Somme, 1st Battle of the, France, 1916 -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Two men were told off to jump out on the side they had entered, to
run along under cover of the parapet and shoot at any one who emerged
or showed in the entrance to the communication trench; two more to
fling over a couple of grenades into the trench section into which
the communication-way entered and follow it up with their bayonets
ready, one to push on along the trench and bring any assistance he
could raise, the other to be joined by the two men above, and, if the
main attack succeeded, to push up along the communication-way and join
Larry’s party.
This left Larry with half-a-dozen men to lead in his rush over the
open. The whole of his little plans worked out neatly, exactly, and
rapidly. He waited for the crash of the two grenades his bombers flung,
then at his word “Go!” the two men told off heaved themselves over
the rear parapet, and in a few seconds were pelting bullets down the
communication trench entrance; the bombers scuffled along the trench
without meeting any resistance.
Larry and his men swarmed up and out from their cover, charged across
the short, open space, and in a moment were running along the edge
of the communication trench, shooting and stabbing and tossing down
grenades into it on top of the surprised Germans there. There were
about a score of these clustered mainly near the juncture with the
other trench, and in half a minute this little spot was converted into
a reeking shambles under the bursting grenades and the bullets that
poured into it from the two enfilading rifles.
Every man in that portion of trench was killed--one might almost say
butchered--without a chance of resistance. Another string of Germans
apparently being hurried along the trench as re-enforcements, were
evidently stampeded by the uproar of crashing bombs and banging rifles,
the yells and shouts of the attackers.
They turned and bolted back along their trench, Larry’s men in the
open above them pursuing and slaughtering them without mercy, until
suddenly, somewhere across the open, some rifles and a machine gun
began to sweep the open, and a storm of bullets to hail and patter
about the little party of Stonewalls.
Larry promptly ordered them down into the trench, and they leaped
in, and, under cover from the bullets above, continued to push the
retreating Germans for another hundred yards along the trench.
Here the enemy made a determined stand, and Larry instantly realized
that, with his weak force, he had pushed his attack to the limit of
safety. He left a couple of men there to keep the enemy in clay for a
few minutes with a show of pressing the attack with persistent bombing,
and hurried the others back to a point that offered the best chance of
making a stand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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