artillery had registered directly on our own front trenches, so that it could slaughter the Germans when they came across, believing those trenches to be occupied as usual.

     “Everything worked out as expected, and as luck had it, most of
     those gallant sixteen Frenchmen got back safely.

“Five minutes before the Germans started their artillery preparation for the drive Gen. Gouraud started his cannon going and there was a slaughter in the German lines.  Then when the German infantry crossed to our front line trenches (now entirely vacant) they were smashed up because the French guns were firing directly upon these positions, which they knew mathematically.  And those of the Boche who went down in the dugouts for safety were killed by the gas which the Frenchmen had left there for them.

“This battle—­the supreme German drive—­raged over eighty-five kilometers (51 miles).  West of Rheims the enemy broke through the line, but they did not break through anywhere in Gen. Gouraud’s sector.  Stonewall Gouraud stopped them.  The American units which took in the defense that was so successful were the 42nd Division, including the gallant 69th of New York, who were to the west of us, our own little regiment, and the American Railroad Artillery.

“That was the turning point of the war, because soon thereafter began Marshal Foch’s great counter thrust, in which the 1st and 2nd American Divisions participated so wonderfully about Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry and that district.  Gouraud in my belief, turned the tide of the war, and I am proud that the New York City colored boys had a share of that vital fight.

“Right here I may say that this orphan, urchin regiment of ours placed in the pathway of the Boche in the most significant battle the world has ever known, had only thirty-seven commissioned officers, and four of those wounded, had to be carried in stretchers to their positions in the trenches in order to direct the fighting.”

Colonel Hayward was himself in the hospital with a broken leg.  Disregarding the orders of the surgeons he went to the front line on crutches and personally directed his men in the fight.  In all of his written and quoted utterances since the war, he has refrained from mentioning this fact, but it is embodied in the regimental records.

Shortly after the French national holiday, the 369th was sent about 15 kilometers west to a position in front of the Butte de Mesnil, a high hill near Maison en Champagne, occupied by the Germans.  Around that district they held half a dozen sectors at different times with only one week of rest until September 26th.

Artillery duels were constant.  It is related that near the Butte de Mesnil the regiment lost a man an hour and an officer a day from the shell fire of the Boche.  So accurate were the gunners handling the German 77s that frequently a solitary soldier who exposed himself would actually be “sniped” off by a cannoneer.