With Haig on the Somme

by D. H. Parry

Down on their faces sank the first line again, so suddenly that an onlooker might have thought that everyone of them had been shot, and as Dennis found himself in a bed of stinging nettles close to the ruins of a cottage, with the corporal and the commandant on either side of him, he caught the distant sound of an English yell away to the left, and knew that the British raid had been well timed, and was acting in concert with his new friends.

For an instant the commandant, whistle in mouth, lifted his head and saw that his supports had come up to within twenty yards of their comrades.

"Now, my dear friend," he mumbled, giving Dennis's arm a warm squeeze. "One bound, and we shall be there!"

The whistle shrilled loudly, and, jumping to his feet, the commandant shouted, "Forward with the bayonet! Vive la patrie!"

Instantly the sandbags in front of them bristled with heads wearing flat caps, and the volley from the mausers mingled with the murderous tac-tac of machine-guns.

It floated dimly through the boy's mind that he had no right to be hazarding life and limb in that place, but the joy of that mad rush with a fight at the end of it banished the thought on the spot, and, scarcely conscious of those few remaining yards which they traversed at top speed, he found himself scaling the sandbags.

Above him was the commandant, sword in one hand and revolver in the other, but as the active little man poised for an instant on the top of the parapet and fired into the trench at his feet, he threw up his arms and pitched backward, Dennis dropping his weapon to dangle at his wrist, and catching him as he fell at the foot of the obstacle.

"It is nothing," gasped the French officer, clutching at his throat, but the blood was pouring between the fingers of his hand.

"He is wrong," said Dennis, as the Alsatian corporal knelt beside him. "We must get him back under cover at once. It is only a surgeon who can stop this hæmorrhage."

"And I haven't thrown a bomb yet!" growled the corporal, tossing the racket he held in his hand over the top of the sandbags.