“Come on,” Dick said. “Over that hump of rock ahead of us. Get positions just over the crest.”
The men darted forward, scrambling up over the little hill that came down to the water’s edge. Dropping down on the other side, they found cover quickly and faced back in the direction from which the enemy must be coming. They saw that their little hill was a point of land projecting into the waters of the reservoir. It was a good spot Dick had chosen—hard to get at from the direction of the dam itself and not much easier from above, for the hill curved around like a natural fort and the land above was somewhat bare of trees because of the rocky soil. The Germans would have to expose themselves badly if they came from that direction.
Dick looked behind him at the reservoir to see if the lay of the land were the way he had figured it from the map, and he smiled with satisfaction. Opposite the point of land on which they had taken up positions was another point, and only about twenty-five feet of water separated the two. Beyond the two points, the artificial lake opened out broadly.
“They won’t come at us from the other side,” Dick figured. “The land is too steep to come up that way, and anyway, they’d come directly at us, figuring that they had us encircled with the water behind us.”
Then he remembered the cry of pain from one of his men and turned back.
“Say—somebody got a slug back there in the woods,” he said. “Who was it?”
“Me, Sarge,” said Private Latham, a wiry little fellow who knew more jokes than anyone in the group and so was a favorite among the men. “But it just nicked me in the left hand. Doesn’t hurt now.”
“Let me see,” Dick said, stepping to Latham’s side. He saw at once that the bullet had gone through the palm of the hand. Quickly he got out his first-aid kit, dumped some sulfa powder into the wound, bound it up with a bandage.
“Not my gun hand, anyway,” Latham said. “I can still shoot.”
At that moment they heard the first attack from the Germans. The Americans in position answered with a short burst of fire, knowing that it would pin the approaching Germans down to rocks and protecting trees.