"Hurrah! Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
How many thousands of soldiers are surging down upon us then? The moist
earth quivers beneath the tramp of their heavy feet. Most surely must
we be smashed to pieces, trampled down, broken. For there are not more
than sixty of us all told, and how may sixty men extended in single
file hope to resist the tremendous pressure of these ranks upon ranks
of men rushing down upon us like a herd of maddened buffaloes?
"Rapid fire! _Nom de Dieu!_ Fire!"
The crackling of the rifles rends the air; spurts of flame shatter the
darkness. The rifles of my platoon have spoken simultaneously!
And now there is a gap in the very heart of the charging mass. I hear
shrill screams of agony as of beasts mortally stricken. The dark
figures divide to flow right and left, just as if, before the trench,
and extending its whole length, a tempest had raged and laid men to the
earth, as the breath of the gale bends down the growing wheat.
Some of the men about me say:
"Look, Lieutenant! See, they are lying down!"
"No, my friend! It is not so. They have fallen down!"