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the French side was the other, the Fort de la Pompelle.  From the air all you saw of them was two low heaps of broken stone, but you knew that men were living underground there and keeping watch on each other.  The eastern end of our sector included a row of three round-topped hills called the Monts de Champagne.  They were named Mont Sec, Mont Haut and Mont Bland.  The French held all three, no-man's land running along their northern bases.  The German had made repeated efforts to take those hills.  They were to try twice more. Late in May of 1918 they tried and failed, but they did break through west of Reims and drove down to the Marne at Chateau-Thierry.  They made a final try in their last offensive of the war on July 15. At that time the sector was held by the American 42nd (Rainbow) division.  That was MacArthur's division, though I am not sure he had then risen to its command.  He was at first one of its brigadiers.

One day I was taken with three French observers to visit an infantry battalion in the line.  A chauffeur took us most of the way in a car.  He parked it behind the hills, where it was out of sight from the German lines, and waited for us there.  We went another miel and a half or so on foot, following zigzag trenches.  We came out on the north slope of Mont Sec, where a major met us, talked with us briefly and turned us over to subordinates of our own rank.  We walked freely along the front trench of the battalion's domain.  No shells were falling in the neighborhood, no German plane was in sight and our heads did not reach to the top of the trench.  You had to mount a firing step to see over the parapet, and we knew that would not be prudent.  We did however get a good look at the German parapet, barbed wire and no-man's land from an observation post.  This was a steel cylinder set upright into the front wall of the trench at a high point.  It was tall and big enough for a man to stand upright in it.It had a steel cover.  It had two openings, an entrance in the rear and a slit peephole in front.  A sliding door was so arranged that when you pushed it aside to enter it covered the peephole in front before it admitted any light from behind.  Thus the Germans never could see light coming through.  The whole structure was covered with earth on top and in front except for the peephole.  We visitors took turns spying on the German trenches, where there seemed to be no on at home.