LIFE AND DEATH
The night wore on. Clouds overhung the sky and it began to drizzle. Roy
Flynn, on duty in No Man's Land, felt that in a little while he and
Watson would need their slickers and he was about to return for them,
believing that his comrade and two others on the watch could be certain
of any improbable attempts of the Huns to make a raid, when a strange
thing happened.
The ground was suddenly lighted up as though by flashes of fire; a
tearing, ripping sound came to the two riflemen, and they saw bits of
earth, stones, grass, bushes, torn, blown, lifted, and whizzing by them.
Myriads of bullets sung mournful snatches of promised death and howled
in derision of life as they struck the rocky earth and bounded onward.
"Back to the quarry! There's no place like home!" yelled Roy to Watson,
and firing three shots into the air he turned to see the two Regulars
who had also been out on the slope running for the pit. Watson also
started and Roy felt conscious that, go as they might, he would not be
the last to get under cover. And then suddenly he knew he would be the
last and as the pain in his hip seemed to shoot up into his very vitals
he wondered, as he pitched headlong, whether he would ever get under
such cover again as would protect him from the barrage. Would he,
indeed, have a chance to get behind some very nearby shelter while the
innumerable bullets paved the way for a German attack on the pit? And,
even so, would the coming Huns not find and kill him?
It was hard going. He held to his rifle, believing that it might be the
means of either saving his life or of avenging it at the last moment.
Once the barrel was struck by a bullet that glanced harmlessly, but with
a wild shriek, as a flattened bullet will.
Then the stock was struck and splintered, and even amidst the awful
danger, the near certainty of death in a veritable rain of lead, the boy
felt one swift regret for an injury to his beloved weapon. Such are the
vagaries of the human mind.
Roy dragged himself forward toward a rise of ground. It was terribly
painful going, but he must get out of this first; see to his wound.
"If I've got to pass up, or down," he said aloud to himself, "I want to
do it according to Hoyle and not as Hamburger steak or mincemeat. Let us
proceed where we can estimate on repairs, if the works are worth it."
He got on, suffering from time to time bitter stabs of pain just below
his hip when his limb twisted. Not able to lift the lower portion of his
body from the ground by his uninjured leg because of the agony when the
other dangled he was compelled to drag his entire weight on his elbows,
gun still in hand, but the lad's pluck and spirit never left him.
"A turtle's got nothin' on me for getting down to it. Wish I was a
snake. Then I could bite a Hun. Mebbe this little thing--" thinking of
his pistol--"might do it yet; drat 'em! Here's this little old heap of
earth, and--oh, glory be! It's a shell pit! Like home and mother! In we
go! Whurrah! That'n nearly got me!"
It had almost. A conical mass of iron ripped clear across his back,
cutting the cloth like a knife, but doing no other damage. The boy
spread himself out, feeling a little easier, and lay still for a moment.
The cold rain fell on his face and he pulled his hat over his eyes.
"But ye don't sting quite like those Boche hailstones," he said. "Well,
I've luxuriated enough now. Go to it, m'lad, and look to your hurt. If
not, the rain'll help to make this slope all unnatural blue with me
arterial fluid; me ancestors way back to Brian Boru would have it that
it's as blue as indigo. Better look to see the damage; but how can I?"
How could he, indeed? Was there nothing for him but to lie there and let
his blood ebb away, unless his comrades missed him in the pit and the
barrage fire ceased? And then a fear seized him. Would they tell Herb
and would that loyal friend risk his life to reach him?
The bullets fell thicker and faster now, the rattle of the guns at the
German trench had increased and no man could steal out from the pit and
hope to survive. Perhaps Roy could drag himself out again and up the
slope in time to keep his friend from attempting----
The boy struggled to get his arms fully under him and then to sustain
the weight of head and shoulders. But the former effort had been too
great; the reaction now was final. He sank back on the soggy ground and
the hem of his blouse stretched across the wound, his weight firmly
holding it. This and the coagulating effect of the cold earth must have
stopped the flow. But the lad lay white and still, no longer gazing up
at the black sky, nor conscious of his hurt, nor the curtain of lead and
iron above and about him.
"Flynn? Where is he?" was Herbert's first question of the men who had
leaped into the welcome shelter of the pit.
Watson glanced around. "He was with me; yelled to me. Must have been
hit! I was; my heel's off, and one hit my pocket fair. And there's
what's-his-name, wounded, though he got in. Flynn must have been hurt
bad, or he'd made it!"
One of the Regulars limped away to his couch, a bullet had cut his side
and broken a rib, but this was a minor matter. The other man who had
been out on the slope had lost his hat; a shot had struck his gun also.
A barrage fire is truly a curtain of missiles, a shower of bullets
that, like rain, reaches in time every spot in the area against which it
is directed.
"You musn't go out, Corporal! My orders, please! You couldn't live to
reach Flynn now, and he may be dead or out of harm's way in some
shelter."
"But, Lieutenant, think of it! He may be suffering, dying out there,
unable to help himself, bleeding to death! If I could only try to
reach----"
"No! A thousand times no! You are too useful here; have done too much of
value already to run a risk of that kind. Just wait a bit until our
fellows down there in their trench start a fusillade. I wish Letty could
get at his gun and perhaps he can."
And Letty did. The telescopic-looking weapon stood on a revolving iron
base at such a height as to be within zone of the enemy's fire when the
gun was being used; and though it took but an instant to elevate, aim
and shoot with accuracy under ordinary conditions, it now was likely to
be pelted thoroughly by the barrage. So Corporal Letty called on his men
to sand-bag the gun clearance space, standing by to pull bags away where
he would indicate it; this gave him a chance, after he had timed his
fuse, to slip in a shell, elevate and let her go straight at the line of
barrage guns.
"There goes Susan Nipper at last!" exclaimed Smith, who was a reader of
Dickens and had named the big gun after a noted character in "Dombey and
Son," which name stuck.
"Yes, and a few of them placed like Letty knows how to place 'em will
fix their feet good and proper. Hit 'em again, old girl!"
And the old girl did. She was a termagant, altogether too violent of
tongue and slap to suit those "laying down the barrage," as they term
it, and after a lot of the German machine and rapid-fire gunners, who
had believed they were so strafing the Americans as to have rendered the
big gun useless, had felt the effects of her bursting shells even fifty
feet away, they lay down on their jobs.
But this was only a little sooner than they expected to do it, anyway.
As soon as the firing ceased, out of their trench and up the slope came
the Boches, more than two hundred of them to oppose less than quarter
their number in the pit. But the pit boys were on the job.
It took the clumsy, heavily-booted Huns quite a while to get up the
slope and Susan Nipper paid them some compliments as they came, but when
ordered to do a certain thing by their superior officers they tried hard
to do it, or they died trying.
Yes, they died trying, and the Americans, experienced now in the
fighting game, saw to it that this program was carried out.
Two things the Boches had for an objective: the recapture of their
general, made a prisoner the night before, and the destruction of the
terrible gun of American manufacture.
Lieutenant Jackson lifted the little 'phone in his quarters and spoke
quite calmly into it.
"Jackson talking. North side gun pit. The Germans are coming; from the
sound and what lights we have been able to use I think there are a great
many of them. You heard the barrage, of course. They're hot foot after
these prisoners of ours. Better come a-runnin' some of you and if I
might be permitted to suggest it, have a company or two make a detour
over the hill and below the pit; this might cut off the Huns when they
go back and get a good many of them. What's that? Oh, yes. We can hold
them awhile. Eh? Sure! Good-by."
Rapid orders quickly followed, the Regulars, however, knowing well
their places and having already had experience in repulsing two small
raids, much to the enemy's discomfort. But Herbert's squad was a little
green in the matter.
"Get your men out there on their bellies, on the hillside, so you can
pick off all the Huns you can get a line on! Letty, got your Colt
spitters placed? Good! Now, boys, line up at the trench and use your
guns first, but hold your bayonets till the very last; they'll outnumber
us, as you know. Make use of your revolvers; that's the game! Every man
of you ought to be good for about four Germans at close range, counting
the misses. A revolver will reach farther than a hand grenade or liquid
fire. Give it to them a little before you see the whites of their eyes
and make every shot tell! Go to it!"
They went to it, with a muffled cheer that the Germans must have thought
was an expression over a game or a joke, perhaps; anyway, it seemed
apparent that, until two powerful searchlights were thrown upon the
advancing enemy, they had believed they were taking the Americans
entirely by surprise.
But when the beams of light suddenly glared upon them, to be followed
instantly by the staccato of the three machine-guns and the crack of
rifles, the first phalanx of Teutons became demoralized for a moment,
with more than half their number struck down.
The second rank also had suffered, but their purpose now was a big one
and with that dogged determination for which the German soldiers under
training and supported by each other in close touch are noted, rather
than a dashing bravery that sweeps all before it, they rallied and
returned to the charge.
On they came again, in open formation, and at a run, the darkness
enveloping them, except when the flashes of gun fire illuminated dimly
the surroundings. For they had instantly shot out the searchlights and
their objective was now the black hillside in the center of which they
knew the gun pit and dugout lay. And they meant to penetrate that spot
and wipe it out past further injury to them.
Is it not best, even when the most graphic recital seems necessary in
the portrayal of a battle scene, to draw the mantle of delicacy over
those details of horror that follow a close conflict between forces long
trained and superbly fitted to kill?
It suffices to say that the Americans found their Southern leader,
experienced in the choice of weapons with which man can do most injury
to his fellowman when he so desires, was right concerning the revolver
as a most effective means of defense and offense.
Even in the dark the pet American weapon worked wonders. An arm drawn
back to hurl a grenade or bomb was pretty sure to drop limp, with its
owner down and out, and a flashing bayonet in the hands of a chap
tumbled over by the same means was hardly a weapon to be feared, even
against vastly inferior numbers.
After the machine-guns and rifles had performed their work the ready
revolvers, each hand holding one trained in its use to practical
perfection, did a work that was more murderous than anything the Huns
had so far witnessed.
It is not pleasant to think even of enemies going down in such numbers.
The death of one man, forced into a death grapple by the red-tongued
furies of war, is enough to draw pity from all who are humane, but when
dozens, scores, in the space of a few minutes are made to suffer and die
for a cause not rightly known to them, and others also, because of the
inhumanity of a power-mad despot, it is beyond the full telling.
If the raiders were slaughtered and turned back from their purpose, they
did not make their effort entirely in vain, as was proved shortly after
the Americans had seen the last of the dusky backs of the remaining Huns
disappearing down the slope and the defenders of the pit had turned to
take account of the results.
When they counted their own dead and wounded, could they be greatly
blamed for being overjoyed upon hearing, half way to the German
trenches, several more shots fired and a clear American voice call out:
"Surrender, all of you!"
The lieutenant's suggestion had been adopted and all that were left of
the raiding companies, fully a hundred men, were cut off in their
retreat and so swiftly disarmed and thrust back over the hill that no
rally to their relief from the farther trenches could be made.
But however ill the wind that had blown those raiding Huns to the attack
of the gun pit, leaving death and suffering in their wake and many more
of their own to care for, it was indeed ill if it blew no good.
Part way down the slope a German helmet, knocked from the head of a
soldier boy by a fateful bullet, rolled into a certain shell pit and lay
by a prostrate form.
In the retreat, with the glare of a renewed searchlight upon them, the
vengeful Huns would have thrust a bayonet into every one of their
enemies that might possibly have been alive, but the helmet deceived
them; this must be one of their own who had fallen in the first fire.
And so they went on.
After the supporting force and their prisoners had gone to the rear,
there crept into the renewed blackness of the night figures that
searched everywhere for the unfortunate.
"Here's a Boche, Corporal, that looks as if he was asleep, not dead. A
young fellow, from the get-up of him, but can't quite see his face.
Red-headed--and, hello, look here!"
Herbert, with his one free hand, the other having had a Boche bullet cut
across the thumb, flashed the electric torch on the occupant of the
shell pit. Then, with an order, he was down on hands and knees and with
knowing fingers feeling for possible heart beats.
"Bring a stretcher, quick, two of you! It's Flynn! Dear old Roy! I
believe he's alive! Yes, yes; he's still alive! Come on, you fellows,
quick!"