Just as he looked, he saw a shell, fired deliberately by a German gunner, strike the van, explode, and next second there remained only a heap of wreckage, among which the twenty poor fellows who had been imprisoned in it were lying heaped, dead and dying, some of them shattered out of all recognition.
“The murderers!” cried Edmond, while his men, who also noticed what had happened, loudly cursed the ruthless barbarians with whom they now found themselves confronted.
Bang! The explosion was deafening. Edmond again felt the concussion where he was crouching. It knocked his shako aside, and for a second he believed he had been hit. Yet, by a miracle, he was unharmed.
Next second an order was shouted—the order to retire!
The Germans, now using their artillery and shelling the Belgian trenches, were advancing. They were crossing the bridge below, and a pontoon section had already begun its work under fire.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Shells were falling thickly now. Their defence had, alas! been all in vain. Edmond heard the order shouted in Flemish.
“Vlucht! Vlucht!” shouted the lieutenant. Edmond stood for a second like a man in a dream. The earth everywhere was being whipped by bullets.
Then he directed his men to dismantle the gun and, two others helping, each quickly shouldering a piece, the little party made off with the Chasseurs over the crest of the hill and down the other side, leaving behind them, alas! many hundreds of their poor comrades.
Bang! Yet another shell fell, rending a great hole in the trench at the very spot where, only a few moments before, Edmond Valentin’s gun had been standing.