With Dashwood's Brigade
High overhead three red rockets burst in the sky, and the German guns
ceased at the signal.
In the dazzling gleam of the concentrated searchlights, Dennis saw a
Prussian officer raise himself cautiously to peer across the sandbags,
and reconnoitre the obliterated British trench.
His eyes reached the edge of the parapet, but no farther, and in the
white figure that leapt up into view and shot him dead, Dennis
recognised young Wetherby.
Like magic the whole line of sandbags became alive with other white
figures pouring in one crashing volley at point-blank range, and with a
full-throated British cheer the Reedshires vaulted over the wet ditch
and hurled themselves upon the astonished Prussians with the bayonet.
Taken completely by surprise, the first line of lying-down men died
practically on its knees, and before the second line could press a
trigger the battalion was into them.
There was no quarter asked or given. The Reedshires were out to kill,
and they killed. In the black shadow of the German redoubt Dennis
Dashwood watched one of the finest fights of the war, every fibre of his
being itching to be in it. But between him and that raving, raging
tumult stretched the tightly packed files of the enemy, thrown into
panic-stricken confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack, and after
a mad few minutes, in spite of the efforts of their officers to hold
them up, the vaunted Prussians broke and streamed back to the protection
of the strong trench.
In a flash of time Dennis saw many things: the slanting rain on our
helmets, the wisp of fog that rolled lazily between him and that Homeric
combat. He recognised his brother, half a head taller than anybody else,
thrusting and hewing like a hero of old, and Littlewood working a Lewis
gun on the top of the sandbags, the shots just clearing our own fellows'
heads.
From an embrasure in the angle of the salient above him the hateful
hammering of a German machine-gun began. The brutes were playing into
the melee, regardless of their own men, in a frantic endeavour to stop
the Reedshires' rush, and as A Company recoiled before that stream of
bullets, Dennis drew his revolver.
Already one of the Prussian battalions had swarmed over into their own
trench, paying no heed to the solitary figure in the black shadow as
they passed him, and, marking the position of the gun, Dennis scrambled
up in their wake with the agility of a cat, and darted into the gun
emplacement single-handed, just as young Wetherby and Hawke saw him and
gave a shout of recognition.
The Germans were chained to the piece, and as he shot the last man of
the gun crew, his brother officer overtook him.
At his heels A Company had arrived with a heartening roar, and jumped
down on to the crowded mass in the trench below them, a perfect forest
of arms going up as the demoralised runaways bellowed for mercy.
"Bravo, Hawke! Go it, boys!" shouted Dennis, almost overturning
Wetherby.
"My hat!" exclaimed the boy, as they gripped each other to save falling
into the tightly packed trench below them, "that was no end of a stunt
of yours. If we hadn't shifted forward we should have been killed to a
man. Hadn't left our position five minutes before their shells found
us!"
"And I never knew you'd moved," said Dennis. "Look at those chaps
bolting into that dug-out there! Give 'em a couple of bombs!"
Young Wetherby hurled two Mills grenades into an opening in the wall of
the German parados, and the double explosion was followed by a chorus of
piercing screams. As for the trench, it was piled up with bodies five
and six deep, for the Prussians were sturdy men and fought like wild
cats.
But already the Highland battalion on the Reedshires' left had come up.
Other battalions away to the east were making good, and the brigade was
carrying all before it.
"Forward!" rang the whistles, and, leaving the supports to consolidate,
the leading battalions cleared the parados and pushed on.
It was a wild flounder over the sodden ground, three hundred yards of
it, with shell-holes where the rain took you up to your armpits, but the
Reedshires had tasted the glories of conquest, and there was no holding
them back, if, indeed, anyone had wished to do so.
"Next stop, Berlin!" yelled Harry Hawke, tripping up as the words left
his mouth, and sliding twice his own length to the edge of a crump-hole,
into which another inch would have plunged him head foremost.
"Stick it, Den!" shouted a voice in his ear, and he saw that it was his
brother Bob, a red smear on his cheek and a light in his eyes Dennis had
only seen there on the football field.
"Come on, old chap!" yelled the C.O., "every fifty yards is worth a
monarch's ransom to Haig. Let's see if we can't carry that wood yonder
while their searchlights last"; and he pointed to the ridge beyond the
captured trench. "I'd like to know who silenced that machine-gun just
now. I suppose half a dozen men will claim it to-morrow, while the real
chap may be dead."
"Oh no, he isn't," laughed a voice.
"Shut your head, young Wetherby, unless you want it punched!" was
Dennis's angry retort, but his fellow subaltern only laughed the louder.
"It was Dennis," said the boy; "he went in alone and shot the whole lot,
Major!"
Bob Dashwood opened his lips to speak, but made a mental note instead,
for the searchlights had been suddenly withdrawn, and were now
concentrated in one blinding blaze about fifty yards in front of the
charging brigade.
The German gunners also had shortened their fuses, transferring their
barrage to the spot, where they poured in a hail of shells through which
no man might try to pass and live.
"Halt there--hang you--halt!" roared the Major commanding; "don't you
see we've reached our limit for to-night?"
The whistles shrilled amid the red and yellow shell bursts, and the
victory-maddened men, realising the impossible, even before the word
reached them, pulled up and looked to their right.
"Dig in--dig in!" shouted somebody.
"No, fall back, you fools!" bellowed a stentorian sergeant, and, checked
in full career, they fell back by companies in any sort of order under a
rain of shrapnel.
Bob and his brother, still side by side, were retiring after them at a
brisk walk, when a man of Dennis's section passed them at the double,
going in the direction of the redoubt which they had carried, and they
saw him run up alongside Hawke, who was a few yards ahead of them.
The crash of the shells in their rear drowned Hawke's exclamation, but
they saw him stop and turn, look under his hand at the barrage, and dart
back towards it like a hare.
"Hawke, stop! Are you mad?" cried Bob, making a grab at him as he went
by, but Hawke's face was white and set, and he paid no heed as they
watched him curiously.
"I know!" shouted Dennis in his brother's ear, "his chum's hit. Look at
that, Bob--there's devotion for you! Those two fellows are the greatest
toughs in the regiment, and they're inseparables."
They saw the little Cockney private fling himself down on his knees
beside a fallen man, tear with both hands at the front of his tunic, and
then fling his arms up above his head with a tragic gesture of despair.
Then he slung his rifle, and, stooping again, dragged the figure up,
hoisted him across his shoulder, and came staggering back under the
heavy load, the heroic group telling blackly out against the
searchlights' white glare.
A shell burst thirty feet way, but the little Cockney came doggedly on,
and they waited for him, even retracing their steps to meet him.
"What's up, Hawke?" shouted Dennis; "do you want us to give you a hand?"
And he was about to add something else, but the look of piteous entreaty
in Hawke's eyes checked the words.
"I'd rather take him in myself, sir," he said hoarsely; "it's true what
they says in the papers abart making a man a new face in the 'orspitals,
ain't it? They'll be able to patch 'im up, don't you think, sir?"
Dennis and Bob exchanged a look, for the savage earnestness hit them
both hard from its very hopelessness.
Tiddler's visage was nothing but a hideous pulp.
And they knew in a moment that poor Tiddler had already passed beyond
all human aid; Major Dashwood made another mental note, to be placed
upon official record later on--if he himself should be spared!
At the mouth of a communication Hawke paused to readjust his burden. The
limp figure was somehow slipping from his grasp, and, seeing at last, he
realised that his errand had been in vain.
As he stood looking down at the crumpled thing that a few minutes before
had been a living, moving part of the great war machine, Dennis laid a
hand on his shoulder.
"He was a good plucked 'un, Hawke, and you did your best for him," said
Dennis; "now you've got to keep a stiff upper lip."
"Yus, I know, sir," was the husky reply, as something rolled glistening
down the dirty cheek. "'Im and me 'listed the same day, and Tiddler was
the only pal I ever 'ad."
He turned a fierce and flashing eye towards the enemy barrage; an eye
that positively flamed vengeance to come, and then he pointed with his
hand.
"See that, sir?" he cried hoarsely, "ain't that Mr. Wetherby?"
A long way out across the wet slope, where the raging Reedshires had
taken heavy toll of the flying foe before the German gunners had drawn
that barrier of fire across the way, a figure was crawling back towards
them, dragging one useless leg behind him.
A very wicked piece of shrapnel had carried young Wetherby's knee-pan
away, and, lodging in the joint, gave the sufferer excruciating agony
every time he knocked it. More than once he almost fainted, and each
time the wounded knee jarred against the rough ground young Wetherby
groaned through his clenched teeth.
"Why don't the stretcher bearers come out?" he moaned.
He could see the strong enemy trench from which they had made their
final advance, and knew by the bustle there that active preparations
were being made to hold it should the Prussians counter-attack again,
which was not unlikely.
The enemy searchlights still concentrated upon it, and the barrage never
ceased to boom and burst behind him with useless expenditure of shells
which had already served their object.
No doubt behind that barrage the discomfited Prussian battalions were
being reorganised, but young Wetherby had no thought of them, all his
energies were directed to getting in as soon as possible that the doctor
might ease his pain.
An unusually heavy burst of shrapnel cut up the ground round about him
as he gained the crest of a bank, where three dead men lay piled one on
top of the other, and, taking advantage of that gruesome cover, a
Prussian officer was crouching on his face. Wetherby paused a moment as
he came alongside him.
"Have you any water in your bottle, Kamerad?" said the man in excellent
English.
"Yes, here you are," replied the boy, unshipping it and handing it to
him; "are you badly hurt?"
The Prussian emptied the bottle before he made answer. "Both legs
broken," he said; "might be worse, might be better."
The man's cynical laugh jarred on young Wetherby's finer feelings,
shaken as he was by the acute agony he was suffering, and he dragged
himself on again, the cold sweat standing in great beads on his
forehead.
He had scarcely placed twice his own length between himself and the
Prussian officer when the brute, who was shamming wounded all the time,
levelled his revolver at the tortured boy, and lodged two blunt-nosed
bullets in his back!
"Great Scott! Did you see that?" shouted Dennis.
"Yus, not 'arf!" And he and Hawke jumped off the mark together, racing
neck and neck out into the open, heedless of a withering fire from some
machine-guns that began to play on the slope.
The German cowered flat as a pancake, his head turned sideways, watching
them as they came.
"Had they seen?" he thought, "or was this some senseless freak of those
mad-brained English?"
The next moment any doubt in his mind vanished, all the blood left the
scoundrel's face, and, starting to his knees, he covered the foremost
figure with his weapon. Twice he raised it, staring hard, and a feeling
as of an electric shock passed through Dennis Dashwood as the pair
recognised each other.
Then they fired their revolvers simultaneously, but the cylinders of
both were empty, and into the livid face of Von Dussel there came an
extraordinary look of mingled doubt and terror.
"But you are dead!" he gasped, as the memory of the mined brewery came
back to him.
"Not the first mistake you have made, you infernal scoundrel!" shouted
Dennis; and clubbing his revolver, he smote him fair and square between
the eyes, dropping the spy like a stone.
"Stop, Hawke, I want that man alive!" panted the avenger, "he's got
enough to go on with"; and, checking the remorseless bayonet with which
Hawke was about to run him through, Dennis turned and knelt beside the
body of his chum.
Little Wetherby was lying on his side, but his eyes brightened as he saw
who it was.
"Go back, Dashwood," said the boy, speaking with difficulty, "it's no
use, I'm done."
"Nonsense, old chap; we're going to get you in between us," said Dennis.
"Hawke and I can carry you."
"No, no--do go back, there's a dear fellow," gurgled the boy, a rush of
blood from his lungs almost choking him. "But I say, Dashwood, there is
one thing you might do for me. You'll find a writing pad in my kit-bag,
the Mater would like to have it."
"She shall, Wetherby. But let's have a look at you, and see if we can
stop the haemorrhage before we pick you up. Where did that fiend get
you?"
"Through the heart," replied the dying boy. "Please let me lie here, and
tell the Mater I don't regret it, except for her sake; say that I
wouldn't have missed this for anything. I've only known what it was to
live since I came out here!" And then, with his hand clasped in his
friend's hand, Cuthbert Wetherby knew what it was to die, and passed
into the great beyond with a fearless smile on his young lips.
Dennis had seen so many men "go out" in the few brief weeks of his
fighting that he had deemed himself case-hardened against anything, but
now he had to look away, a little ashamed that Hawke should see the
spasm that came into his face.
"You are not the only one that's lost a pal to-night, Hawke," he said in
a choking voice; "now give me a hand with this Prussian hog."
As Hawke jumped up with alacrity he gave a yell of positive anguish.
"Why didn't you let me tickle 'im in the ribs, sir? He's gone!" he
howled.