History of the 151st field artillery, Rainbow Division, by Louis L. Collins, lieutenant governor of Minnesota. Edited by Wayne E. Stevens, PH. D. Pub. by the Minnesota War records commission.

THE MEUSE-ARGONNE OFFENSIVE

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tanks on which the German artillery had scored direct hits. In
some of them were the bodies of men who had died at their posts.
In one a dead pilot still sat at the steering device. Bodies of dead
Germans lay strewn about machine guns hidden in little clumps
of woods. Elsewhere, scattered in the open, were the bodies of
German and American infantrymen and horses.
Upon arriving in the new sector of the 42nd Division, the
regimental post of command was established in a frame shed
east of Exermont, and the batteries occupied positions in the
woods about six hundred yards north and east of the town.
When the 42nd Division entered the line the Kriemhilde Stellung was yet unbroken. It had been the mission of the 1st Division during the fighting which had begun on October 4 to drive
a deep wedge into the enemy position along the high ground east
of the valley of the Aire. The division had acquitted itself well,
having pushed the line forward a distance of eight kilometers to
a line running east and west through Sommerance, a ruined village directly west of Romagne. But several days of hard fighting and heavy losses had made a period of rest necessary. It was
apparent, furthermore, that another specially prepared assault
would be required to carry the Kriemhilde Stellung. To the Rainbow Division was given the honor of undertaking to finish the
task so well begun by the 1st.
The country through which lay the objectives of the 42nd
Division was ideal for defensive fighting and its natural advantages
had been fully utilized by the enemy. Almost three kilometers
to the north, separated from Sommerance by high ridges, was
St. Georges, a little town situated in a valley just north of the fortifications of the Kriemhilde Stellung. A little less than two kilometers east of St, Georges was the village of Landres-et-St.
Georges, also in a narrow valley between high ridges. A short
distance northeast of the latter was a wooded height known as the
Bois de Hazois, which commanded the town itself and the country
north of Sommerance. About two kilometers east of Sommerance
was the west end of the Bois de Romagne, whose thick woods
were still occupied by the Germans. A little to the north of the
Bois de Romagne was the C6te de Chatillon, a hill covered by a