He jumped up suddenly and ran forward, his companions streaming out behind him, everyone bending double, for bullets were flying in every direction, some from their own battalion, and some no doubt from hidden snipers, who would have to be reckoned with later on.
"Are we all here?" said the lad, as they reached the third heap, which had been an estaminet before a British 9.2 had brought it down like a house of cards. "Now for it!" And they bolted across the open square, and gained their goal at last.
Only the skeleton of the church walls remained, and the sun slanted in through the ruined windows on to a scene of indescribable wreckage.
Where the roof had fallen in the debris formed a barrier across the aisle, and the eastern end of the ruin had evidently been used as a dressing-station. Several stretchers lay on the floor there, and on one of them was a dead man with a tourniquet still clamped on his thigh.
The saw on the ground, and the ugly contents of the bowl beside it, told of an interrupted amputation—perhaps the other man huddled up in the corner had been the surgeon himself!
But they had no time to waste on idle speculation, for beyond the pile of beams and tiles, red bricks and plaster, the machine-guns were still firing; and, motioning his companions to caution, Dennis crept round a broken pillar.
Under what remained of the belfry tower behind the rampart of sandbags the grey-painted 77 mm. showed its square shield, and a crew of five men were busy about it.
Somewhere above them in the bell chamber another and a lighter gun was in full blast, and Dennis made a quick sign to Harry Hawke.
The crack shot of No. 2 Platoon raised his rifle, and the sergeant on the seat behind the gun-shield reeled round and dropped, Hawke's second bullet sending the man who was feeding the breech two feet into the air.
"Charge, boys, charge!" shouted Dennis. And before the three Germans who remained realised what was happening, there was an ugly bit of bayonet work, and the gun was silenced!