About nine o’clock the 1st Battalion, which had been in support, was ordered to reinforce on the
right, and proceeded immediately toward Stenay along the main Stenay-Mouzay road. Its advance was
held up, however, near the French barracks known as Blanc Fontaine, five hundred meters out of Stenay,
by the cross-fire of machine gunners and snipers from the church steeple in the city, and from the slopes
of Aviation Hill to the east of Stenay. The 2d Battalion had been protected partially by the morning fog,
but this lifted, unhappily, in time to expose the 1st Battalion. A machine gun mounted in a window of
the barracks kept down some of the enemy fire, and Major Danenhour, firing a rifle from another
window, personally accounted for some snipers. But the heavy casualties and the reduced strength of
the organization rendered further advance inadvisable and the men were ordered to dig in and hold on.
When the progress slowed down, Colonel Leary decided to go forward and look at matters for
himself. En route he came across about 150 men, consisting of part of a machine gun company and a
platoon of riflemen, who had become separated from the battalion near the Stand. Colonel Leary
personally led this detachment forward to replenish the thin front line. For this act of heroism he was
awarded the D. S. C. On account of the difficulty of locating the enemy machine guns with sufficient
accuracy for the artillery to knock them out, Colonel Leary gave orders to organize for defense, worry
the Boche all night, and clean up the town the next morning.
This was done. Patrols, advancing cautiously the morning of the 11th, found that the Germans
had evacuated, barricading the two principal streets with the finest French furniture, rifled from
residences. A patrol led by Lieutenant Frank Feuille found four Germans who had been left behind.
Before eleven o’clock outposts had been established around the city, with machine guns sited on all
roads. About two hundred civilians remained in Stenay, hundreds of others having been evacuated
during the last few days of fighting. Early in the morning a little girl was sent by the citizens to the
bakery to present a bouquet of flowers and a flag to Major Soother and Captain Hennessey, who were
welcomed as the deliverers of Stenay.
French civilians, under German rule for four years, gathered at the city hall
of Mouzay to receive food and supplies from the Americans on the day following
the evacuation by the Germans, November 11, 1918.
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