But here, for the time, the fire was more concentrated than either Tom Walton or George Harper ever had seen it before. An officer shouted to the movie operator to drop out of sight. But even if the latter heard, the warning came too late. A shower of bullets shattered and knocked over the camera, and in the same instant the operator himself pitched forward on his face. From where Tom lay he could see that the man did not move a muscle, after the first convulsion which followed his fall. He had been killed instantly. Officers and men of the ranks were being picked off mercilessly as they crept forward to get within reach of the hidden machine guns. It was at this juncture that another branch of the service took a hand. It all showed, too, that the commanding officers were every instant in close touch with every changing development of the attack. The order came for the Americans to fall back several hundred yards. To the mystified Germans it was a maneuvre not then to be explained. It was inconceivable that the Americans should be retreating, and yet that seemed to be exactly what was taking place. But the Germans in the wood had their visions obscured from their own approaching doom. Up from out of the west, and straight for a point directly over the natural fort of the enemy, swooped a dozen heavy bombing planes. It is doubtful if any German in that wood ever knew what happened to him. Simultaneously every plane let go its full cargo of destruction, and these highly explosive bombs, descending straight as arrows, struck the ground at almost the same time, and with such a detonation as to shake the surrounding country as though by an earthquake. The entire wood was demolished. Trees were lifted from the ground and split to splinters. Nothing lived there after that work of death had been carried out. Devastating ruin had been wrought suddenly and completely. The ground was torn to great depths and a shower of wood and rock and other debris was shot fifty or more feet into the air. It was after they had passed through this monumental wreckage, and were crawling forward upon the opposite side, that Ollie Ogden, intent upon getting around a clump of bushes so that he could get a view of a sniper he knew to be hidden there, found himself but a few yards away from “Snooper” Jones. The latter was edging forward in a declivity of ground, and for an instant Ollie marveled at the courage and persistence of the man—but only for an instant. For looking slightly ahead, he saw that “Snooper,” thinking himself hidden from human sight, was crawling toward the body of a German, his intention obvious in his every movement. Ollie could not shout a warning without attracting a concentration of bullets upon his own position. Unseen by “Snooper” Jones, all he could do was lie silent and watch. “Snooper” was now within a couple of feet of the body which lay with right hand outstretched, a ring upon the third finger.