“Yes, sir,” I answered. “I’ll go and pick out the men right away. I think we can make those fellows shut up shop over there.”
“Good boy!” he said. “You’ll try, all right.”
I started away. He called me back.
“This is going to be a bit hot, McClintock,” he said, taking my hand. “I wish you the best of luck, old fellow—you and the rest of them.” In the trenches they always wish you the best of luck when they hand you a particularly tough job.
I thanked him and wished him the same. I never saw him again. He was killed in action within two hours after our conversation. Both he and my pal, Macfarlane, were shot down dead that morning.
When they called for volunteers to go with me in discharge of Major Lewis’ order, the entire company responded. I picked out twenty-five men, twelve bayonet men and thirteen bombers. They agreed to my plan which was to get within twenty-five yards of the gun emplacement before attacking, to place no dependence on rifle fire, but to bomb them out and take the position with the bayonet. We followed that plan and took the emplacement quicker than we had expected to do, but there were only two of us left when we got there—Private Godsall, No. 177,063, and myself. All the rest of the twenty-five were dead or down. The emplacement had been held by eleven Germans. Two only were left standing when we got in.
When we saw the gun had been silenced and the crew disabled, Godsall and I worked round to the right about ten yards from the shell-hole where we had sheltered ourselves while throwing bombs into the emplacement, and scaled the German parapet. Then we rushed the gun position. The officer who had been in charge was standing with his back to us, firing with his revolver down the trench at our men who were coming over at another point. I reached him before Godsall and bayoneted him. The other German who had survived our bombing threw up his hands and mouthed the Teutonic slogan of surrender, “Mercy, Kamerad.” My bayonet had broken off in the encounter with the German officer, and I remembered that I had been told always to pull the trigger after making a bayonet thrust, as that would usually jar the weapon loose. In this case, I had forgotten instructions. I picked up a German rifle with bayonet fixed, and Godsall and I worked on down the trench.
The German, who had surrendered, stood with his hands held high above his head, waiting for us to tell him what to do. He never took his eyes off of us even to look at his officer, lying at his feet. As we moved down the trench, he followed us, still holding his hands up and repeating, “Mercy, Kamerad!” At the next trench angle we took five more prisoners, and as Godsall had been slightly wounded in the arm, I turned the captives over to him and ordered him to take them to the rear. Just then the men of our second wave came over the parapet like a lot of hurdlers. In five minutes, we had taken the rest of the Germans in the trench section prisoners, had reversed the fire steps, and had turned their own machine guns against those of their retreating companies that we could catch sight of.
As we could do nothing more here, I gave orders to advance and re-enforce the front line. Our way led across a field furrowed with shell-holes and spotted with bursting shells. Not a man hesitated. We were winning. That was all we knew or cared to know. We wanted to make it a certainty for our fellows who had gone ahead. As we were proceeding toward the German reserve trench, I saw four of our men, apparently unwounded, lying in a shell-hole. I stopped to ask them what they were doing there. As I spoke, I held my German rifle and bayonet at the position of “guard,” the tip of the bayonet advanced, about shoulder high. I didn’t get their answer, for, before they could reply, I felt a sensation as if some one had thrown a lump of hard clay and struck me on the hip, and forthwith I tumbled in on top of the four, almost plunging my bayonet into one of them, a private named Williams.
“Well, now you know what’s the matter with us,” said Williams. “We didn’t fall in, but we crawled in.”