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hurts after he had been taken to the hospital.  Lieutenants Patrick Edwards and Mason Turner on
the part of the machine gun company with Company D, were also hit and had to be evacuated. 
Lieutenant Fleming Burk, who was in command of Company D, which furnished the combat
liaison with the 89th Division on the left throughout the advance, was later added to the casualty
list and the command of his company passed to Lieutenant Alf L. Jones, with Sergeant Hiram
Hucherson in command of the attached machine guns. 
While the intermediate objectives faurished the battalion with a slight breathing spell, it
did as much for the enemy, and when the order came to go forward again the German had
concentrated heavy machine gun and artillery fire to block the way of Major Allen’s depleted
command.  Twice after 8:30 o’clock when the first attempt was made, Major Allen placed
himself in the front line between his two assault companies and gallantly started forward, but
each time the result was so sickening that a halt was enforced.  During the half hour wait the
smoke barrage which had hung like a pall over the German lines during the first phase of the
battle had blown away and it had become necessary to sweep over country which for two
thousand yards was bare of cover.  The few groups of hardy man who did work their way
forward a short distance nearly all became casualties before they could be rescued.  It was to aid
one of these from his own company that Captain John E. Curtis of Company I crawled forward
to a shell hole in plain sight of the Germans and under bursts of deliberate fire.  When Captain
Curtis found that the wounded man’s condition was so serious that thorough first aid treatment
was imperative he picked the man up and carried him back to the aid station on his shoulders. 
Miraculously he was not wounded. .
Realizing the need to push forward at all costs, and taking into account the strength of the
third battalion which had lost heavily in the first few hours, Colonel Price ordered the second
battalion to leapfrog the third and take up the advance.  In accomplishing this the entice second
battalion filtered through the woods to the left of Andevanne, thus avoiding the open ground
South of the village and formed its skirmish line so rapidly that it had pushed forward into the
Carpiere Bois, north of Andevanne, almost before the German machine gunners were aware of
the change in forces.  Slipping up on one gun crew after another detachments of the second
battalion carried position after position in a series of desperate, man-to-man encounters.  It was
during this fighting that Sergeant Alfred Buchanan of Company G was wounded and forced to
go back to the first aid station.  He later attempted to rejoin his company, but with Germans and
Americans brushing elbows he had wandered into the German lines before he realized it.  By
quirk thinking he managed to escape and rejoin his platoon, resuming command and conducting
it with marked ability until hit a second time. 
By that night the second battalion had reached the narrow gauge railway running west
through the woods from Hill 243 and had discovered a possible avenue of approach to that cote,
which still was to be the scene of heavy fighting and many casualties.  Close to two hundred
prisoners had been added to the regiment’s catch and scores of thrilling exploits recorded.  Many
machine guns were captured and several pieces of artillery, including a 1918 model 210
Howitzer.  The 345th machine gun battalion alone fired more than 1,225,000 rounds over the
heads of the second battalion in the woods.  So intense was their fire that at one stage it became
almost impossible for Major Etter’s men to advance through the woods because the machine gun
bullets had clipped all the branches from the trees and practically blocked the paths.  Then it was
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