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I dropped my report at division headquarters and we went home. Douglas and his pilot had returned.  They had failed, as we had, to make any contact with the French.  Later that day we learned that the attack of the 167th had been stopped at the railroad track, at the foot of the hill.  Elsewhere along the front, however the allied offensive had been highly successful, expecially in the north. The Germans continued to hold Hill 193 for three days.  Meanwhile the American 26th division had outflanked the hill on the right and the Germans gave it up.

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Footnotes,

1. The 88th was lucky that both its plane crews came out of that mission safe.  A lot of shelling was going on from both sides. To do its work properly the observation plane had to fly low enough to risk being hit in the air by our own or the enemy's artillery. Infantry moving forward in an attack naturally is looking toward its front, not backward.  To insure being seen, therefore, the observation plane had to fly ahead of its own troops, which meant over the Germans.  It was in easy rifle range from the ground.  Both our planes were peppered with bullet holes, and it was pure luck that those bullets did no damage.  We were not always so lucky.

2. The Very pistol, from which our signal rockets were fired, was named for its inventor, a British rocket expert.  I don't know whether it is still in use or not. It was shaped something like an oversized derringer. It was a muzzle-loader. Its barrel was about an inch and a half in diameter. You loaded it by pushing a cylindrical rocket down the barrel.  You cocked the pistol, pointed it somewhere off into outer space and pulled the trigger.  The rocket was first ejected, then after a second or two it went off ^[[at]] a safe distance.  Sometimes when you pulled the trigger the rocket would not be ejected but would start fizzing in the barrel.  In that case the prudent course was to throw the pistol overboard, hoping it would hit a German when it came to earth.  I lost one Very pistol that way.

3. I  have never forgotten what our identifying marker was on our planes that morning of July 18th. Such markers were commonly cloth streamers attached to a wing.  The could be varied as to color, number and location (right or left wing).

^[[Love, Dad]]