Chapter 25

STORMING THE RIDGE

"What is it, Sheldon?"

"I think I can silence those guns, sir," Frank said.

A light came into the captain's eyes.

"How?" he asked.

In a few brief words Frank described his plan.

"But it's suicide," protested the captain. "There isn't one chance in a thousand that you'll come out alive."

"I know," said Frank. "But Raymond and I are willing to risk it if you give the word."

The captain pondered for a moment. It was a forlorn hope, but forlorn hopes sometimes won out.

"Go ahead," he said.

Frank nodded to Bart, and in a twinkling they had turned the big barrels over on their sides.

Then each lay on the ground behind his barrel and began to push it toward the enemy.

The men of their company had watched them wonderingly while they made their preparations, and when they realized what the boys had in mind they raised a thundering cheer that rose above the din of battle.

The crews of the two enemy machine guns looked with stupefaction at the big barrels coming toward them. Then they woke from their trance and a storm of bullets beat upon the barrels.

If they had been empty the bullets would have gone through and killed the boys behind them. But they were filled with woolen clothing, which while light enough to enable the boys to push the barrels with comparative ease was just the thing to stop the bullets. The whizzing missiles thudded into the clothing and there they stopped. It was on the same basis as the sandbag which stops a cannon ball that would go through an iron plate.

Steadily the boys kept on, pushing the barrels before them. They did not go on hands and knees, for then they would be exposed to the enemy bullets. It was a caterpillar motion, drawing their bodies along the ground, and was a tremendous tax on their muscles, for they could get no purchase.

One thing in their favor was that the ground sloped a trifle toward the enemy position and this made the barrels roll more easily.

By this time the enemy was growing frantic at this novel method of attack. They could not see their enemy, and they could not kill him. And the sight of those barrels coming toward them, as inexorably as fate, got on their nerves, already tense with the fury of the combat.

Nearer and nearer came the barrels to the guns until they were not more than twenty feet away. Then they stopped.

The German gunners drew fresh hope from this. Had their bullets found their mark in the bodies of their daring enemies?

But there were two very live boys behind those motionless barrels.

Frank and Bart had drawn a handful of grenades from their sacks. At a given signal they drew back their arms and hurled them over the barrels in quick succession.

They fell right in the midst of the machine guns. There was a tremendous explosion that killed some of the gunners and threw the rest into wild confusion.

"Now!" shouted Frank, and he and Bart leaped to their feet and rushed toward the guns.

There was a wild melee for a moment, and then the surviving Germans turned and ran in panic down the slope.

The boys slued the captured guns around and sent a stream of bullets after their wildly fleeing enemies.

The rout was complete, and the next minute the whole company, that had charged the instant the grenades were thrown, came tearing up, and there was a scene of hilarity and enthusiasm that passed description.

"The finest thing I ever saw!" declared the captain. "You boys are the stuff of which heroes are made."

But there was no time then to dwell on the exploit. The enemy was on the run and they must keep him going.

And they did, so well and so thoroughly, that when the day was over they had swept the whole ridge that had been their objective in the fight and planted Old Glory on its highest crest. And their victory was shared by the rest of the Allied line, who not only regained all the losses of the day before, but swept the Germans out of their first and second lines on a five-mile front, inflicting on them a defeat which they were long to remember.

And how the lesson that the Germans learned that day was repeated later on will be told in the next book of this series, entitled: "Army Boys on the Firing Line; Or, Holding Back the German Drive."

Not but what the victory had cost the Americans dearly. Every regiment engaged had its own long list of killed and wounded.

"Poor old Fred," said Frank, referring to Anderson. "His right arm was badly shattered and I'm afraid he may lose it."

"Fred is playing in hard luck," returned Bart. "That's twice he's been wounded. Remember the night down at the old mill when the bomb got his leg?"

"He's having more than his share," agreed Billy.

"There's Wilson, too," said Bart. "He's been in the thick of it all day, but he went down with a bullet in his shoulder just as we got to the top of the ridge."

"The corp certainly fought like a tiger," said Tom. "But he's worth a dozen dead men yet. A month in the hospital will fix him up all right, I hope."

"There's one good thing anyway," pat in Billy. "The Huns haven't taken many of our boys prisoners."

"And we've got more of their men than we know what to do with," exulted Frank.

"I know what I'd do with them," said Tom. "I'd send them to America to be imprisoned there and I'd put a bunch of them on every transport that sailed to the other side."

"That wouldn't be a bad stunt," agreed Bart. "Then if a submarine sank the ship it would carry a lot of their own people down to Davy Jones."

Among the missing was one whose loss did not greatly grieve the boys of the old Thirty-seventh. Nick Rabig did not answer to his name when the roll was called. They did not find his body on the field, nor was he among the wounded that were brought in and tenderly cared for in the hospitals.

"I see Nick is missing," remarked Frank to Bart later in the evening, as they were resting and rejoicing over the victory.

"Missing but not missed," put in the implacable Tom.

"If the Huns have got him, he'll feel more at home than he ever felt with us," remarked Bart.

"Maybe he was captured against his will," said Tom, "and then again _maybe_--"

"What do you suppose they'll say in Camport when they hear of this day's work, fellows?" asked Billy.

"Oh," answered Frank with a laugh, "they'll only say: 'It's nothing more than we expected.'"

"They know us, don't they?"

"Of course they do," broke in Tom. "We came to France to do our duty as American citizens, as well as soldiers."

"I wonder how long it will be before this war is over and we start for home?" came from Frank.

"Not tired of the game yet, are you?" quizzed Billy, quickly.

"Do I look as if I was tired of it?" was the counter-question.

"We are all going to stay over here until the Huns are licked good and proper!" burst cut Bart. "There is no use in stopping while the job is only half finished."

"Just you wait until Uncle Sam has a lot of men over here," put in Billy. "Then we'll show those Huns what's what and don't you forget it! We'll wallop them so thoroughly they'll be getting down on their knees yelling for mercy."

"Now you've said something!" came in a chorus from the others.

And here let us say good-bye to the Army Boys.

End of Project Gutenberg's Army Boys in the French Trenches, by Homer Randall