"We got them!" cried Bart, exultingly, as the boys worked feverishly at the preparations to meet the new attack.
"Right between the eyes," cried Billy.
"We drew first blood, all right," agreed Frank, "but they'll come again for more."
The prophecy was speedily realized, for again the enemy came forward, with undiminished ardor, protected this time by a deadly barrage fire behind which they marched with confidence. It was evident that this time the enemy, having tested the Allied mettle and found it excellent, had determined to place its chief reliance upon their big gun fire. And for a time it seemed as though their confidence was justified. The barrage fire swept the ground so completely that the Allies were forced to abandon their hastily seized positions in the open and retreat once more to the shelter of their trenches. But all the attacks of the German hordes, repeated again and again, were not able to get possession of those first line trenches, to which the Allies held with the fury of desperation. They were manned chiefly by the American troops, although certain units of French and English held either end of the line. Again and again the storm broke, and again and again it was beaten back. The Germans had massed at that portion of the line numbers many times greater than those possessed by the defenders. By all the theories of war they ought to have been successful, but, like the old guard at Waterloo, the Americans might die, but would not surrender.
Yet after a while the very stubbornness of this resistance proved in itself a danger. On the right and the left the line, though not broken, was bent back. In this way the American position formed a salient in the German line, and was subjected to attack not only in front, but on the flanks. It became imperative that the line should draw back so that it might be in keeping with the position now held by the wings.
So, after hours of sanguinary fighting, the orders came to fall back, and the Americans, who had been standing like the army of Thomas at Chickamauga, fifty years previous, reluctantly obeyed, and fell slowly back to new positions, their faces always toward the foe.
"What kind of a fool stunt is this?" growled Tom, who, with his comrades, had been in the thick of the fight. "We had it all over those fellows, even if they were two or three times as many, and here we are retreating, when we ought to go ahead and lick the tar out of them." "Don't growl and complain, Tom," soothed Frank, whose left hand was bleeding where a bullet had zipped its way across it. "They'll get the licking all right when the time comes."
"It's good dope to give back a little sometimes," added Bart. "It's like boxing. When a blow comes straight at your stomach you bend back and that takes half the force away from the blow. Don't worry the least little bit about this fight. We may be bending a little, but we're not breaking, and before many hours we'll be standing the Heinies on their heads."
But the promise was not fulfilled that day, and when, night came after hours of tremendous struggle, the Allied forces had not regained their lost ground.
As darkness fell the combat lessened, and finally ceased altogether, as far as infantry attacks were concerned, although all through the night the artillery kept up a fire of greater or less intensity.
The boys of the regiment to which the Camport boys belonged were in rather a sober mood when they gathered around their field kitchens that night and partook of the food that was served out to them. They had not lost a gun, but they had yielded ground, and a great many of their comrades would never again answer the roll call. But their fighting spirit was at as high a pitch as ever, and they could scarcely wait till the morrow to get their revenge.
Frank and his chums had come through the day unscathed, except for the injury to Frank's hand and a mark across Billy's temple where a bullet had ridged the skin. Perhaps it was due to the fortune that is said to attend the brave, for they had borne themselves like heroes and had been stationed at one of the most fiercely battered portions of the line.
"I suppose they're gloating over this in Berlin to-night," said Tom gloomily, as they sat at the roots of a great tree whose bark and branches had been stripped from it by a storm of shells.
"And groaning over it in New York," added Billy.
"He laughs best who laughs last," said Bart. "To-morrow's a new day.Just watch our smoke."
"We'll eat 'em alive," prophesied Frank confidently, as he nursed his wounded hand. "Like John Paul Jones, we've just begun to fight."
"Do you fellows remember what General Corse said one time when Sherman asked him if he could hold out?" asked Bart.
"What was it?" asked Billy.
"He said: 'I've lost one eye and a piece of an ear, but I can lick a brigade or two yet,'" answered Bart.
"Good old scout," approved Billy, while the boys laughed.
"Well, we're not as badly off as that yet," said Frank, "although this hand of mine is smarting to beat the band."
"And my head is aching ready to split," added Billy. "One inch to the left and it would have been all up with your uncle Billy."
The fighting was resumed at dawn, and again it was the Germans who attacked. They had counted on their advantage of the day before to break the morale of their enemies and hoped by pressure to turn the withdrawal into a rout.
But like so many German calculations since the beginning of the war, they had figured badly. The Allies, stung by their discomfiture of the day before, fought like tigers. They beat the Germans back and took the offensive in their own hands.
The Germans retreated, though staunchly contesting every foot of ground. In the front of Frank's company the enemy had established a machine gun nest that was particularly effective. Again and again the Americans sought to clean them out, but were met with such a galling fire that they lost heavily, and at last the captain decided that the guns were not worth the price he was paying to get possession of them. Yet the position would be of so much advantage, if captured, that he hesitated at changing his course and choosing another line of advance.
In the litter and wreck of the field, Frank's keen eye had caught sight of two big barrels filled with clothing for the troops. The barrels had been dropped from a wrecked motor lorry of a supply train. Like a flash an inspiration came to him.
He consulted a moment with Bart, whose eye lighted up as he nodded assent. Then he stepped up to his captain and saluted.
"What is it, Sheldon?"
"I think I can silence those guns, sir," Frank said.
A light came into the captain's eyes.
"How?" he asked.
In a few brief words Frank described his plan.
"But it's suicide," protested the captain. "There isn't one chance in a thousand that you'll come out alive."
"I know," said Frank. "But Raymond and I are willing to risk it if you give the word."
The captain pondered for a moment. It was a forlorn hope, but forlorn hopes sometimes won out.
"Go ahead," he said.
Frank nodded to Bart, and in a twinkling they had turned the big barrels over on their sides.
Then each lay on the ground behind his barrel and began to push it toward the enemy.
The men of their company had watched them wonderingly while they made their preparations, and when they realized what the boys had in mind they raised a thundering cheer that rose above the din of battle.
The crews of the two enemy machine guns looked with stupefaction at the big barrels coming toward them. Then they woke from their trance and a storm of bullets beat upon the barrels.
If they had been empty the bullets would have gone through and killed the boys behind them. But they were filled with woolen clothing, which while light enough to enable the boys to push the barrels with comparative ease was just the thing to stop the bullets. The whizzing missiles thudded into the clothing and there they stopped. It was on the same basis as the sandbag which stops a cannon ball that would go through an iron plate.
Steadily the boys kept on, pushing the barrels before them. They did not go on hands and knees, for then they would be exposed to the enemy bullets. It was a caterpillar motion, drawing their bodies along the ground, and was a tremendous tax on their muscles, for they could get no purchase.
One thing in their favor was that the ground sloped a trifle toward the enemy position and this made the barrels roll more easily.
By this time the enemy was growing frantic at this novel method of attack. They could not see their enemy, and they could not kill him. And the sight of those barrels coming toward them, as inexorably as fate, got on their nerves, already tense with the fury of the combat.
Nearer and nearer came the barrels to the guns until they were not more than twenty feet away. Then they stopped.
The German gunners drew fresh hope from this. Had their bullets found their mark in the bodies of their daring enemies?
But there were two very live boys behind those motionless barrels.
Frank and Bart had drawn a handful of grenades from their sacks. At a given signal they drew back their arms and hurled them over the barrels in quick succession.
They fell right in the midst of the machine guns. There was a tremendous explosion that killed some of the gunners and threw the rest into wild confusion.
"Now!" shouted Frank, and he and Bart leaped to their feet and rushed toward the guns.
There was a wild mêlée for a moment, and then the surviving Germans turned and ran in panic down the slope.
The boys slued the captured guns around and sent a stream of bullets after their wildly fleeing enemies.
The rout was complete, and the next minute the whole company, that had charged the instant the grenades were thrown, came tearing up, and there was a scene of hilarity and enthusiasm that passed description.
"The finest thing I ever saw!" declared the captain. "You boys are the stuff of which heroes are made."
But there was no time then to dwell on the exploit. The enemy was on the run and they must keep him going.
And they did, so well and so thoroughly, that when the day was over they had swept the whole ridge that had been their objective in the fight and planted Old Glory on its highest crest. And their victory was shared by the rest of the Allied line, who not only regained all the losses of the day before, but swept the Germans out of their first and second lines on a five-mile front, inflicting on them a defeat which they were long to remember.
And how the lesson that the Germans learned that day was repeated later on will be told in the next book of this series, entitled: "Army Boys on the Firing Line; Or, Holding Back the German Drive."
Not but what the victory had cost the Americans dearly. Every regiment engaged had its own long list of killed and wounded.
"Poor old Fred," said Frank, referring to Anderson. "His right arm was badly shattered and I'm afraid he may lose it."
"Fred is playing in hard luck," returned Bart. "That's twice he's been wounded. Remember the night down at the old mill when the bomb got his leg?"
"He's having more than his share," agreed Billy.
"There's Wilson, too," said Bart. "He's been in the thick of it all day, but he went down with a bullet in his shoulder just as we got to the top of the ridge."
"The corp certainly fought like a tiger," said Tom. "But he's worth a dozen dead men yet. A month in the hospital will fix him up all right, I hope."
"There's one good thing anyway," pat in Billy. "The Huns haven't taken many of our boys prisoners."
"And we've got more of their men than we know what to do with," exultedFrank.
"I know what I'd do with them," said Tom. "I'd send them to America to be imprisoned there and I'd put a bunch of them on every transport that sailed to the other side."
"That wouldn't be a bad stunt," agreed Bart. "Then if a submarine sank the ship it would carry a lot of their own people down to Davy Jones."
Among the missing was one whose loss did not greatly grieve the boys of the old Thirty-seventh. Nick Rabig did not answer to his name when the roll was called. They did not find his body on the field, nor was he among the wounded that were brought in and tenderly cared for in the hospitals.
"I see Nick is missing," remarked Frank to Bart later in the evening, as they were resting and rejoicing over the victory.
"Missing but not missed," put in the implacable Tom.
"If the Huns have got him, he'll feel more at home than he ever felt with us," remarked Bart.
"Maybe he was captured against his will," said Tom, "and then againmaybe—"
"What do you suppose they'll say in Camport when they hear of this day's work, fellows?" asked Billy.
"Oh," answered Frank with a laugh, "they'll only say: 'It's nothing more than we expected.'"
"They know us, don't they?"
"Of course they do," broke in Tom. "We came to France to do our duty asAmerican citizens, as well as soldiers."
"I wonder how long it will be before this war is over and we start for home?" came from Frank.
"Not tired of the game yet, are you?" quizzed Billy, quickly.
"Do I look as if I was tired of it?" was the counter-question.
"We are all going to stay over here until the Huns are licked good and proper!" burst cut Bart. "There is no use in stopping while the job is only half finished."
"Just you wait until Uncle Sam has a lot of men over here," put inBilly. "Then we'll show those Huns what's what and don't you forget it!We'll wallop them so thoroughly they'll be getting down on their kneesyelling for mercy."
"Now you've said something!" came in a chorus from the others.
And here let us say good-bye to the Army Boys.
End of Project Gutenberg's Army Boys in the French Trenches, by Homer Randall