“Patrols advanced into No Man’s Land as the artillery cut away
barbed-wire entanglements. The great guns rose into a rumble and
death rode through the night on shells—bound toward Germany. At 2.25
o’clock in the morning of September 26 the barrage rose and thundered
in volume. Like the roll of a mighty drum the sound could be heard
for more than a hundred miles. At 5.05 o’clock the barrage rested on
the German front lines—rested there for twenty-five minutes, cutting
forests to the ground and demoralizing the enemy who fled into the
deepest dugouts. At 5.30 o’clock, the zero hour, the boys from
Ohio went over the top. Every county and village in the State was
represented in that attack.
“On and on they went. Machine-gun nests, carefully camouflaged with the
hellishness shown only by the German, were discovered and destroyed.
Here and there in the woodland Hun snipers were busy—but not for long.
Men fell by the wayside in agony, refused assistance from comrades, and
urged the men to go forward. That was the true Ohio spirit. The spirit
that drove the Germans back mile after mile, that resulted in the
capture of not only Montfaucon, twenty-four hours later, but Cierges
and Ivoiry. These towns had been held by the Germans for four long
years and were wrested away and liberated by Ohioans in forty-eight
hours. In the prisoner cage were huddled approximately 1,100 prisoners,
many officers among them.
“Relief came to the tired, fighting crew on September 30. Back they
came a laughing, joking, dirty, sleepy division of fighting men—no
longer boys. Behind them, buried in the fields of eastern France,
slept those sons of Ohio who had given their lives, their all.”