"Guess we'd better see what we can do for those fellows," remarked Martz in the same cool, almost disinterested manner he had used before. Everybody wanted to go, but Martz insisted it was a job for only two men. As a companion he picked John J. Mullen, of Philadelphia. Mullen was not a former Guardsman. He was a selected man, sent from Camp Meade several months before with a draft to fill the ranks of the Twenty-eighth Division. But he had proved himself in many a training camp to be, as his comrades put it, "a regular fellow." So Corporal Martz and Mullen, surrounded by a goodly part of the Crown Prince's crack troops, 3,000 miles from home, in a country they never had seen before, cut loose from the little group of their comrades, turned their backs on the American lines and hiked out through the woods toward Hunland to succor their fellows in distress. The little prisoner convoy was not making great speed and the two Americans soon overtook them. The first torrent of the German advance had now passed far to their rear. The two Americans circled around through the woods and lay in ambush for the party. The prisoners, because of the narrowness of the paths through the woods, were marching in single file, one German officer in the lead, the other bringing up the rear. "You take the one in front and I'll take that bird on the end," said Martz to Mullen. Martz was something of a sharpshooter. Once he had gone to camp with the West Virginia National Guard, just over the state line from his home, and came back with a medal as a marksman, although he was only substituting for a man who was unable to attend the camp. They drew careful bead. Out of the corner of his eye Mullen could watch Martz, at the same time he sighted on his German officer. Martz nodded his head and the two rifles cracked simultaneously. Both officers dropped dead. The prisoners looked about them, stunned with surprise. Martz and Mullen stepped out of the woods. There was no time for thanks or congratulations. They hurried back the way they had come. The released men had no trouble arming themselves with rifles and ammunition from the dead lying in the woods. They soon overtook Sergeant Floto and his men. The party was now of more formidable size and as the Germans by this time were broken up into rather small groups, the Americans no longer felt the necessity of skulking through the woods, but started out as a belligerent force, not hunting fight, but moving not a step to avoid one. A few hours later they joined another group of survivors, under Captain Charles L. McLain, of Indiana, Pa., who took command. He vetoed the daring rush through the Hun-infested woods by daylight and ordered that the party lie concealed during the day and proceed to the American lines after nightfall.