“You fellows certainly have your troubles—front and back,” he said to Dabnitz. “But I say, Lieutenant, you couldn't ask troops to go forward better—you couldn't ask more of the Japanese in the business of charges—”
“I wasn't out in that service,” Dabnitz observed.
“Grand little bunch of celibates afield, those Japanese—religious about these matters of using up hostile ammunition. Fact is, I never saw white troops go out to a finish four times in one day—as yours did to-day—out over their own dead, too—”
He was becoming genial; his heart quaking for Peter, as he thought suddenly of the words aimed at Kohlvihr's throat, and of Peter's association at the last with the man in the steward's blouse. ...Dabnitz was unvaryingly courteous.
The advance was on again. Boylan went forth to see the repulse. The main lines on either side had loosened to fill the gaps of Kohlvihr's division, the much-torn outfits braced by the fresher infantrymen. On they went, a last time, over the strewn land.
Boylan saw it all again; heard the drum of the batteries when the troops reached the hollow of the valley; saw them change like figures on a blurred screen; perceived the antics and the general settling—and turned away....
It was like the swoop of a carrion bird an instant afterward—and the deafening strike. The Austrians had varied a little. A shrapnel battery had been emplaced among the rapid-fire pieces during the recent interval. A hundred yards down the works to the east landed the first finger of a hand that groped for headquarters. Boylan watched for the second shell—one eye, and as little besides as possible, above the rim of the trench now deserted. It was the same tension and tallying of seconds that Peter had known on the afternoon that the moon rose before the setting sun. Big Belt ducked at the second scream. The explosion was nearer and a little back. He returned to field headquarters just as a third shrapnel shivered the land still nearer the bomb-proof pit.
Kohlvihr's face was gray as the fringe of his hair. He looked little and aged.
“My compliments to the commander,” he was dictating, “...report that after five advances we find enemy's front impregnable to infantry. Headquarters now under shrapnel fire. We are forced to withdraw toward Judenbach—”
The dispatch rider was standing by. The dirt sprinkled down on their heads through the wooden buttresses as another shrapnel broke outside.