"The advance started at 6 o'clock, and at 6.25 the first of our men entered the village of Vaux. By 6.40 they had gone through the wood, gaining all their objectives. Our stormy petrels took Vaux in clean-up style. Squads were ready with their hand grenades to clear the cellars, but many of these had been closed by our fire, and the Germans had been buried in them. From others the Germans came out and surrendered. In some there was difficulty, and in that case our men threw in hand grenades in great numbers. Generally, if there were any Germans left, they surrendered. "Four hours after the men went over the top American telephone lines were working from Vaux back to our headquarters. By 7.30 our ambulances were running into the wrecked village. "A wounded German brought in about 10 o'clock said that in the morning there had been 4,000 Germans in the village, but after the barrage started some had been withdrawn, leaving only those who could be sheltered in sixty-eight caves in the village. He said the cave in which he took refuge was wrecked by an American shell and that he lay wounded for six hours until the Americans came in." For adroitness, dispatch, thoroughness, and sustained teamwork, the attack on Vaux was an undoubted triumph for American arms, though a small one. Each man moved to the particular post in the town to which he had been assigned to perform his allotted task. None failed, and the operation was completed with systematic smoothness; as though in a twinkling, it was all over. With Vaux and the Bois de la Roche in their hands, the Americans took their machine guns to the edge of the wood, expecting a counterattack. It duly came, the Germans launching a fresh regiment upon the lost positions; but an hour later all was calm--the regiment was no more. A second counterattack broke in the small hours of July 3, 1918, accompanied by a heavy bombardment. The enemy lost heavily without regaining a foot of the ground won by the Americans. The Germans advanced in close formation from their trenches without being checked. In some cases they were allowed to approach close to the American line. Then the American gunners, from their hidden nests, mowed down the enemy ranks with showers of bullets. Later came a fight for the possession of a hill known as 204, situated between Vaux and the Bois de la Roche. The Germans held it and the French, in essaying the task of wresting it from them, invited American detachments to lend a hand. The hill stood just outside the American sector and commanded Château-Thierry. Volunteers were many; most of them were new arrivals who had never faced the Germans. Practically none had been under fire. They were waiting their chance, some swimming in the Marne, others catching baseball, when the call came, and the response was five times the number needed.