His eyes reached the edge of the parapet, but no farther, and in the white figure that leapt up into view and shot him dead, Dennis recognised young Wetherby. Like magic the whole line of sandbags became alive with other white figures pouring in one crashing volley at point-blank range, and with a full-throated British cheer the Reedshires vaulted over the wet ditch and hurled themselves upon the astonished Prussians with the bayonet. Taken completely by surprise, the first line of lying-down men died practically on its knees, and before the second line could press a trigger the battalion was into them. There was no quarter asked or given. The Reedshires were out to kill, and they killed. In the black shadow of the German redoubt Dennis Dashwood watched one of the finest fights of the war, every fibre of his being itching to be in it. But between him and that raving, raging tumult stretched the tightly packed files of the enemy, thrown into panic-stricken confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack, and after a mad few minutes, in spite of the efforts of their officers to hold them up, the vaunted Prussians broke and streamed back to the protection of the strong trench. In a flash of time Dennis saw many things: the slanting rain on our helmets, the wisp of fog that rolled lazily between him and that Homeric combat. He recognised his brother, half a head taller than anybody else, thrusting and hewing like a hero of old, and Littlewood working a Lewis gun on the top of the sandbags, the shots just clearing our own fellows' heads. From an embrasure in the angle of the salient above him the hateful hammering of a German machine-gun began. The brutes were playing into the melee, regardless of their own men, in a frantic endeavour to stop the Reedshires' rush, and as A Company recoiled before that stream of bullets, Dennis drew his revolver. Already one of the Prussian battalions had swarmed over into their own trench, paying no heed to the solitary figure in the black shadow as they passed him, and, marking the position of the gun, Dennis scrambled up in their wake with the agility of a cat, and darted into the gun emplacement single-handed, just as young Wetherby and Hawke saw him and gave a shout of recognition. The Germans were chained to the piece, and as he shot the last man of the gun crew, his brother officer overtook him. At his heels A Company had arrived with a heartening roar, and jumped down on to the crowded mass in the trench below them, a perfect forest of arms going up as the demoralised runaways bellowed for mercy. "Bravo, Hawke! Go it, boys!" shouted Dennis, almost overturning Wetherby. "My hat!" exclaimed the boy, as they gripped each other to save falling into the tightly packed trench below them, "that was no end of a stunt of yours. If we hadn't shifted forward we should have been killed to a man. Hadn't left our position five minutes before their shells found us!"