Imagine my suspense for the next half hour. I kept looking through the
periscope but for fully fifteen minutes I could not find my officer.
Finally I spotted him sprawled out, apparently dead, as a star-shell
lit up the ground within the range of the periscope. As no shot had
been fired, except from our portholes, I knew he was not as dead as he
seemed. And sure enough when next I could make him out he was several
yards ahead, and to the left, of the spot where I had last seen him.
Then I knew what he was after. He was making a detour to approach the
carcass from the rear, and as he could only move in the dark intervals
between star-shells his progress was, of necessity, slow. At the end
of another fifteen minutes I located him in a position, as nearly as I
could judge, about ten yards in the rear and just a step to the left of
the carcass. I then thought it time for me to take a hand, and give him
what help I could.
Running into the signal man's dugout I told him to call for a barrage,
giving the range at, approximately, thirty yards behind the point at
which the carcass lay.
I then jumped back to the periscope only to see, by the next flare,
that the lieutenant was no longer in sight. Leaving the periscope I
selected three men, whom I was sure I could trust, and, by the time I
had brought them to the firing step, the barrage from the guns in our
rear for which the signal man had telegraphed began to fall.
Quickly explaining to the men what I had in mind, that we were going
to help the lieutenant, I was about to give the order to go "Over the
Top," when another man, who had overheard, begged me for permission
to accompany us, and as I had need for some one to repair the barbed
wire, which the lieutenant had cut on his way out, I gave him the job
together with permission to go with us.
After a few words of instruction to the corporal, who, during my
absence, was left in command of our sector, we went silently "Over the
Top" at the point where the lieutenant had preceded us.
The barrage had by this time aroused the curiosity of the enemy
and they were replying with a brisk shelling of our lines, and the
batteries that were laying down the barrage.
We advanced at a walk and were fortunate enough to find the place where
our lieutenant had cut his way through our barbed wire. There I left my
volunteers with the necessary tools to repair the wire, after we should
have passed through it on our return.
It was now beginning to get light enough for us to see several yards in
either direction around us, and after moving forward about fifty yards
beyond the wire, we ran straight into the lieutenant, who was driving
the Hun before him at the muzzle of his automatic.
We wasted no time on the return journey but hustled "Fritzie" along at
a brisk pace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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