Broad day had come when I reached another such wide clearing as that of our dueling exploit. I was timid of taking it, but it ran south; indeed, it may have been the same. The firing was faint behind me, and I decided to follow it. I was vexed because I could not quite control my steps. My gun was swinging listlessly in my hand, and for the first time in twenty-four hours I pushed it back into its holster.
Half an hour's going disclosed a broad road ahead. I was passing untenanted trenches. I heard voices ahead presently and sprang into the bushes at the side. Then I went ahead slowly, with ears keen. The voices grew more distinct; I caught syllables and--it was English, good old English!
I tumbled out and approached several Americans standing near a funk hole. I went up to one of them. He looked at me with some concern in his eyes.
"My God, but I'm glad to see you!" I said. They were of the Third Battalion, and my exclamation must have startled them, for, of course, I did not know them. "Tell me something in American," I added. My nerves were frayed, I guess, and my voice sounded curiously far-off.
"Is anything the matter, sir?" one of them asked.
"Nothing at all. I'm on my way back to regiment at Karlsruhe. Will this path take me?"
Then I learned that I had reached the Tirpitz trench, the reserve battalion's new position.
"Let me go back to the next runner post with you," said one, and made to take my arm. Which annoyed me, naturally.
The colonel was about to eat breakfast when I arrived at the fancy dugouts we had taken so many eons ago. I indicated my battalion's position on his map and told him the situation briefly.
Lieutenant McKeogh adds, "Relief was sent with ammunition and food on September 30, and on the following day the refreshed command started forward again--again to be cut off, this time for five days." The men in the battalion crouched in the rain and the cold in their shallow and hastily constructed trenches. The Germans kept a constant fire upon them from machine guns and attempted to reach them with their artillery, but fortunately they did not get the exact range.
There were machine-gun nests all about them and if a man showed himself ever so little or made any loud noise, he brought upon all of them volleys from the guns and from the trench mortars. At regular intervals all the machine guns would sweep the place with a rain of bullets. Snipers were also constantly on the watch for the exposure of the smallest part of a man's body.