During a temporary lull, I strolled out to the left, map in hand, and crossing the ravine started up the next ridge to find them. About a hundred yards ahead I caught a glimpse of a man walking through the trees, and thought I recognized one of our runners. I shouted “Hey.” He turned around. I asked “What platoon are you in?” Then I noticed how nicely his helmet came down around his neck. He unlimbered a rifle that looked about eight feet long, and cracked a bullet past my ear. I reached for my .45, remembered my last target score with that weapon, and promptly betook myself off to our own ridge. There I took a dead man’s rifle and ammunition, and called for volunteers to go on a combat patrol to find the 2nd platoon. We needed them badly, for if the enemy got in on our left flank they could enfilade our ridge and shoot us down at pleasure. I took Martocci and four other men--their names I can’t recall, though their faces stand out sharply in my memory. We advanced up the ridge on our left in skirmishing order. My Boche friend was waiting for us, and before we had gone fifty yards he cracked down on us from the woods above. We answered, firing by ear at the sound of his rifle. It was blind work; we couldn’t see fifty yards through the woods. We worked up to the top of the ridge, and then along it toward the west. Two of the patrol were missing; lost or killed, I never knew which. We pushed on cautiously, a few yards at a time, stopping to look and listen. Now and again the enemy would spot us, and his bullets would snap past us viciously. The German rifle has a high, whip-like crack, easily distinguishable from that of our Enfield or Springfield; but the noise of the bullet passing by is much the same. Suddenly I felt a sharp blow on my shoulder; one of the gentlemen had pinked me neatly. Down the ridge the bushes rustled; all four of us let drive at the sound. There was a shrill scream, and then silence. One of us had found a mark. This was all very interesting, but my business was to find that 2nd platoon. My mind was working away industriously at that problem, with a peculiar detachment. I only remember feeling vaguely annoyed at our patrol’s unpleasant situation, and did my share of the shooting almost mechanically. Of course, as we found out later, the 312th Inf. outpost made no advance at all that morning, and our patrol had pushed in behind the German line of outguards; to our mutual bewilderment and disgust. The Boche began to fall back through the woods, not stealthily as we were moving, but clumping and crashing along, and shouting to one another to know what in donner und blitzen was up.