During the day other men slipped from the shelter of the woods and scurried into the company lines, but there were sad holes in the ranks when the last one to appear came in.
Company M was having the same kind of trouble. A swirl in the fighting opened a gap, and an avalanche of Germans plunged through, leaving Captain Mackey and a dozen men utterly separated on one side. It was impossible for them to rejoin the company, so they did from their position what the men of Company L were doing, fought their way through the Prussian-crowded woods to their own lines.
Lieutenant William B. Brown, of Moscow, Pa., near Scranton, senior officer remaining with the bulk of the company, became commander, but his responsibility was short-lived. He, too, was surrounded and made prisoner.
Lieutenant Thomas B. W. Fales, of Philadelphia, now became commander of the little band, as the only officer left with the main body of the company. Lieutenants Edward Hitzeroth, also of Philadelphia, and Walter L. Swarts, of Scranton, had disappeared, prisoners in the hands of the Germans, and Lieutenant Martin Wheeler, of Moscow, Pa., also had been separated with a few men.
There were thirty-five men in Lieutenant Fales' command. He rallied and re-formed them and they began the backward fight to the support line. They made it in the face of almost insurmountable odds and, what is more, they arrived with half a dozen prisoners. Enough men of the company had been picked up on the way to make up for casualties suffered during the running fight.
Lieutenant Wheeler, who had been cut off with part of a platoon early in the rush, ordered his men to lie down in the trenches, where they were better able to stand off the Germans. He himself took a rifle from the hands of a dead man and a supply of ammunition and clambered out of the trench. Absolutely alone, he scouted along through the woods until he found a route that was relatively free from the German advance.
Then he went back for his men, formed them and led them by the selected route, fighting as they went against such of the enemy as sought to deter them. All of this Lieutenant Wheeler performed while suffering intense pain from a wound of the hand, inflicted early in the engagement. After reaching the regimental lines, he had first-aid treatment for the wound and continued in the battle.