“After ’em, boys!” shouted Clem, and the three chased along a narrow street to the eastern edge of the town where the Germans turned a corner and came face to face with a full platoon of Americans who took them prisoner.
The lieutenant in charge of this unit took great pleasure in the sight of five Germans being pursued by three Americans. As the little squad came up, he asked Clem to report action and casualties.
“Orders now are to report southwest of the village. Battalion will reform. Fall in with us.”
Clem was glad of this. Though such fighting was intoxicating while it lasted, it was sickening business after all. He had had enough of it. He was glad he had done his duty--glad the town had been won and if there were enough men left to hold the place, but a rest wouldn’t go badly. Still, if there was to be more of such work, he was ready.
Ambulancier Donald Richards, with Washington White beside him, but without his usual grin, drove his much battered car down the military road and across the scarlet-flowered fields in the direction of the battle sounds. From a rise of ground he could see advancing lines of men, some distance apart, moving rapidly for a short space and dropping on the ground; then arising and going forward to repeat the movement--all this carried out with wonderful precision. At one moment there were a thousand men thus spread out, moving swiftly. At the next moment they were all prone on the ground, in perfect unison.
Don understood this perfectly. He had witnessed the same tactics a few days before in the charge on Bouresches and they had won. But the attempt to win Belleau Wood had been frustrated for three days by the terrible machine-fire which greeted the determined Americans. Would it be possible to attain their object this time before they were all killed?
For he could see also, all over the field behind the charging soldiers, many men who had fallen. In spots the ground was strewn with bodies of the wounded and dead. As he gazed, horror-stricken yet fascinated by the spectacle, he could discern the thinning out of the charging lines, as they swept forward.
“We’ve got to get right down there, Wash, and bring some of those fellows out,” Don said.