“Yes, sir,” answered Dave; and related some of the particulars. “I sent Jackson and Meeks back with a prisoner.”
“Yes, I saw them with the fellow, but just then I had no time to ask them the particulars,” answered Captain Obray. “You certainly have done wonderfully well. Those machine-guns were doing terrible execution on our boys. With those guns going, we could not have advanced at this point.”
The captain then told Dave that he and the men under him must retire along with the rest of the engineering unit.
“Two regiments of the regulars are coming this way,” he announced, “and they can hold this ground a great deal better than we can. And besides that, there will be plenty of work for us to do just as soon as this battle comes to an end. Unless I miss my guess, we are going to make quite an advance on Jerry;” Jerry being the name by which the Germans were occasionally designated—why, no one could tell.
The advance and the retirement over the rough rocks of the gully had been no easy task for the engineers, and all were glad enough to go back to the shelter of the unfinished dugout. As they went down the slope Dave paused just long enough to see a company of the regulars come into view on the double-quick.
As said before, the fighting continued far into the night, and early in the morning it was renewed and did not come to a stop until about the middle of the afternoon. By that time the Americans had made an advance along the line from a half mile to two miles deep; and once more they began to dig in with all possible speed.
It was a night not easily forgotten by Dave and his chums. They had had no supper, and to cook under such circumstances was practically out of the question. They used their emergency rations, and about two o’clock in the afternoon saw some of the kitchen details coming forward with hot stew and coffee. These, along with chunks of bread, were eagerly devoured by the hungry engineers.
“Well, we sure did make a record for ourselves in this battle,” remarked Buster, when the fighting had come to an end. “We ought to get some credit for smashing up those gun nests.”
“You’ll get it, don’t you worry,” returned Dave. “You just wait until I make my report.”
The news soon circulated that Dave and his detail had been instrumental in annihilating the two German machine-guns with their crews, and the major of the engineering unit himself came down to the quarters to praise the young sergeant and shake hands with every fellow who had been with him.