to a halt on November 6th when the Meuse river was reached and could not be crossed because
the retreating Germans had blown up all the bridges. On November 7th the division received
orders to organize the line along the heights from Halles to the Meuse, and the 360th went into
bivouac in the Bois de Montigny. This was a period for great mental, as well as physical,
suffering for the officers and men. Everyone felt that the enemy was beaten decisively and there
was a general desire to push forward and bring the war to a conclusion. Besides, the woods were
damp and everywhere men began to show the strain under which they had lived for days. Within
a very short time 40 per cent of the regiment was reported ill with diarrhea, and another 20 per
cent suffered with sub-acute bronchitis. As soon as the reports indicated the true seriousness of
the situation the regiment was moved, headquarters and the third battalion going into billets at
Andevanne, the first battalion to Villers-devant-Dun, and the second battalion to Bantheville.
Meanwhile reports from the front indicated that the enemy had withdrawn to the heights
two kilometers east of Stenay and to the heights north of Baalon. So, on November 9th, when a
bridge had been built across the stream, the 179th Brigade was again ordered to the chase, and
the 360th to follow them closely. Colonel Price led his regiment across the Meuse that night at
Dun-sur-Meuse. The next morning the 179th advanced against the newly discovered German
positions. At 4 o’clock on the afternoon of the 10th the 180th Brigade was ordered to relieve the
357th and 358th Infantry regiments and renew the attack at daybreak on the morning of
November 11th. The relief was effected in the last flicker of fire that the enemy could muster. A
lone enemy observation balloon, which refused to the end to be downed, directed this fire with
such accuracy that Lieutenant Heber Henry, supply officer of the second battalion, had his horse
shot from under, him, although he escaped unhurt. But the next morning the regiment stood
ready to deliver another mighty blow when word of the operation of the armistice was received
all along the line, a few minutes before the assault hour. During the night Major Allen, who had
been constantly with his battalion since the regiment’s first operation, succumbed to the effects
of the severe German gas bombardment and had to be evacuated. Captain John Rosenbalm and
Lieutenant Albert H. Graves, of Company L, as well as a number of enlisted men, were also
gassed that night.
The first battalion was formed up in the assault waves of the regiment when the attack
order was countermanded. The second battalion was in support, and the third in reserve. The
word was received quietly, soldierly. Vigilance was not relaxed a moment until the supporting
artillery had clicked off the last second of the final minute of the war. The outpost groups of the
first battalion lay watchfully waiting but a few yards from similar but less spirited detachments
of the German army. Only one incident occurred to relieve the nervous strain of those final
hours. That came when men from the machine gun company rolled their ration wagon into the
outskirts of Baalon, looking for hungry comrades.
‘What the h--- are you doing here?” shouted an American outguard from behind a stone
wall when it seemed that the driver intended to deliver his rations if he had to go to Berlin to do
it. “Don’t you know the Germans aren’t out of town yet?”
The speed with which the ration cart was whirled around and started in the direction of
the American lines seemed to make the pace of a comet snail-like in comparison.
That night it was solemn, rather than joyous, groups of men from the regiment which
gathered around warming camp fires in a link of the lighted chain from Switzerland to the sea
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