Pugh, disgusted, emitted a stream of tobacco juice, shrugged his shoulder, turned on his heel.
“Come on, Hicksy, let’s get back where there’s white men.”
Their hearts racing madly, they reached their holes without being struck by the machine-gun bullets that sang deadly songs all around. After the first terrific salvo, the German artillery, for some unknown reason, had stopped.
The skirmishing on the right, which the platoon had witnessed in the early morning, seemed to have been carried within the woods. A few waves of pigmy-like figures had walked slowly toward the wooded hill, and by the time their lines arrived, although considerably thinned, the gray defenders of the hill were to be seen no more.
Now that they were no longer targets, Hicks walked over to where Ryan was squatted in his hole.
“This is a hell of a note, isn’t it, Ryan? To have to lie like this all day and not get to fire a shot?”
“You’ll get a chance to fire plenty of shots, damn it. Some poor fool is making our regiment attack without a barrage. Did you see the outfit over on the right that went up that hill? That was the third battalion, and I’ll bet there’s not a third of the men left. Well, we’ll go over most any time.”
“But, Ryan, that’s murder, not to have a barrage. What can these fool officers be thinking of?”
“Glory,” Ryan answered.
Late in the afternoon the company commander passed the word along the line that the men would be permitted to eat one of their boxes of hard bread, but nothing else.