With Haig on the Somme Part 24

"Ain't it a little bit of all right?" grinned Hawke. "That there bough might have been made for it, and foothold on that other branch underneath. She weighs twenty-five pounds; but if you think the strap of your map-case will hold, sir, it's as good as done."

Dennis slipped the map from his shoulder, and, buckling the strap end round the muzzle of the Lewis, Tiddler held the weapon up to the full extent of his arms while Dennis, taking the other end of the improvised line in his hand, climbed up the beech again.

The straps held, to their great joy, and the pair below watched the thing dangling in mid-air above their heads as Dennis hauled it slowly upwards.

The men of C Company also watched the manoeuvre with keen interest; and Hawke, with a couple of charged magazines in his hand, climbed up and clung within arm's reach of his officer.

The Germans were flinging a terrific barrage fire upon the village in our rear, and our own barrage was pulverising the ground beyond the enemy ridge, almost drowning the sound of the two machine-guns which were checking the British advance at that spot.

Dennis could see the gunner behind his sandbags, sweeping the front of the wood, and, laying the gun, he pressed the trigger.

The detachable magazine of a Lewis holds forty-seven cartridges in two layers; and, loosing a couple of trial shots, both of which drew a spurt of earth from the sandbags, he kept his pull on the trigger, and emptied the rest in a continuous stream.

He saw the gunner drop, and several heads peer anxiously round as another man took his place. They were trying to locate the whereabouts of this unseen enemy, but they fell back out of sight before they could place it, and a third and a fourth gunner likewise.

The machine-gun was silenced before Dennis pa.s.sed his hand down to the delighted Hawke.

"Now's your time!" he yelled to the waiting line beneath, as he fixed the deadly disc in position. And as he heard the whistles shrilling, he almost lost his balance in the wild excitement that seized him.

"Charge, boys, charge!" was the cry, as the Reedshires sprang over the tree-trunks and rushed up the slope, and a row of forage caps popped up above the parapet.

They made a splendid mark for the lad; and it was a very broken volley that met the khaki rush as Dennis played his weapon along the Bavarian trench.

"Get down, Hawke!" he shouted; "we must be in this." And, leaving the gun where it was, he clambered down, to find Hawke and Tiddler waiting for him.

Before they were clear of the wood, the rearmost files of the Reedshires were in the trench; and when they reached the crest the trench floor was covered with dead and wounded, and the victorious battalion was bombing its way along the sinuous windings which curved off northward.

Far away to the east a tremendous fusillade told where the division on their right was attacking Montauban; but Dennis's anxiety was to pick up A Company again, and that was a difficult matter.

"Seen anything of Captain Dashwood?" he cried to a wounded Reedshire on the fire-step, who was trying to staunch an ugly wound.

"No, sir. They went over on the left there with the Highlanders."

In the distance across the sh.e.l.l-torn ground behind the trench they saw clumps of brown dots growing smaller and smaller, as our successful rush carried us far into the enemy's lines, and there was nothing for it but a long sprint to overtake them.

Even Dennis, fit as he was, and Hawke and Tiddler, both hard as nails, were puffed and blown before they had run very far; and so confusing was the maze of craters and battered trench-lines that Dennis suddenly realised that he was alone.

The sing of bullets pa.s.sed his ears, and the spurting up of the ground in his immediate vicinity told him that the spot was "unhealthy"; and, seeing an empty communication trench a few yards on the left, he jumped down into it, reloaded his revolver, and went forward cautiously.

The trench, which had somehow escaped our bombardment, had been hastily evacuated when we carried the third line; but, finding that it curved in the direction where he had last seen those running figures, he followed it until a clamour of voices ahead of him made him shrink behind the angle of a bay as a mob of Germans came running towards him.

Dennis felt in his bomb sack and found he had three of those deadly missiles left, and a grim smile twitched the corners of his compressed lips.

"If they're bolting it means that our chaps are behind them," he thought to himself. "If it's a counter-attack, a friendly dug-out wouldn't be a bad place. But here goes, anyhow!" And, jumping on to the fire-step of the bay, he lobbed a bomb into the trench about fifteen yards higher up, where it burst with a loud report.

Then he sprang down, and, shouting loudly as though he had a whole party at his back, he pitched another bomb, which burst as it touched the ground.

His last bomb struck the side of the trench, dislodging the sandbags; but, covering the terrified mob with his revolver, he stalked boldly forward, calling to them to surrender.

They were big fellows, and they were Prussians; but their unexpected reception had demoralised them, and their hands went up in the air with a shout of "Mercy, Kamerad!"

There must have been twenty at least that had survived the explosions.

How many he had killed he never knew; but he realised that he must carry matters with a very high hand, and give them no time to think.

"Come on, then--you are my prisoners," he said in German. "File along the trench; my men will escort you to the rear." And, stepping back a few paces to the angle of the bay, he stood aside to let them go by.

There was terror in their faces, and the sight of the revolver held threateningly in the officer's hand sent them past at a shambling trot.

Dennis had counted seventeen, and there were still four more to pa.s.s him, when, from the head of the drove, there came a loud laugh, and a guttural voice shouted back: "Sergeant, the Englishman is alone!"

Dennis saw the speaker jump on to the side of the parados with his hand to his mouth, and he raised his revolver; but the shot was never fired, for the b.u.t.t of a rifle descended on his trench helmet from behind, and Dennis dropped with a groan.

When he opened his eyes he was lying on his back and it was dark. The action of turning his head caused a terrible spasm of pain, and made him lie quite still again for some moments.

Low cries and a distressing moaning mingled with a voice that spoke in German; and, opening his eyes again, he saw by the light of a lantern three figures bending over a prostrate man, who had been stripped to the shirt. His tunic lay on the ground, so close to Dennis that he could have reached out and touched it, and one of the figures was just rising from his knee.

"You have wasted my time for nothing," he was saying. "The man is dead as a herring. Himmel! That makes eighty-seven I have examined to-night, and not one of them will see the Fatherland again."

He picked up his case of instruments, and, followed by two hospital orderlies, pa.s.sed by Dennis and out through a doorway.

"Great Scott!" murmured the lad, "I must be a prisoner in a German dressing-station. What's happened?"

He had to piece it all together, until he reached the point in the day's happenings when the Prussians filed past him in the empty trench; then he remembered, and wondered if he were much hurt.

His head felt three times its normal size; but he could move his arms and legs, and presently sat up, holding his head in both hands, for the pulsation within it was so terrific that it seemed the next throb must split it in two.

Guns were still firing in the distance, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he saw that he was in an unroofed barn.

"I must get out of this at once," he thought. And, remembering the torn tunic which had belonged to the dead man beside him, he reached carefully for it, slipped his arms into the sleeves, and was b.u.t.toning it up when two stretcher bearers entered and dumped their burden down on the other side of him.

"That's two of those English pig officers we've brought in to-night,"

said the lantern bearer who accompanied them. "This one may think himself lucky if he gets attended to before daylight." And Dennis, who had thrown himself backwards, felt his heart stand still as the orderly flashed his lantern on the new-comer's face.

It was only a glimpse he caught, but he knew that the crumpled figure was his brother Bob!

CHAPTER XIX

What They Learned on the German Telephone

The shock of the discovery was so great that Dennis lay paralysed, and everything seemed very black indeed, until a low murmur in English brought him to his senses at his elbow.

"Well, I'm hanged! This is a pretty nice ending to a glorious day!"

muttered Captain Bob. "But I shouldn't mind so much if I only knew that Dennis had come out of it all right."

A hand grasped his own, and the speaker started as someone whispered in his ear: "Dear old chap, keep your hair on, and don't speak above your breath. Half these poor beasts understand English. Are you badly hit?"