Right in front of our
eyes our captain--Captain Straight--fell. As he went down he blew two short
blasts on his whistle, which was the signal to hug the earth once more.
And we dropped.
The officers and men who had been hit had begun their weary crawl back to
the dressing station; that is, all of them who were able to make the
effort. We saw that Captain Straight made no attempt to move. Some of us
crept up to his side.
"Hit in the upper leg," he whispered in reply to the queries.
"Go back, sir, go back!" we urged, but Captain Straight was obdurate. He
had made up his mind that he was going to see the thing through, and stick
to it he would no matter what the cost to himself. He realized that only by
some super-human effort would we now be able to take the enemy trench. The
machine gun fire was hellish. The infantry fire was blinding. A bullet
would flash through the sleeve of a tunic, rip off the brim of a cap, bang
against a water-bottle, bury itself in the mass of a knapsack. It seemed as
though no one could live in such a hail of lead. But no one had fallen down
on the task of the day.
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