his company commander. The platoon which went up with Lieutenant Burr S. Weaver from
Company L captured two more German machine guns with their crews, which had filtered
through the American line or had been passed over by the advancing troops.
Hardly had the regiment become established along the saddle between Hill 327 and the
woods on the left when patrols working west to the Moselle discovered that what was supposed
to be a battalion sector occupied by a unit of another division held not a single American.
Captain Roy F. Hall took his company over there and held the entire line until Company C was
given a part of it.
In these positions the regiment settled down to what rest it was possible to secure under
the harassing bombardment of the German guns until the relief by the 7th Division October 6.
There was one break in the somewhat perilous routine of this existence. That came on the
morning of September 26 when Companies E and F were detached from the regiment and joined
with two from the 359th, making up a battalion which carried out a demonstration action.
With the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient there remained but one of the two original
irregularities in the battleline as it presented itself early in the fall. Attention of the army
commander consequently shifted to the Meuse-Argonne area. In order that a deceptive attack
could be launched at the point of this wide salient without attracting undue German
concentration in defense of that point it was directed that every division in the line east of the
Meuse River should make a demonstration against the enemy on the morning of September 26.
This would hold his attention to his immediate front while the real attack should be made to the
west.
A heavy bombardment of the regiment’s lines on the night of September 25-26 presaged
what Companies F and F would have to meet the following morning. An hour before the
preparatory American bombardment was to begin the Germans let down a hailstorm of fire and
attempted a raid. This was repulsed, however, but not without considerable anxiety over the fate
of the regimental commander, who a few minutes before had been making a reconnaissance in
front of his lines before the village of Pagny-sur-Moselle. This fear prompted Sergeant Major
Ernest T. Tetens, then a private, to search for Colonel Price and find him. In returning to his
own lines Tetens was wounded.
Promptly at 5:30 on the morning of the 26th Major Charles T. Kerr’s two companies
under the immediate command of First Lieutenant Thomas F. Heazlett and Captain Charles D.
Birkhead advanced on the enemy’s line in close support to the companies from the 359th, which
had been put in the assault wave. The plan called for a straight penetration of the enemy’s
position for a depth of two kilometers, then a turn to the right for one kilometer, winding up with
an attack on the villages of Preny and Pagny from the rear. Company L was ordered to move
around Hill 327 the same morning and on Pagny from the flank. The Germans held a long
crescent shaped hill several hundred meters in advance of the battalion’s jumping off place. The
limits of the hill provided him with enveloping fire and he made liberal use of the machine guns
he had placed there. Every place he occupied the higher ground, and against this direct and
overwhelming fire the battalion could do no more than butt his first lines. Despite severe losses
and inspired by the examples of officers like First Lieutenant Raymond C. Campbell and Second
Lieutenant Mark L. Hill of F company, who led reinforcements across an open field, nearly
every yard of which was swept with machine gun bullets, the German positions were assaulted
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