Even so the Americans did deadly execution until their ammunition was practically exhausted. Then, seeing the situation hopeless, the head coaches, Emanuel Haug, John A. C. Collins, Donald D. Smith and Paul B. Mann, called for volunteers to hold the monument with the few remaining cartridges, while the rest of the boys retreated. Hundreds clamoured for this desperate honour, and finally the coaches selected seventy of those who had qualified as sharpshooters to remain and face almost certain death, among these being: Jack Condon of the Morris High School, J. Vernet (Manual Training), Lynn Briggs (Erasmus), Isaac Smith (Curtis), Charles Mason (Commercial), C. Anthony (Bryant), J. Rosenfeld (Stuyvesant), V. Doran (Flushing), M. Marnash (Eastern District), F. Scanlon (Bushwick), Winthrop F. Foskett (De Witt Clinton), and Richard Humphries (Jamaica). Such was the situation when Field Marshal von Hindenburg dashed up in his motor car. Seventy young American patriots on top of Lookout Hill, with their last rounds of toy ammunition, were holding back a German regiment while their comrades fled for their lives. And surely they would have been a martyred seventy, since the Bavarians were about to charge in full force, had not von Hindenburg taken in the situation at a glance and shouted: “Halt! It is not fitting that a German regiment shall use its strength against a handful of boys. Let them guard their monument! March on!” Meantime, to the east and north of the city the battle raged and terror spread among the populace. All eyes were fixed on New York as a haven of refuge and, by the bridge, ferry and tunnel, hundreds of thousands made their escape from Brooklyn. The three great bridges stretching their giant black arms across the river were literally packed with people--fathers, mothers, children, all on foot, for the trolleys were hopelessly blocked. A man told me afterwards that it took him seven hours to cross with his wife and their two little girls. Other swarms hovered about the tunnel entrances and stormed the ferry-boats at their slips. Every raft in the harbour carried its load. The Pennsylvania and Erie ferries from the other side of Manhattan, the Staten Island boats, the Coney Island and other excursion steamers, struggled through the press of sea traffic and I heard that three of these vessels sank of their own weight. Here and there, hardly discernible among the larger craft, were the small boats, life-boats, canoes, anything and everything that would float, each bearing its little group to a precarious safety on Manhattan Island.