That way was all but open now, if the enemy but realized it. Any moment they might discover it. A half-mile to the south of the village the line was so thinly held that one strong, quick thrust must make a gap. Let the enemy but fling a third of the troops he was pounding to pieces in the bloody streets of the town, in the torn fields that flanked it, and in the shambles of the Grande Place that was the center of this action, at that weak spot, and all was over. But with a fury mechanical, insensate, the Germans still came on in direct frontal attacks.
The British had slain and slain and slain, firing into the gray masses until the water boiled in the jackets of the machine guns. Five attacks had broken down in the Grande Place itself--and now a sixth was forming. Should he still hold fast, the colonel asked himself, or should he retire, saving what machine guns he might, and flinging a desperate detachment southward in the attempt to make a stronger right flank? But to do that might be the very move that would awaken the Germans to their opportunity there. So long as they pounded, pounded at his center, he would take a toll of them, at least--but the moment was coming--
"I have ut!" cried McDermott, and mounted his gun at the window.
"It is time to retire," said the British colonel, and was about to give the order.
"Right in their bloody backs," said McDermott to himself.
And so it was. For the sixth advance of the German masses had carried them well into the Grande Place. McDermott, crouched at his window, cut loose with his gun at pointblank range as the first wave, five men deep, passed by him, splashing along the thick ranks from behind as one might sweep a garden hose down a row of vegetables. Taken thus in the rear, ambushed, with no knowledge of the strength of the attacking force behind them, the German shock troops swayed and staggered, faced about and fell and broke. For right into the milling herd of them, and into the second advancing wave, the British poured their bullets. The colonel, who had been about to order a retreat, ordered a charge, and before the stampeded remnant of the first two waves could recover themselves the British were on them with grenades and bayonets, flinging them back into the third wave, just advancing to their support, in a bleeding huddle of defeat.