“Why doesn’t he do something? What the devil is he good for?” Hicks wondered.
Pugh was lying in a spot thoroughly without shelter. Around him the bullets spat viciously, covering him with fine dirt. Ahead of him a small hump of ground enticed him. It was small, not much bigger than the crown of a hat, but to Pugh it looked mountainous. He had watched it now seemingly for hours, afraid to move, believing that if he lay quite still the enemy would think he was dead and not fire at him. But ever the bullets came closer. He wriggled a few inches on his belly, and stopped. He tried it again. If only the machine-guns would let up for a moment he was sure that he could make it. He twisted a few more inches, working his body snakelike. Now he could almost touch the mound of dirt. He reached out his hand and grasped at the hump. The fingers of his hand had been stretched out. Now they slowly crumpled, making a weak, ineffectual fist. His arm remained outstretched. His head flattened against the earth, his body relaxing. From the left side of his head blood dripped, forming a little pool that was quickly absorbed by the dirt. Slowly his body stiffened out.
Hicks had watched him, fascinated, wanting to cry out warning, yet fearing that his effort to help would be a hindrance. He felt himself, with Pugh, striving to attain shelter behind the absurd little mound. It was his hand that reached out to touch it!
“Pugh!” he called. “Oh, Pugh!” He was excited. “Can’t you make it, Pugh?” In his consciousness the thought pounded that Pugh was dead, but he combated it. “Why, Jack can’t be dead,” he argued with himself. “Why, he just gave me a cigarette last night!” There was total unbelief of the possibility of connecting death with Pugh in his tone. “Jack Pugh dead? Damn foolishness.” But he was dead, and Hicks knew it. It made him sick to think of it. “That’s right. It’s something you can’t fool yourself about.”
He rose straight as any of the posts from which was strung the fatal barbed wire. He stooped over and picked up his bandolier of ammunition. He looked around at the men lying there on the ground and a sneer came over his face. Methodically, as if he were walking home, he started, toward the end of the barbed-wire pen. A bullet neatly severed the fastening of his puttee. He was unmindful of the fact that it unrolled the folds of the cloth falling about his feet.
Now, along the line, other men had got to their feet. They were all in a daze, not knowing what was happening. They sensed an enemy in front of them, but they were not fully aware of his presence.
Whizzing past, the machine-gun bullets were annoying little insects. Hicks struck at his face, trying to shoo the bothering little creatures away. How damned persistent they were! He reached the strands of barbed wire which lay between him and the enemy and calmly picked out a place where the wire had been broken, and walked through. Now he had entered the fringe of the forest. Dimly he recognized a face before him to be that of a German. There was the oddly shaped helmet covering the head, the utilitarian gray of the German uniform. The face did not at all appear barbaric. It was quite youthful, the chin covered with a white down. He veered the muzzle of his rifle toward the face, and, without raising his rifle to his shoulder, pulled the trigger. The face disappeared.
Gray uniforms, with helmets like distorted flower-pots, fled through the woods, in front of the mass of men that now surged forward. Hicks followed after them, not particularly desirous of stopping them, but wanting to overtake them before they reached the crest of the hill.
Men poured into the woods, making a firm wall studded with bristling bayonets. On their faces was a crystallized emotion, presumably hate. Lying out on the ground but a short time ago they had been frozen with fear. They were hounds on a leash being tortured. The leash had snapped and the fear was vanishing in the emotion of a greater fear—the maddened fight for self-preservation. And so they scoured the woods, charging the Germans with a white fury, recklessly throwing hand-grenades in front of them.