Viewing page 158 of 171

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-2-

that I had ever seen.  Another item of the same date is a receipted bill ^[[from]] MacDougal & Co., tailors on the Rue Auber, for a uniform to be delivered later.  That turned out to be a lucky investment.  When I was wounded four days later my clothes were cut off me.  My baggage stayed with the squadron until some time in 1919.  So at the base hospital at Beaune I had no clothes except the pajamas and robe issued to patients. Some time in October a Red Cross man asked if he could do any errands for me in Paris.  He brought me the uniform from MacDougal's, so I had it to wear when I got back to the States.  I had not asked for that leave, but it was a pleasant one.  I did not see Paris again until 1938.

When Heilbrunn and I reported back to the squadron on the morning of the 12th we found it in the process of moving.  Jordan had packed my trunk and bedding-roll and they had already gone on a truck.  We were going back to the St. Mihiel salient which we had left two months before. This time, however, our destination was Souilly, near Verdun on the western face of the salient.  The Americans, in their firdt big independent offensive of the war, were starting an attack on the salient that morning, September 12th. As before, I went with a party of observers in an auto.  I remember that we stopped for lunch at Bar-le-Duc. Souilly was a little more than 20 miles further on.  It had been the site of Petain's headquarters during the siege of Verdun in 1916. The road we followed from the Bar-le-Duc had been the main route of supply for Verdun in those days.  The French alled it the "Voie Sacree", and each kilometer marker was topped by a blue helmet of a dead French soldier.

Souilly had a big airfield. Whe we got there we found two other, newer squadrons already operating.  They also had been assigned to the Third Corps, which no had a full-strength observation group of three, including ours.  Littauer's nose was so to speak put out of joint, for he was outranked by a commander of one of those squadrons, the 99th  Littauer was a mere reserve captian, while the 99th was commanded by a regular army lieutenant-colonel named Christie.  That automatically made Christie the commander of the group.  He had already designated his own outfit, the 99th, as the corps squadron.  The 88th and the third squadron, the 104th, were assigned to work with the two divisions in the line.  We were to serve