champagnes known the world over, and many interesting things to be done, if only for a few hours, the
drought would be over.
We stayed in the vicinity of St. Masmes until September 6th. This was a good opportunity for
the men to clean themselves as well as their equipment. A small, fast flowing stream, the Vesle flowed
through the battery positions. Several movies were shown at the theater in the town of Bazancourt. The
movies were all lousy, as usual, but helped to relieve the monotony of waiting. During this stay here
there were a few changes in the officer personnel; Captain Lippard, Charlie Battery Commander,
became Battalion Executive, Captain Thornton went to Charlie Battery as Commander, and Lt. Mann to
Captain Thornton's place as liaison officer.
On the sixth we moved from St. Masmes on a long trip towards, and beyond Verdun. Our route
took us through Pont Farverger, Bethenieville, St. Hilaire Le Grande, Suippes, Somme Suippes, St.
Menehold, Clermont, Blercourt, and Verdun itself. Verdun, the famous besieged city of World War I,
with its cold grim fortresses had seen too much of soldiering to be much interested in our long convoy.
The old fortresses of this town were not defended by the Germans in this present conflict, a few battle
scars were to be seen but not many.
After going through Verdun, where the people had a sort of beaten, downtrodden look, a look as
if they had been worked by a tyrant all their days, we headed out east and went through Etain and finally
arrived at Barancourt ninety-four miles from where we started in the morning.
From Barancourt we went to Landres, and ended up in a small town called Lugquengnieux, after
passing through a small place, just a wide spot in the road called Mairy. The towns in this zone are all
mining towns dull, dreary and uninteresting, almost dead. A few children and girls wave and smile, but
men are sober faced and tired looking, trudging along, minding their own business, looking straight
ahead. Lt. Cantini returned to the battalion in this position.
About 0200 on the morning of September eighth, small arms fire could be heard to the rear.
Towards dawn the Battalion heard that a panzer brigade searching for our recon outfit, not realizing that
they were up against an entire division, attacked Division Artillery Headquarters, killing several and
wounding many more. Finally some aid was brought to the men and the Panzer outfit made its way to
Mairy, where our Service Battery was located; also in the town was the 1st Battalion 358th and their
Canon Company. The Germans entered the town shortly after daybreak, only to run into a tremendous
barrage of all types of fire, including artillery which had swung its guns 180 degrees in order to fire on
the enemy. Grenades were tossed from windows into open half tracks, riflemen were sniping from all
vantage points; bazookas smashed and wrecked tracked vehicles as fast as they came into range. The
artillery was firing heavy a barrage on all roads coming into town, thus blocking any escape. A and B
companies, 358th Infantry, plus Service Battery plus our artillery accounted for 48 half tracks, 27 assault
guns, 7 tiger tanks, 2 motorcycles and 1 truck, and 100 prisoners, and 47 wounded, the 1st Battalion
suffered 22 casualties. Sgt. Tammany, and Pfc. Schneiderman knocked out a tank, S/Sgt. Tucker and
Cpl. Harnagel an halftrack, Sgt. Gemar and Cpl. Rathage stopped a Mark V tank. All these men, from
Service Battery, did their splendid work with bazookas, and no casualties. The Panzer outfit learned too
late that it was pulling the tale of a tiger, and was almost completely annihilated. A heartening sight
during the fight was to see the Frenchmen come out of the town and woods with weapons of all types
and heading for the scene of the fight. That day was the first active firing we had done since the Falaise
Pocket. Nine hundred twenty-four rounds fired. That night a normal barrage was laid down right in
front of the CP. During the day the ack-ack had quite a novel experience. One of their gun sections had
spotted some Germans running into the woods right in front of the gun, so Captain Aurbach, B.C. had
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