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!"