"Fine!" said the commander. "We will clean that place up at 2.30 o'clock this afternoon." And that is exactly what they did. The guns laid down a barrage that not only drove the Germans into their shelters, but opened up holes in the near side of the wood and through the wire. The scattered few of the Pennsylvanians who still clung to their places just within the first fringe of woodland made themselves as small as possible, hugging the ground and the boles of the largest trees they could find. Despite their best endeavors, however, it was a terrible experience to have to undergo that terrific cannonading from their own guns. Finally, the barrage lifted and the regiments went out once more for the sixth assault on the Bois de Grimpettes. The big guns had lent just the necessary added weight to carry them across. The Germans flung themselves from their dugouts and offered what resistance they could, but the first wave of thoroughly mad, yelling, excited Americans was on them before they got well started with their machine gun reception. Our men went through Grimpettes Wood "like a knife through butter" as one officer expressed it later. It was man against man, rifle and bayonet against machine gun and one-pounder, and the best men won. Some prisoners were sent back, but the burial squads laid away more than 400 German bodies in Grimpettes. The American loss in cleaning up the wood was hardly a tithe of that. It was a heroic and gallant bit of work, typical of the dash and spirit of our men. After the first attack on Grimpettes Wood had failed, First Sergeant William G. Meighan, of Waynesburg, Pa., Company K, 110th Infantry, in the lead of his company, was left behind when the recall was sounded. He had flung himself into a shell-hole, in the bottom of which water had collected. The machine gun fire of the Germans was low enough to "cut the daisies," as the men remarked. Therefore, there was no possibility of crawling back to the lines. The water in the hole in which he had sought shelter attracted all the gas in the vicinity, for Fritz was mixing gas shells with his shrapnel and high explosives. The German machine gunners had seen the few Americans who remained on the field, hiding in shell holes, and they kept their machine guns spraying over those nests. Other men had to don their gas masks when the gas shells came over, but none had to undergo what Sergeant Meighan did.