Back and forth we repeated the address correctly and incorrectly some ten or twelve times until Hartzell informed me that he knew it well enough to sing it. He also gave me his wife's address. Then just to make conversation he would shout over, every fifteen minutes, and tell me that there was just that much less time that we would have to lie there.
I thought that hour between seven and eight o'clock dragged the most, but the one between eight and nine seemed interminable. The hours were so long, particularly when we considered that a German machine gun could fire three hundred shots a minute. Dusk approached slowly. And finally Hartzell called over:
"I don't think they can see us now," he said; "let's start to crawl back."
"Which way shall we crawl?" I asked.
"Into the woods," said Hartzell.
"Which woods?" I asked.
"The woods we came out of, you damn fool," he replied.
"Which direction are they in?" I said, "I've been moving around and I don't know which way I am heading. Are you on my left, or on my right?"
"I can't tell whether I'm on your left or your right," he replied. "How are you lying, on your face or on your back?"
"On my face," I said, "and your voice sounds like it comes from in back of me and on the left."