With Haig on the Somme Part 10

"Nothing to what was going to happen in a few minutes if you had not arrived," replied Dennis, unable to repress the triumph he felt at the consternation in the faces of his judges.

"_Ciel_, mon Commandant!" exclaimed the _liaison_ officer. "It is a very fortunate thing for you that I came in time. If you had shot this young Englishman, Father Joffre would have had something to say about it."

In a few words he established the prisoner's ident.i.ty beyond any shadow of doubt, and the good-hearted fellows were round him in a moment, clamouring out their apologies, while the commandant, with tears rolling into his beard, kissed him on both cheeks.

Dennis was ashamed that he had called him a pork butcher, for the poor man was pathetically apologetic, and trembled like a leaf at the thought of what might have been.

"You certainly gave me a very tight squeeze for the moment," laughed the lad. "But it was a string of extraordinary coincidences that might have deceived anyone."

"Then our general's reply has not reached your headquarters?" queried the _liaison_ officer.

"Unhappily not," said Dennis. "It is somewhere among the wreckage of the car and the remains of those two poor fellows."

"Never mind," said his preserver. "We will let you into a little secret.

The dispatch you brought to us was a request that this division should join with your nearest brigades in a raid on the enemy's lines. The Allied artillery is even now lengthening its fuses, and we are on the point of giving the Germans a surprise. Will you find your way back, or----" And he made an expressive wave of his hand in the direction of the German trenches.

"If Monsieur le Commandant has no objection, and somebody will lend me a revolver, I should love to take part with the battalion that was going to shoot me," laughed the boy.

"_Cher ami!_" cried the black-bearded officer. "You heap the coals of fire upon my head. You and I will march together!"

While Dennis swallowed a cup of coffee the commandant dived into his dug-out and reappeared with a revolver case, which he buckled on the boy with his own hands; and meanwhile the little group at the wood fires had s.n.a.t.c.hed up their rifles and donned their blue-painted steel helmets, and were falling in by companies, eager to exchange the monotony of trench warfare for a brisk dash at the hated foe.

The Alsatian corporal, a typical poilu, still kept very close to his late prisoner, but there was an altogether different look in his eyes now.

"I should never have forgiven myself, mon lieutenant," he blurted out, as he slung his rifle behind his back and festooned himself with racket bombs. "I hope monsieur will bear me no ill will for my stupidity."

"It is nothing, my friend," said Dennis laughing. "A brave man should do what he thinks to be his duty, and you did yours. What is the distance to the enemy trench?"

"About a hundred metres, mon lieutenant," replied the corporal, "and uphill all the way. _Voila!_ There goes the signal!"

A low blast on a whistle, and the long grey-blue line went quickly forward among the trees, and jumped down into the deep excavation which wound like a dirty white ribbon along the outskirts of the wood.

The 75's were barking loudly in their rear, the sh.e.l.ls now falling behind the enemy trench, the sandbags of which showed in an irregular line on the slope against the sunrise.

The _liaison_ officer had come with them thus far, and was looking at his watch.

"_Bon chance_, lieutenant," he said. "Unhappily, I may only see the attack launched, but I hope this will not be our last meeting."

"My boys, it is time!" cried the commandant. "_En avant!_" And, climbing swiftly over their parapet, the active little poilus scampered up the hill through the yellow charlock.

Half-way up every man flung himself flat upon his face, and looking back, Dennis saw the second line coming over to their support. Again the whistle sounded, the little blue figures jumped up, scurrying like rabbits, and the machine-guns on the German trench opened fire.

Down on their faces sank the first line again, so suddenly that an onlooker might have thought that everyone of them had been shot, and as Dennis found himself in a bed of stinging nettles close to the ruins of a cottage, with the corporal and the commandant on either side of him, he caught the distant sound of an English yell away to the left, and knew that the British raid had been well timed, and was acting in concert with his new friends.

For an instant the commandant, whistle in mouth, lifted his head and saw that his supports had come up to within twenty yards of their comrades.

"Now, my dear friend," he mumbled, giving Dennis's arm a warm squeeze.

"One bound, and we shall be there!"

The whistle shrilled loudly, and, jumping to his feet, the commandant shouted, "Forward with the bayonet! _Vive la patrie!_"

Instantly the sandbags in front of them bristled with heads wearing flat caps, and the volley from the mausers mingled with the murderous tac-tac of machine-guns.

It floated dimly through the boy's mind that he had no right to be hazarding life and limb in that place, but the joy of that mad rush with a fight at the end of it banished the thought on the spot, and, scarcely conscious of those few remaining yards which they traversed at top speed, he found himself scaling the sandbags.

Above him was the commandant, sword in one hand and revolver in the other, but as the active little man poised for an instant on the top of the parapet and fired into the trench at his feet, he threw up his arms and pitched backward, Dennis dropping his weapon to dangle at his wrist, and catching him as he fell at the foot of the obstacle.

"It is nothing," gasped the French officer, clutching at his throat, but the blood was pouring between the fingers of his hand.

"He is wrong," said Dennis, as the Alsatian corporal knelt beside him.

"We must get him back under cover at once. It is only a surgeon who can stop this haemorrhage."

"And I haven't thrown a bomb yet!" growled the corporal, tossing the racket he held in his hand over the top of the sandbags.

Its explosion seemed to satisfy him for the moment, and pa.s.sing his powerful arms under the commandant's shoulders, while Dennis lifted his legs, they walked carefully backwards down the slope again beneath a whistling hail of bullets.

CHAPTER VIII

In the Enemy Trenches

By great good fortune, when they reached the crumpled ruins of the cottage, they found two stretcher-bearers kneeling among the nettles, on the look-out for casualties. They had seen them coming, and the stretcher was already unrolled, and as they laid him upon it the wounded man motioned with his hand.

"Stand round me," he said in a husky whisper, speaking with difficulty.

"Do not let them see who it is that is. .h.i.t."

One of the brancardiers placed a pad under the commandant's ear, and pa.s.sed a bandage round his neck.

"Tighter, tighter!" motioned the sufferer. "How is it going? For me, I do not mind if you pull my head off, provided we take the trench."

Dennis peeped through a crack in the wall and bent over him.

"The attack has been completely successful," he said. "The supports are swarming in now."

"_Vive la patrie!_" cried the wounded man, whose grey-blue tunic was stained crimson with his own blood. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart, lieutenant. Again you heap the coals of fire upon me."

Then he fainted.

"Come along, Alphonse," said one of the stretcher-bearers to his companion. "We must get him to the surgeon at once."

"And we," said the Alsatian corporal, touching Dennis on the arm. "Shall we return up yonder?"

The commandant's revolver lay among the nettles, Dennis picked it up, and the pair raced side by side again up the trampled slope.

Lithe and active as Dennis was, his new friend, loaded with his pack and hung about with bulging wallets and strings of racket bombs, was over the parapet before him, and the boy's after-recollection of the ten minutes that followed was a chaotic jumble of mad slaughter.