And then the long tension snapped, his head dropped forward and his body was shaken by convulsive sobs.
CHAPTER VIII
Advancement for Tom
BUT if there is sadness in battle, so also at times does it have its humorous aspects, some of which are ludicrous to an extreme.
It was just that sort of a reaction that Tom Walton got when, having laid the body of Major Sweeney on a little knoll by the side of a tree, he again laid siege to the enemy line.
By this time it was a general free-for-all at that particular point, and it was vicious and close-range fighting. Tom was having all he could do to defy two Germans, one of whom was doing his best to bayonet him, while the other was trying to brain him with a rifle butt, when Ollie Ogden suddenly appeared upon the scene.
With a single leap—and no one to this day knows why he adopted that method of attack, except that men often do strange things in the stress of battle,—Ollie was upon the back of the man trying the bayonetting. His two arms were gripped about the German’s throat, and his feet were twined affectionately around his waist and over the stomach. From all appearances he was there to stay awhile.
The other German—he who had been so seriously intent upon crushing Tom’s head in with the butt of his rifle—was so startled by the strange performance that he stood gazing as though stricken, while Tom with a sudden wrench took the gun from him and added him to the list of prisoners.
But by this time a dozen men on both sides had abruptly suspended hostilities to watch the antics of the big German with Ollie on his back. The latter seemed to be enjoying it as much as anybody.
The Hun first clawed desperately to disengage Ollie’s strangle grip upon his throat, and failing in that, vainly transferred the same tactics to disengaging himself from the latter’s feet.