CHAPTER XVII
The Exploits of A Company
"Tomkins!" cried the Captain, "bunk back to the C.O. if you can find him, and tell him there's a strong counter-attack on. Say it's a matter of minutes if we're going to hold the village."
Fifty yards beyond the outer fringe of those crumbled heaps a little stream flowed, a shattered willow here and there marking its course, and from the opposite bank the ground rose to what had once been a thick wood.
In front of the wood a solid mass of German infantry had suddenly sprung into view as if by magic, and, forming up elbow to elbow, moved down the slope, breaking into a brisk run. The great grey wave overlapped A Company for a considerable distance on either flank.
A strip of ragged garden hedge on our side of the stream, a well-head, and the wooden ribs of a stable which had somehow survived the bombardment were the only available cover, if one excepted two large shell craters.
"Hadn't we better fall back, Bob?" said Dennis, as he arrived breathlessly at his brother's side. "The thin red line at Balaclava was a fool to this."
"Fall back be hanged!" cried the Captain. "If we give them an inch we shall let them in. No, there's a better stunt than that. Where on earth are our machine-guns I'd like to know?"
His words were almost lost as the company poured a terrific fusillade into the advancing enemy, and the target being too big and too near to miss, every bullet found its billet. Men in the front rank went down like ninepins, but the rest came on over their bodies, and everyone realised that they meant business.
For once the enemy had resolved to use the bayonet, and less than sixty yards now separated them from the Reedshires.