“At 5 o’clock that morning we got in position on the Paris Soissons road, and 5 minutes later we went over the top. The bullets were coming at us like hail. We couldn’t advance but a few yards our dead were lying all around. So, we withdrew to the other side of the road and waited for a report from headquarters. Our orders were to stay where we were and hold our ground. Many yanks had seen their last sun that day, there were lying so thick that we couldn’t walk without stepping on them.
At 5 o’clock that night, we got orders to go over the top at once, to go till we where all killed if necessary. We went over and kept going till I was wounded in the left hip, which was the first time I got a taste of cold steel. Major Roosevelt, the son of the ex-president lay wounded thirty yards from me. When night came, I was carried off the field to a first aid station.” - Private Theodore Kohls, 1st BN, 26th Inf. Reg., 1st Division, AEF, Soissons, France July 1917 #ww1 #reality #stayzero #zerofoxtrot