The 1st and the 32nd were not the only veterans attacking on October 4th. There was to be an offensive along our whole line to engage the enemy at every point to support the prime object of making the wedge. The 1st started for its objectives at the same hour, daylight, as the other divisions. Its left overran the Germans of the 5th Guard Division in Montrebeau Wood, and swept down into the Exermont ravine. There the groups of dead of the 35th, killed by shell-bursts, gave warning against "bunching" that the men of the 1st took to heart. They did not move forward in dense formation, but in thin swift lines offering the enemy few targets, and those briefly. Orders were simple; responsibility direct and ruthlessly delegated. Company leaders knew what to do against machine-gun nests, and they did it, thanks to the fresh vigor and thorough training of the men.
Quivering under the blows of the hammer of command and determination, the left was driven three miles that day, against fire from three directions manipulated by the cleverly conceived and cunningly executed open warfare tactics of the enemy: in and out of the folds of ground, uphill and downhill, taking machine-guns with barrels hot, as the German gunners fired until the last moment. That night it sent patrols into Fléville, a village on the bank of the Aire at the foot of a bluff, with the Germans holding the other bank three miles in their rear. The possession of Fléville was that of a name on the map, which read well in communiqués. Holding the high ground above it was what counted, in the same way that possession of the porch counts if you wish to throw stones at a man on the driveway below; and holding it in face of fire from flank and rear flank required men who would dig holes and stick to them. The wedge was made, but it was a sharp one of only one brigade front, as things had not gone as well as they might either with the right of the 1st or with the 32nd.
[Illustration: MAP NO. 8 THE APPROACH OF THE CENTER TO THE WHALE-BACK.]
The right of the 1st crossing Exermont ravine under enfilade and frontal fire charged into the wooded slopes of the Montrefagne, or Hill 240. Twice that day we had the hill; and twice the Germans, reinforced, surged back and drove us off. Our men were saying that "every Boche who didn't have a machine-gun had a cannon"; for the enemy, realizing the value of every foot of ground, was using roving guns attached to his infantry battalions. We were doing the same. There were instances, in the course of this battle for the heights, when our infantry charges came within a hundred feet of field guns which the enemy boldly--and it seemed miraculously--withdrew under our rifle fire to the cover of reverse slopes.