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force was being moved into line that night. The heaviest punch was to be struck north of us, near Soissons at the top of the pocket. As shock troops there Mangin had brought in the French Moroccan division and the American First and Second. On our part of the front not so much power was being concentrated, but each division was expected to gain some ground. Douglas and I were to carry out "infantry contact patrol" with the 167th French division. I described that kind of operation in a letter to you written in August 1972. Neither Douglas nor I had ever done it before, but we had been drilled on it rather thoroughly. Littauer offered each of us a choice of pilots from the squadron. Douglas had first choice, and I do not recall whom he picked. I chose Victor Heilbrunn. We had other pilots who were more skillful at handling planes, but some of them were apt to balk at flying close to the ground over enemy territory. On this mission we would have to fly low and I knew I could depend on Victor. Our orders were that Douglas was to take off at daybreak. The infantry would then be moving out. I was to follow exactly an hour later. 

The front of the 167th centered on Torcy, a village just to the left of Belleau. The division was attacking the strongest position the Germans held in that area. The infantry would first have to cross a small stream, then a narrow-gauge railroad track. Then they had to climb Hill 193 (the number simply means the altitude, in meters). The face of Hill 193 was rounded, high, and steep. It had scattered clumps of bushes, excellent cover for machine guns, nearly all the way to the top.  Then you came to open ground extending two or three hundred yards beyond the brow of the hill.  Then you came to a village, Monthiers. The whole terrain was pitted with shell-holes, and some of them were connected by trenches. 

Each attacking division had a tentative time schedule for its advance, a succession o^[[f]] objectives it hoped to reach at specific times. The schedule of the 167th called for an advance nearly halfway up Hill 193 by the time Douglas arrived. By the time I got there, an hour later, the French were expecting to be over the brow of the hill, on open ground approaching Monthiers.  If they had been sure in advance of meeting that schedule, Douglas and I would not have been needed.  More often ^[[than]] not such schedules went haywire ^[[strikethrough]] after [[/strikethrough]] after an