"One evening at 7 o'clock orders came over the long-distance telephone from headquarters to move. At 10 o'clock the same night camions were rumbling up, and after all the men had found places, started toward the fateful Marne. Before daylight they had crossed a goodly part of France and reached the reserve areas. The camions started back, while soldiers and officers stretched out along the roadside to snatch a few hours of sleep. The next night they marched into the support positions. A few more hours of sleep, and they went directly into the battle. In less than twelve hours telephone wires were strung and communication established in their territory. Every part of the organization from commanding officers to privates were working perfectly. Supplies were coming up over the roads in the rear. Ambulances were carrying back the wounded, while the trucks which had carried up ammunition with which to sow the seeds of death returned to aid refugees and thus helping to save the living. "Along the Paris road the dust hung like a fog over the companies marching forward to take their turn at fighting and other companies returning for a few hours of sleep. Out of the brown clouds dashed staff motor cars and ambulances disregarding all speed laws. Trains of trucks passed the horse-drawn batteries moving into position. Flashes and ear-splitting crashes came from batteries put in position just far enough off the roads to avoid the traffic. Men were cooking beside the guns, and others, oblivious to the suffocating dust, were sleeping in the midst of the noise and turmoil. All moved according to a well-ordered system. "While the guns were barking under the shade trees at the roadside stolid ox teams with carts loaded with household possessions were moving to the rear. It seemed as if the guns with their muzzles pointing the other way were holding back the invaders until those fleeing fugitives should again reach safety. Other batteries were hastily unlimbered in fields and orchards where plows and harrows had been abandoned only a few hours previously by the peaceful peasants." The Americans entered the line in the midst of a battle which raged over a hilly country and which shifted back and forth like a maelstrom. Crops were growing and there were no prepared trenches. The first unit on the scene was a machine-gun battalion, which rode on trucks throughout the night of Friday, May 30, 1918, and arrived the next morning, going into position to guard the bridges across the Marne at Château-Thierry. Another unit arrived on Sunday morning, June 2, 1918, and before 4 o'clock the same afternoon had been in three fights, in one of which it drove the Germans back two kilometers on a front of four kilometers. The beginning of June, 1918, in fact, which marked the entrance of the Americans into the battle line of the Soissons-Marne-Rheims salient, found them in the thick of the conflict almost before they had breathing time to dig in.