It was no time to consider rank with that grey mass surging on. Above the noise his voice rang out like a trumpet.
"Come on, boys!" he shouted. "Over the top and at them!"
At the same instant he leaped forward and his comrades followed. On they rushed like an avalanche let loose. They were at Yankee fighting pitch.
All the pent-up rage that had been gathering for months leaped to the fore. The fire that had stirred their ancestors at Bunker Hill and Gettysburg burst into flame.
Wounds? They scorned them. Death? They laughed at it!
On they went like so many vikings. Faster, faster, rushing, pouring onward—until with tremendous force they fell like a thunderbolt upon the advancing ranks.
Into that grey mass they forced their way, shooting, thrusting, stabbing. And when their guns were empty, or they could not use their bayonets, they grasped the weapons and swung them about their heads like flails.
There was a red mist before their eyes and red patches on their tunics. Some of them fell but the others kept on stabbing, hacking, hewing their way into the solid mass until that mass, veteran, as it was, wavered and broke before the wild, irresistible charge.
Slowly at first, then more swiftly, the enemy retreated, pursued to the very edge of their trenches by the American boys, who, having tasted blood, were not to be denied.
They would have gone further but this was not in the plan of their commanders, for the enemy's guns had got the range and a murderous fire was being laid down.