They started off, feeling their way over the huge boulders that lay in the ravine. When they were no more than a hundred yards from the platoon, a shell severed the air over their heads and burst in the field to their right. They fell flat on their faces. After the shell had exploded they got up and started again. Another shell burst ten yards in front of them. They ran forward again, the canteens jangling over their shoulders. This time the shell burst just to their left, throwing up a mass of dirt which showered down on them. “Good-by, canteens; I’m goin’ to throw mine away and run,” said Cole. “Yes, you are. And we die of thirst. Come on, it’s not far now.” They hurried blindly on. Another shell screeched over their heads and struck the edge of the ravine to their right. They were violently thrown against the opposite side. “I sure do admire that boy’s aim. Let’s go, Hicks.” Abruptly the ravine shallowed out and they found themselves running for the village, their bodies wholly exposed. As they approached, a door in one of the buildings of the badly battered town was thrown open and a voice called: “Here you are, fellows. Come in this way.” * * * * * “Hell, if you think you had it hard, you ought to have been with us.” Hicks and Cole, resting after they had filled the canteens with water from a creaky pump in the village square, were seated in a room of the building through which they had entered the town. At the window near the door a thin-snouted Hotchkiss machine-gun was pointed out over the field. Beside it, his head lying against the saddle, a man was reclining. It was he who had spoken. “Think of carrying one of these guns over your shoulder and walking through heavy rifle fire the whole length of that field! Pretty tough. Pretty tough.” “Oh, forget about it; it’d a been worse if you’d a been killed.” “I don’t know so much about that!” “And when we got in this town. Boy, we sure did clump them Dutchmen over the head! Firin’ out of the windows, they were, and us comin’ in in plain sight. But we knocked ’em for a gool, a cock-eyed gool. I thought them God-damned Squareheads could fight.” He chuckled and stretched his body. “But you oughta seen ’em run when we swarmed in here.” “I guess they fought well enough to knock off most of us.” Hicks shuffled his feet restlessly. “Guess we’d better be gettin’ back, King.” It had grown quite dark and along the lines of restless men white rockets were fired, to flare for a moment, covering a part of the ground with an intense brightness and then expiring on the ground with a short hiss. The platoon was not in sight when they returned to the mouth of the ravine. But as the clanking of their canteens was heard, men hurried from their burrows and surrounded Hicks and Cole. “Here, give me mine.” “Mine’s the one with the dent in the side, Cole.” “That’s not my canteen. Here, let me find it.”