NEVER has there been such a sudden and simultaneous crashing outburst of artillery of every conceivable kind and calibre as ripped the darkness and the silence at two-thirty o’clock on the morning of September 12th on the southern side of the St. Mihiel salient. For the five minutes preceding the appointed time every officer of the staff and line had stood gazing at his wrist watch, counting off the seconds, knowing what was coming, waiting for it, wishing for it, and yet withal unprepared for the terrible shock which seemed to make the very earth rock and roar. With such an uninterrupted banging and booming and screeching and swishing as never before had been heard upon the face of the earth, thousands upon thousands of guns, massed side by side along a line twelve miles long, were belching forth as in one thunderous voice a new and world wide Declaration of Independence. America, come to another continent to avenge mankind and save humanity and civilization, was pouring the wrath of the universe into the Hun lines and defenses. Under the terrific shock of the thing men fell upon their faces in the trenches, their hands to their ears in a vain effort to shut out the screaming, nerve-racking death-cry of the cannon. The attempts were futile. Never for an instant did the guns pause; never was there the slightest break in their awful rhythm. Men in the trenches whose duty still lay before them, marveled at the strength and endurance, the proficiency and the tenacity of those other men, far behind the lines, who were feeding, feeding, feeding shells into the maw of this tremendous array of artillery. A veritable cloud of projectiles—death-dealing, trench-destroying shells—were being hurled over the heads of the infantrymen into the long-held defenses of the Boche. And then, as if that was not enough for men to endure, just before they were to throw their own lives into the battle, the German guns began to reply. They had no range, for the attack was a complete surprise. Had they been less self-complacent they might have realized that for days before, when an invincible fleet of aeroplanes of every description had kept their own air observers from flying over this area, something of great significance was under way. But if they sensed it, their efforts to learn were of no avail, and so when the awful thunder of shelling began, they could only guess where the infantry and tanks were massed, which inevitably would follow in the wake of the artillery carnage. So, when they opened up, terrifically, too, it is true, but with nothing like the force of the assault directed against them, it was with a sweeping shelling much like the playing of a searchlight over an area. It was not a barrage; it was more like the blind, helpless and hysterical hitting back of one who knows not where his opponent is.