“‘Keep your nerve’ I told him.  ’All the Dutchmen in the woods are at us, but keep cool and we’ll lick ’em.’  Roberts crawled into the dugout.  Some of the shots got me, one clipped my head, another my lip, another my hand, some in my side and one smashed my left foot so bad that I have a silver plate holding it up now.

“The Germans came from all sides.  Roberts kept handing me the grenades and I kept throwing them and the Dutchmen kept squealing, but jes’ the same they kept comin’ on.  When the grenades were all gone I started in with my rifle.  That was all right until I shoved in an American cartridge clip—­it was a French gun—­and it jammed.

“There was nothing to do but use my rifle as a club and jump into them.  I banged them on the dome and the side and everywhere I could land until the butt of my rifle busted.  One of the Germans hollered, ‘Rush him!  Rush him!’ I decided to do some rushing myself.  I grabbed my French bolo knife and slashed in a million directions.  Each slash meant something, believe me.  I wasn’t doing exercises, let me tell you.

“I picked out an officer, a lieutenant I guess he was.  I got him and I got some more of them.  They knocked me around considerable and whanged me on the head, but I always managed to get back on my feet.  There was one guy that bothered me.  He climbed on my back and I had some job shaking him off and pitching him over my head.  Then I stuck him in the ribs with the bolo.  I stuck one guy in the stomach and he yelled in good New York talk:  ’That black -------- got me.’

     “I was still banging them when my crowd came up and saved me and
     beat the Germans off.  That fight lasted about an hour.  That’s about
     all.  There wasn’t so much to it.”

No, there was not much to it, excepting that next morning the Americans found four German bodies with plentiful indications that at least thirty-two others had been put on the casualty list and several of the German dead probably had been dragged back by their comrades.  Thirty-eight bombs were found, besides rifles, bayonets and revolvers.

It was Irvin Cobb, the southern story writer, who first gave to the world a brief account of the exploit of Johnson and Roberts in the Saturday Evening Post during the summer of 1918.  He commented as follows: 

     “If ever proof were needed, which it is not, that the color of a
     man’s skin has nothing to do with the color of his soul, this twain
     then and there offered it in abundance.”

Mr. Cobb in the same article paid many tributes to the men of the 369th and 371st serving at that time in that sector.  Among other things he said: