During the assault on Blanc Mont, which started on 3 October, March "left a shelter to rescue wounded". The next day, "during a counterattack, the enemy having advanced to within 300 meters of the first aid station, he immediately entered the engagement and though wounded refused to be evacuated until the Germans were thrown back". As a result of his actions, March received the French Croix de Guerre with Palm and the Army Distinguished Service Cross for valor (the Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest Army decoration, next only to the Medal of Honor). A curious detail emerges from the account of his war experiences that would find its way into his fiction: though it appears he was never gassed badly enough to be hospitalized for it, upon his return from the war he told people that he was and that he only had a short time to live; a number of characters in "Company K" suffer and die after mustard gas attacks. Roy Simmonds, March's biographer, locates the origin of what he calls the "two worlds of William March" (the title of his biography) in this period: throughout his life, March appears to have mixed reality with imagined memory, telling supposedly historical anecdotes that may not have been true. An experience March told a number of times included his jumping into a bomb crater to take shelter and coming face to face with a young German soldier, whom he instantly bayoneted; this anecdote also found its way into "Company K".