Viewing page 7 of 236

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-7-
from the pursuit patrols that lay in his path. Imagine my satisfaction when, as I stepped into my headquarters on my return, the Information Officer reported that the Rumpler had been shot down in flames by a patrol from the 1st Pursuit Group, and that he had fallen on our side of the line and all his plates were in our hands.
I mention this small incident to point out the fact that every little thing has to be thought out and arranged far ahead of time and the objects, aims, and exact method of operation of an enemy have to be thoroughly understood to counteract what he desires to do. In this case, the Rumpler had broken through our screen near the Argonne Forest where he could get the sun behind him. As soon, however, as the anti-aircraft artillery post could look up away from the sun they found him and immediately opened fire to signal our pursuit patrols, which were twenty miles away. Other anti-aircraft batteries took up the fire with the result that the patrols, way up in the air, saw the shells bursting and immediately went in pursuit and discovered the German ship and shot it down. The plates, which he had exposed, had enough on them to show almost exactly where our concentration had been made.
     The area over which our army was to operate was one of the worse in Europe. During the four years of the war, no substantial advance had been made in this locality. The Argonne Forest was very large, thickly wooded, hard to reconnoitre, and in which it was impossible to make a forced landing with an aeroplane (if shot down or in trouble); while, for the infantry and artillery on the ground, the mere fact of subjecting it to artillery fire and battle conditions piled the trees on each other so that they, in themselves, made a very formidable obstacle. From the Argonne Forest to the Meuse River (a distance of about forty miles) there were many little forests covering a succession of ridges running more or less parallel to our front, all converging on the town and position of Mountfaucon, which was the Gibraltar of this part of the country.