On the first day the 77th had practically reached its objectives, on the second it was to suffer the same loss of momentum as other divisions. The "scalloping" on the edges of the Forest, however valorous, could not keep up to schedule. If the Forest boundaries had been straight lines on a plain, the result might have been different. _Liaison_ over the escarpments in the valley of the Aire and the hills and ravines on the left became a nightmare. Still the orders were "Push ahead!" to battalions or companies which were not up. If under this spur they advanced beyond their flanks, then the flanks were to "push ahead!" Thus in a process of see-sawing platoons and companies continued to make progress. The units in the middle of the Forest saw nothing but trees and underbrush. All the world was forest to them. Those who found themselves on the edge looked out on stretches of the great battlefield under puffs of shell smoke, and to the going and coming of aeroplanes in another world, and possibly were forced to seek shelter in the Forest by bursts of machine-gun fire to which they were exposed from other divisional sectors. So it was not surprising that the men of the 77th, immersed in the Forest depths, should think that they were fighting the whole battle. They knew nothing of the "scalloping" tactics. Their horizon was confined to a few square yards. To them the Argonne had no appeal of a holiday woods. Sylvan glades, which the poet might admire, meant stumbling down one side and crawling up the other, with ears keen for the whipping sound which might signify that they were in an ambush. They might not stop in for a nap at the rest-camps. They were not sleeping in those beautiful wainscoted quarters, but on the dank ground in the deep shadow of the trees which kept the sunlight from slaking moisture after the rains. The rolling kitchens were held up in the rear where the trucks cut deep in the saturated woodland earth, and hurdled over tree-trunks between sloughs, while the Forest made the darkness all the more trying as the weary engineers endeavored to hold up their end.