Jake pushed on. It was terribly heavy going, and he sank ankle deep at every step in the soft, wet ground. It was hard, too, to keep straight on, because the whole surface was pitted and cratered with holes that ran from anything the size of a foot-bath to a chasm big enough to swallow a fair-sized house. Jake skirted the edges of the larger holes, and plunged in and struggled up out of the smaller ones. The going was so heavy, and it was so hard to keep direction, that for a long time he thought of nothing else. Then a man who had been advancing beside him turned to him and yelled something Jake could not hear, and next instant lurched staggering against him. Jake just caught a glimpse of the wild terror in the staring eyes, of the hand clutched about the throat, and the blood spurting and welling out between the clenched fingers, and then the man slid down in a heap at his feet. Jake stooped an instant with wild thoughts racing through his mind. What was he to do for the man? How did one handle—couldn’t stop bleeding by a tourniquet or even a tight bandage—choke the man that way—why’n blazes hadn’t the ambulance classes told them how to handle a man with a bullet in his throat? (The answer to that last, perhaps, if Jake had only known, being that usually the man is past handling or helping.) Then before Jake could attempt anything he knew the man was dead. Jake went on, and now he was conscious of vicious little hisses and whutts and sharp slaps and smacks in the wet ground about him, and knew these for bullets passing or striking close. The barrage lifted again, this time before they were well up on it, and the line ploughed on in pursuit of it. That was the third lift. Jake tried to recall how many times the pretended barrage had lifted in the practice attacks behind the lines, how many yards there were there from their own marked position to the taped-out lines representing the German positions. Then through the bellowing of the guns, the unceasing howl of the shells, the running crashes of their bursts Jake heard a sharp tat-tat-tat, another like an echo joining it, another and another until the whole blended in a hurrying clatter and swift running rattle.