"Rapid fire! Into the wood!"
Yes, but what are we to fire at? Lying down, there is nothing to be seen of the sharpshooters. They won't do us any harm; in another minute they will have disappeared among the trees. But the machines—they have hidden them away among the foliage to good purpose.
Our subaltern, lying a bare five paces away from me in the grass, raises himself on his elbows, and gazes intently through his field-glasses. I know what is vexing his soul. He is a handsome, splendid lad, for whom even we grizzled old-timers would go through fire and water, for he meets you as man to man, without sniffing or swagger, as it becomes a youngster. And the other day, when I was marching with the rear guard, we discussed Lilliencron's novels. Since then he has always appealed to me as if he had stepped straight out of one of these romances of war. He is all ablaze to glean his first laurels. But however much he may twiddle the focus of his glasses up and down and crane his neck, he cannot discover a trace of the enemy, and we blaze away foolishly at the wood, and may, for all I know, be bringing down leaves or birds from the trees there.
"Close to the big oak. To the right in the undergrowth," some one of the rank and file sings out.
I strain my eyes to the spot, and fail to see anything.
And again I hear the guns growling all round us. But somewhere out of the far distance a clear, long-drawn bugle-call rings out amid the iron bass. It thrills like nerve and brain against an iron wall.
Behind there, to the right—they are on the run there! And from afar the rifle fire rattles like mad.
"My men! Up with you! At the double!"
That came from our lot ... our subaltern is racing on with his drawn sword in his hand.... I am still prone, and have, almost automatically, drawn my right knee close up under my body ... they are rising to their feet to the left and right of me, and dashing on after him ... a wrench! and my knapsack slides lop-sided up the back of my neck ... then I jump up with my rifle in my right hand, and am running for all my legs are worth.
But as we rise to our feet the machine-guns in the woods begin to buzz, and to rain lead into our ranks, until right and left of me men yelp and drop twisted and tumbled to the ground.