Many of our company commanders were picked off by the enemy because of their distinctive dress, their celluloid map cases affording excellent targets. My memory of this fight is somewhat fragmentary. There are phases which are all but blanks to me. Others stand out with startling clarity. We were advancing in skirmishing order through a wood. A pal of my old athletic days, Ned McD----, fighting a few yards from me in our scattered line, fell with a bullet through both thighs. I made him as comfortable as I could in a nook about twenty paces back from where our men, lying on their stomachs, were keeping up a steady rifle fire through the underbrush. I had hardly returned to the line when the whistle of our platoon commander sounded shrilly, and we were ordered to retire to the farther edge of the plateau, where our men could have better protection from the enemy fire. I hurriedly placed McD---- under the edge of a bank, where, at least, he would not be trampled on by men or horses. "Don't attempt to leave the spot, Ned," I said. "I'll get back to you to-night if there's an opportunity." The chance did come, but when I reached the spot he had disappeared. Our subsequent meeting--the story of which I shall tell--is one of my few agreeable recollections in the train of the tragedy of our campaign. But to go back to the fight. Soon after leaving the spot where McD---- lay, I joined in a charge on a line of hidden trenches. We were upon them, and it was steel and teeth again. I saw an officer run in under a bayonet thrust, and jab his thumbs into a German's eyes. The boche rolled upon the ground, screaming. How long we fought, I do not know. When it was over we began to pick up the wounded. It was night. The Prussian guns were still hammering at us, and some of the shells set fire to a number of haystacks in the field where we had crossed the open. It was Hell. In the red glare of the fire the stretcher bearers hurried here and there with the dying, while others who had been placed behind the hay-stacks for shelter burned to death when the stalks caught fire. The few who could, crawled away from the fire. Those of us who were able to do so, pulled others to safety, and many a man had his hands and face badly burned, rescuing a helpless comrade. The next morning we went at them again. In the first rush, I felt a sudden slap against my thigh. It did not feel like anything more than a blow from an open palm. I thought nothing more of it until after the fight, when some one told me I was bleeding. A bullet had struck the flesh of my thigh. The slight wound was dressed at the regimental station, and I was ready for duty again.