There was very little firing done now. The machine guns on either side had ceased, as they were as likely to mow down their own men as the enemy by shooting into that dense mass. Rifles and revolvers were used until their charges were exhausted. Then revolvers were thrown aside or hurled into opponents’ faces, the rifles were used as a backing for the bayonet or whirled about the head like a flail, and the fighting became a conflict between individual men or groups battling to the death. For a few minutes it was a mêlée of hacking, clubbing and stabbing. Men by the dozen went down, killed or wounded. Some of the latter, who could still move, crawled or fell into shell holes that offered some slight measure of protection. Often a pair of combatants went down together, locked in a close embrace from which neither of them rose again. Frank found himself engaged with two husky Germans who attacked him at the same moment. He side-stepped one and drove his bayonet through the shoulder of the other. He tried to withdraw it, but could not pull it out before the other German was again upon him. Like lightning he dropped his hold on his gun, his fist shot out and landed flush on his assailant’s jaw. The man went down, and Frank, content with having put him out of action, wrenched his gun free from his other fallen enemy and hurried to the help of Tom, who was hard beset. Whirling his gun about his head, he cleared a space about himself and his panting comrade. A moment’s respite and again they plunged into the thick of the fight. “Hot stuff, eh?” said Tom, with a twisted grin on his lips that had been cut by a glancing bayonet thrust. “Hot’s the right word,” gasped Frank. “Where are Bart and Billy?” “I don’t know,” replied Tom, and then, as a group of Germans surged in upon them, they said no more but went at it tooth and nail. It was not an easy victory, for the Germans fought desperately. But victory at last it proved to be, as the Yankee boys pressed forward with that same splendid get-there-or-die spirit that they had shown ever since the first glorious days at Belleau Wood and Château Thierry. Soon the long lines broke up into separate groups and a few minutes later the Germans began to retreat, slowly at first and then more rapidly, until the wood in front of the old Thirty-seventh had been cleared, and the American line had been advanced far beyond where it had been when the fighting had begun. The Americans had lost a considerable number of men, but not so many as the enemy, for the ground was covered with German dead.