Daily Capital Journal

Ray Whiteaker of company L, writes of his experience in going "over the top" at four o'clock. He says:

We were ordered to move to the front and as far as I could see there was a mass of soldiers, teams and wagons, bound the same way. A start had hardly been made when the big shells of the Germans began to fall among us and a number of the boys did not get any further. After advancing a few miles we were obliged to get into a ditch to rest awhile before making an assault. The ditch was full of water. Behind a barrage of machine guns around us but we went on. The whole Hun army couldn't have stopped us. Making it to the river we forced the Germans back and captured their machine guns. At the river we struck until 12 o'clock that night continually under fire. Once I was covered with about 3 feet of dirt from a shell and another knocked a tree across the dug out in which I lay. Hundreds of sharpshooters were hid across the way to pick a fellow off. In the morning I was gassed and was loaded into a wagon and taken to the American Hospital many miles away. There I am now (August 20) hoping to soon be well enough to get back to the front.