At last we got to our destination and picked up the boxes. A box of ammunition weighs a hundred or more pounds, so we decided that three of us should carry two boxes. The boxes are fitted with handles on each end. We started off running at top speed, then dropping flat on our stomachs to fetch our breath and rest our aching arms. The enemy was rapidly getting thicker. We rose and rushed forward another stretch. At three hundred yards from the trench, the greater number of our crowd had fallen. We dropped. Then our hearts stood still, for from our trench there came a silence we could feel. We knew what it meant. There was no need for the enemy to increase the rapidity of his fire over us and over the boys in the trench to let us know what was up. Our ammunition had already given out, and we had to face the last few hundred yards without protection, meager though it had been throughout. We knew there was not a man in that trench who had a bullet left. We knew that as far as we were concerned, we were done. We metaphorically shook hands with ourselves and wished friend self a long good-by. We looked at the sun and said "Tra-la-la" to it, and we wondered in a flash of thought what the old world would be like without us. We wondered where we would "light up." All this passed in a moment of time, and then we decided that it would be better if we paired up, two men taking one box of ammunition. This offered a smaller target for the busy enemy, and also made for increased speed in covering the remaining ground. We sprang up once more and dodged and doubled as we leaped through the rain of bullets, machine gun and rifle. How we lived I don't know. I was sharing a box with a lad whom I heard the fellows call Bob. He was no more than a boy, but we were much of a size and ran light. We were the only two of the twenty-nine left on our feet. To-day I am one of five of that bunch left alive. About fifty yards from the trench we dropped for a last rest before the final spurt which would decide the whole course of events in the next ten minutes. Would we reach that trench and turn in our box of ammunition, or would we "get ours" and would the boys so eagerly waiting for us be surrounded and captured? Or would many of them do what they had threatened? "If it comes to surrendering," several had said in my hearing, "I will run a bayonet into myself rather than be taken." When a man is lying close to the ground there is not so very great a chance of his being hit by bullets. They pass overhead as a rule. It is when a man is kneeling or standing, or between the two positions that the great danger lies. The lad Bob and I were just in the act of rising when mine came along. I felt no more than a stinging blow in the right shoulder, a searing cut and a thud of pain as the bullet exploded in leaving my body. I fell on my face and blood gushed from my shoulder. "Hit hard or soft?" queried my companion, as he threw himself down beside me. "Don't know," I gasped.