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Page 30
Meanwhile, outside his dugout, life was speeding up at a dizzying
rate. The German artillery had sprung to sudden and wholesale
activity. Far to the right of the Here-We-Come regiment's
trenches a haze had begun to crawl along the ground and to send
snaky tendrils high in air-tendrils that blended into a single
grayish-green wall as they moved forward. The hazewall's gray-
green was shot by yellow and purple tinges as the sun's weak rays
touched it. To the left of the Here-We-Comes, and then in front
of them, appeared the same wall of billowing gas.
The Here-We-Comes were ready for it with their hastily donned
masks. But there was no need of the precaution. By one of the
sudden wind--freaks so common in the story of the war, the gas-
cloud was cleft in two by a swirling breeze, and it rolled dankly
on, to right and left, leaving the central trenches clear.
Now, an artillery barrage, accompanied or followed by a gas-
demonstration, can mean but one thing: a general attack.
Therefore telephonic word came to the detachments to left and
right of the Here-We-Comes, to fall back, under cover of the gas-
cloud, to safer positions. Two dogs were sent, with the same
order, to the Here-We-Comes. (One of the dogs was gassed. A bit
of shrapnel found the other.)
Thus it was that the Here-We-Comes were left alone (though they
did not know it), to hold the position,--with no support on
either side, and with a mere handful of men wherewith to stem the
impending rush.
On the heels of the dispersing gas-cloud, and straight across the
half-mile or less of broken ground, came a line of gray. In five
successive waves, according to custom, the boches charged. Each
wave hurled itself forward as fast as efficiency would let it, in
face of the opposing fire, and as far as human endurance would be
goaded. Then it went down, and its survivors attached themselves
to the succeeding wave.
Hence, by the time the fifth and mightiest wave got into motion,
it was swelled by the survivors of all four of its predecessors
and was an all-but-resistless mass of shouting and running men.
The rifles and machine-guns of the Here-We-Comes played merrily
into the advancing gray swarms, stopping wave after wave, and at
last checking the fifth and "master" wave almost at the very
brink of the Franco-American parapet.
"That's how they do!" Mahan pantingly explained to a rather shaky
newcomer, as the last wave fell back. "They count on numbers and
bullrushes to get them there. If they'd had ten thousand men, in
that rush, instead of five thousand, they'd have got us. And if
they had twice as many men in their whole army as they have,
they'd win this war. But praise be, they haven't twice as many!
That is one of the fifty-seven reasons why the Allies are going
to lick Germany."
Mahan talked jubilantly. The same jubilation ran all along the
line of victors. But the colonel and his staff were not
rejoicing. They had just learned of the withdrawal of the forces
to either side of them, and they knew they themselves could not
hope to stand against a second and larger charge.
Such a charge the enemy were certain to make. The Germans, too,
must soon learn of the defection of the supports. It was now only
a question of an hour or less before a charge with a double-
enveloping movement would surround and bag the Here-We-Comes,
catching the whole regiment in an inescapable trap.
To fall back, now, up that long bare hillside, under full fire of
the augmented German artillery, would mean a decimating of the
entire command. The Here-We-Comes could not retreat. They could
not hope to hold their ground. The sole chance for life lay in
the arrival of strong reenforcements from the rear, to help them
hold the trenches until night, or to man the supporting
positions. Reserves were within easy striking distance. But, as
happened so many times in the war, there was no routine way to
summon them in time.
It was the chance sight of a crumpled message lying on his
dugout-table that reminded the colonel of Bruce's existence and
of his presence in the front trench. It was a matter of thirty
seconds for the colonel to scrawl an urgent appeal and a brief
statement of conditions. Almost as soon as the note was ready, an
orderly appeared at the dugout entrance, convoying the newly
awakened Bruce.
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