Army Boys marching into Germany

There was a series of clicks as the bayonets slipped in their sockets.

“In less than five minutes now!” muttered Tom.

Suddenly the great American guns opened up with a roar that sounded as though the earth had split asunder. There was a deeper bass note than usual that the Army Boys’ trained ears detected in an instant.

“Those must be the naval guns we’ve been hearing so much about,” said Frank to Billy.

“That’s what,” replied Billy, “and they’re some guns, too. I hear that they throw nearly a ton of metal a distance of sixteen miles. They’re the biggest guns that have ever been used in battle, and they spell hard luck for the Heinies.”

“I wonder how we’re going to get across this canal,” pondered Tom, as they waited for the word to charge.

“Our engineers will have seen to that,” said Frank confidently. “Trust those boys to be on the job. Maybe it will be rafts, maybe pontoons. You remember how we got across the Meuse the other time. At the worst we can swim it.”

But as it grew lighter with each succeeding minute, they saw that they would not have to swim. During the night, the engineers had assembled a string of barges which they had laid beside each other and covered with planking. The work had been done under fire and the losses had been heavy, but the engineers were of the same plucky type as those who had dropped their picks and shovels and gone into the fight at Cambrai, and those others who had helped Carey to stop the gap on the road to Amiens. They had stuck to their job until their work was done, and several such bridges were now ready for use at different points along the American line.

“Stand ready,” came the command that thrilled the Army Boys from head to foot.

“Charge!”

With a rousing cheer the line swept forward, and the greatest battle of the war was on.

The American guns laid down a barrage, a veritable curtain of fire that went before their men and kept lifting as the line advanced so as not to kill their own men. The Americans were so eager to get forward that this was an ever present danger, and many lives had been lost in the earlier battles of the war from this cause. But now the men were veterans, and while they were just as full of ardor and eagerness as ever, they had learned not to throw their lives away by being over rash.

A hail of fire came from the German guns as the first detachments reached the bridges and began to cross. Great lanes were torn in the American ranks, but they closed up at once like the water in the wake of a ship.

The tanks went first, and though the floating bridges swayed beneath their weight they were soon safely on the other side of the canal. After they had reached the bank, they halted for the infantry to come up and form rank in the shelter of their armored sides. The bullets rattled against them until the din was like that of a boiler factory. Two of them were struck by monster shells that put them out of action, but the majority of them came through the storm of fire without material damage.

In the meantime, the first detachments of infantry had crossed the bridges, although their losses were heavy and the planks of the bridge were red. Some had been swept into the canal and the water was dotted with bodies, some motionless, while others, who were only wounded, sought to swim to the nearer shore or were rescued by American boats that put out into the stream.

The old Thirty-seventh had been given the post of honor in their section of the line and the Army Boys were in the first rank. A bullet clipped off a lock of Billy’s hair just above the ear, and one had pierced the sleeve of Frank’s arm, blistering the skin as it went along as though it had been seared by a hot iron. But the lads were so full of the spirit of the fight that they scarcely noticed these trifles when they brought up breathless on the further side.

“So far so good,” gasped Frank, as he and his comrades halted to draw breath in the shelter of a great tank.

“Talk about hundred yard dashes!” exclaimed Billy. “I’ll bet we came near beating the record for crossing bridges.”

“I don’t know,” grinned Tom, as he took off his helmet to wipe his forehead. “I think we beat it that time when we scurried over the broken bridge like jack rabbits with the Uhlan cavalry only a dozen jumps in the rear. But we’re lucky this time as we were then, and we’ve come through with scarcely a scratch.”

“Knock wood,” warned Billy. “This is only the curtain raiser. The real play is yet to come.”

In less than an hour, sufficient forces had crossed the bridges to justify the officers in ordering an advance against the first line of the enemy trenches that had been established just within the edge of the forest. The trenches were heavily manned and bristled with field and machine guns, while back of them in the grim and forbidding forest stretched other lines of defense that the boys knew would cost thousands of American lives to take. But the job was there and had to be done. And they vowed in their hearts that it should be done.

The huge tanks lined up for the attack and got once more in action. Into the woods they went, crushing down trees as though they were pipe stems, lurching into and out of shell craters, tearing into the barbed wire entanglements, plucking up the posts to which they were fastened and opening huge gaps into which came pouring the long lines of shouting, cheering men. Like an avalanche they struck the trenches, and the Germans poured out to meet them.

The opposing lines swayed back and forth like gladiators in a death grip. Then they broke up into hundreds of battling groups, a dozen men here, twenty there, struggling with bayonets and rifle butts, hacking, stabbing and at times throwing their empty guns aside and fighting with knives and even with fists. It was the kind of close-in fighting in which the Americans excelled and which they always sought when the plan of battle made it possible.

Frank, Tom and Billy fought as closely in company as they could, and many a blow had been warded off by one of the three from the others that would otherwise have found its mark.

For a long time the battle seemed to be fairly even, for the Germans fought with the fury of desperation and were constantly reinforced from heavy divisions kept in reserve. Each side attached especial importance to this first stage of the fight, because of the influence it might have on the morale of their men. The side that lost in the first phase of the battle would be depressed, while the side that won would be correspondingly elated and strengthened in spirit for the struggles that were yet to come.

But American blood and American fighting qualities were not to be denied. Gradually the Germans were pressed back, but as they retreated they kept up a stubborn resistance by means of machine gun nests posted in every conceivable place, at every turn in the forest paths, in clumps of bushes, in forks of trees. They made the Americans pay dearly for every foot of ground that they gained.

But the Americans had learned by long experience not to advance in mass formation against these messengers of death. They spread out in units and in groups, worming their way through the bushes, seeking the shelter of every rock and tree and shell hole.

In following up this method of fighting, the three Army Boys were separated. Frank found himself in a shell hole alone. He peered over the edge and could see nothing of Tom and Billy. He crouched low in the hole, reloading his rifle. Then he took stock of his position.

About three hundred feet ahead of him was a machine gun nest that was spitting bullets in a steady stream. It was sheltered by a barricade of logs about four feet high. Behind this the German machine gunners were snugly ensconced and seemed to defy capture. They kept slewing their gun from side to side of the barricade so that it commanded the whole front of the position, and their bullets went hissing over the open space like so many snakes and quite as deadly.

Frank pondered as to what he should do and a wild thought came into his mind. At least it would have seemed wild at the beginning of his experience in the war. But he had taken so many risks and gotten away with them that he had grown inclined to trust his luck.

He was going to put that particular machine gun out of business. But how could he do it single-handed?

They could fire a hundred bullets to his one.

His keen eye studied the ground in front of him.

There were perhaps half a dozen shell holes between him and the barricade. But they were too far apart for him to slip from one to another without being seen. And to be seen in that bullet swept place meant certain death.

But he also noted another thing. A heavy German field gun from a distance of miles behind the lines was sending huge shells that were falling with tolerable regularity in the space between him and the barricade. Every minute or two, a shell would explode with a tremendous roar, sending a volume of black smoke and tons of dirt into the air.

Here was the solution of Frank’s problem.

He measured the distance between him and the next shell hole, and poised himself for a spring when the next shell should fall.

It came, and on the instant Frank was out of his hole and rushing toward the next behind the screen of smoke and dirt. He dropped into it and waited for the next shell. Several times this was repeated, until at last Frank found himself in the last shell hole less than fifty feet away from the barricade. This was his limit of possible shelter. The rest of the way he must be in the open.

He crouched low in the hole, waiting for a favorable moment. Just at that time bullets were whistling directly above his head. But he had noted that the gunners were sweeping their gun about in a semicircle, so as to command all portions of the open space, and he knew that in a moment or two the line of fire would be on one side or the other of the direct line that lay between him and the barricade.

How many men there might be in the machine gun crew he did not know. There would surely be two, perhaps half a dozen. He did not greatly care. In that moment of intense exaltation he would have fought a regiment.

The bullets ceased to sing above his head. He peered cautiously above the edge of the hole. The wicked looking muzzle of the machine gun was pointing considerably to his left.

He leaped from the hole and raced for the barricade.

There was a startled shout and a frantic effort to slew the gun around. The next instant Frank sprang high in the air, struck the topmost log of the barricade with both feet and sent it tumbling down upon the machine gun crew while he went down with it.