The next day we flew out again to the battle front, taking care not to advance over the proscribed area, and we scanned the northern banks of the Susquehanna for signs of the enemy, but saw none. On the second day we had the same experience, but on the third day, towards evening, three Taubes approached swiftly at a great height and hovered over our lines, taking observations, and an hour later we made out a body of German cavalry on the distant hills. “An advance guard of Saxons and Westphalians,” said I, studying their flashing helmets. “There will be something doing to-morrow.” There was. The battle of the Susquehanna began at daybreak, October 14th, 1921, with an artillery duel which grew in violence as the batteries on either side of the river found the ranges. Aeroplanes skirmished for positions over the opposing armies and dropped revealing smoke columns as guides to the gunners. Hour after hour the Germans poured a terrific fire of shells and shrapnel upon the American trenches and I wondered if they would not destroy or disarrange our trap, but Astor said they would not. Our inadequate artillery replied as vigorously as possible and was supported by the old U. S. battleship _Montgomery_, manned by the Baltimore naval brigade under Commander Ralph Robinson, which lay two miles down the river and dropped twelve-inch shells within the enemy’s lines. Valuable service was also rendered by heavy mobile field artillery improvised by placing heavy coast defence mortars on strongly reinforced railroad trucks. None of this, however, prevented the Germans from forcing through their work of pontoon building, which had been started in the night. Five lines of pontoons were thrown across the Susquehanna in two days, and very early on the morning of October 14th, the crossing of troops began. All day from our aeroplane, circling at a height of a mile or rising to two miles in case of danger, we looked down on fierce fighting in the trenches and saw the Germans drive steadily forward, sweeping ahead in close formation, mindless of heavy losses and victorious by reason of overwhelming numbers. By four o’clock in the afternoon they had dislodged the Americans from their first lines of entrenchment and forced them to retreat in good order to reserve lines five miles back of the river. Between these front lines and the reserve lines there was a stretch of rolling farm land lined and zigzagged with three-foot ditches used for shelter by our troops as they fell back. By six o’clock that evening the German army had occupied this entire area and by half-past seven, in the glory of a gorgeous crimson sunset, we saw the invaders capture our last lines of trenches and drive back the Americans in full retreat, leaving the ground strewn with their own dead and wounded.