the platoon had been in the trenches for about six weeks. everything had been quiet, well-ordered. occasionally a shell from the german batteries would start lazily off and end up with terrific speed in the platoon’s trench. once or twice men were killed when the shells struck, and their bodies were hurried away to the dressing station; one morning the body of a red-haired german, an immense fellow with a broad forehead, large wide eyes, and a huge mouth, was found fastened to the strands of barbed wire in front of hicks’s post. there was a hole in his side made by the explosion of a small hand-bomb. besides that, there was nothing of interest.
in fact, there was too little of interest. not even a prisoner had been taken, although the colonel of the regiment had let it be known that the first man to capture a prisoner would be given a fifteen-days leave to aix-le-bains. so it was decided that a raiding party was what was needed to resuscitate the platoon from its lethargy.
it was for this reason that when hicks and[30] bullis set out through the trench toward their shell hole one night they were stopped by the lieutenant and told that they had been relieved for the night and were to return to their dugout and await his orders.
hicks was disturbed. he felt as if the lieutenant’s orders had in some way to do with his sleeping on watch. he had not minded the consequences so much when he was walking toward battalion headquarters, but now that everything with regard to the affair seemed to have been smouldering, he was fearful. being rather reckless, probably the first time that major adams’s remark that he might get a general court martial was fully realized by him was at the moment when he and bullis had been sent back to their dugout.
now he sat, his head bowed and his hands clasped before him. what the hell was he to do? it was the first time he had thought of his family. what would maisie say when she discovered that he, william hicks, was in fort leavenworth? what would the gang at the office say? and his mother? maybe they might order him to be shot! this was a mess. but no, wasn’t there a general order recently made to the effect that no one in the american[31] expeditionary forces could be executed without permission of president wilson? sure there was. good of the old horse-face to think of that. but maybe there was a way to get out of it yet. he considered for a moment the advisability of clambering over the trench and setting forth into that unexplored field, never to return unless he brought a german prisoner with him. let’s see, how had they done it, he mused. there were plenty of heroes who could. they’d just fill their pockets with hand-grenades and blow up a machine-gun nest. “major adams, i fulfilled your prediction! here!”—indicating three fierce-looking germans with the stump of his left arm, which had been shot off during his single-handed assault. “and there were five more, but i would have had to carry them.” bunk.
“all right, hicks and bullis. are you all set?” lieutenant bedford, with his aggressive little mustache, was peering into the dugout from the trench. “here’s some blacking for your bayonets. we’re going on a raiding party to-night.”
“hooray. that’s the stuff.” but the voice of bullis was weak and shaky. “when do we go?”
hicks was nonplussed. he hastily wondered whether he had said a prayer that had been answered. he wanted some source to lay this bit of good fortune to. and at the same time he doubted whether it was unalloyed fortune, whether there were not some disagreeable part to be performed. so he said nothing, but began in a businesslike manner to dim the lustre of his bayonet with the blacking bedford had given to him.
“we’ll be ready to start in a half-hour. we’ve got to wait for guides from the intelligence section.” lieutenant bedford walked away.
when the guides arrived and the representatives from each platoon were assembled it was night, and so dark that one could not see another in front of him. a lieutenant and a sergeant from the intelligence section led the way, with hicks and bullis sandwiched in the middle of the long line that kept from separating by the man in rear holding to the shoulder of the man in front of him.
instead of leaving the trench by hicks’s shell hole, the party turned in the opposite direction, and, after walking along the slippery duck boards for ten or more minutes, climbed over a[33] firing bay and worked their way through a path that a succession of well-placed shells had blown in the barbed wire.
their feet, scuffing through the tall grass, hissed like a scythe cutting heavy weeds. that, and an occasional cough, were the only noises of the night. suddenly hicks’s foot struck a large, yielding substance. he felt with his feet, prodding into the thing, which caused a fearful stench to rise.
“hey, what’s this?” he softly called, and the intelligence-section sergeant came running back only to exclaim in a voice that had been hardened by one other raiding party: “that? why, that’s only a dead boche.”
a moment afterward an automatic rifle broke nervously into a series of put-put-puts.
as one man, the party fell flat on their stomachs.
“put-put-put. put-put-put,” said the automatic rifle.
“damnation,” bedford cursed. “it’s somebody from our lines firing at us.”
“well, don’t talk so loud,” one of the men said angrily, “or you’ll have both sides on us.”
the lieutenant from the intelligence section gave orders for the men to lie prone and to[34] crawl after him. after a while he rose, motioning for the others to get up.
“i think,” he said, talking to bedford in an undertone, “that this is the place where we get back in the trench. let’s count up our men and see if they are all here.”
they counted as many times as a surgeon counts the sponges he uses in an operation, but each count only made more certain that there was one man missing. investigation showed them that the lost man was corporal olin, from the adjoining company.
while they were debating upon what course to take, they noticed from their lines a green rocket fired into the air.
“gas,” hoarsely cried the lieutenant of the intelligence section, struggling to get on his respirator.
poor hicks knew not what to do. before the rocket had been fired he had about decided to return to look for the missing corporal. but with a respirator on he could hardly breathe, not to consider finding his way in the dark. but of a sudden he whipped off his mask and started off in the direction from which they had crawled. no one noticed his leaving, for[35] each man was too much taken up with his own affairs.
hicks walked for a while, until he felt that he had neared the place where the automatic rifle had begun firing at them. then he dropped upon his knees, and with his hands spread out as far along the ground as he could spread them, felt for the lost body. perspiration was drenching him. it ran down his face and dropped off his chin, to splash unconcernedly on the canvas covering of his mask. he felt as if all the blood of his body was in the veins of his face. there! certainly it was a body.
“olin,” he whispered. “olin.” but there was no answer. he felt along the body until his hand touched the face. it was warm, and then he knew that he had found olin. but not olin! just a body that had once been olin. for olin was dead. along the tunic and under the respirator box was a warm, sticky substance. hicks placed his hand over the breast above the heart. it failed to beat.
“oh, hell!” he muttered, and started to crawl back, hardly caring whether he reached the raiding party or not.
to have saved corporal olin, to have brought[36] him into the trench, staggering under the weight over his shoulder, would, he realized, have exonerated him completely in the eyes of major adams. further, he would have received either a distinguished service cross or a croix de guerre. but how could he, what sort of a fool would he have looked like, carrying a dead man over his shoulder all the way into the trench! well, it was simply a case of misplaced heroism. he shrugged his shoulder and went on.
when he arrived at the place where he had left the party, just enough light had broken to enable him to see them sprawled on the ground. with their respirators still on they seemed, in the dim light, like pompous owls.
hicks approached, casually inquiring why they had not taken off their masks. the lieutenant of the intelligence section, after wildly motioning with his hands, took off his mask, sniffed, and proceeded to curse hicks for not informing him that the gas had blown away.
“we might have been killed out here any minute, you damned bonehead.”
“yes, and we probably will be killed now if we don’t get out of this pretty soon. in five minutes it will be broad daylight. besides, the gas alarm was all a fake,” hicks answered.
now all the men had returned their respirators to the boxes which were fastened by a cord around their necks to their breasts. the sergeant of the intelligence section set out to find the path in the barbed wire, but there was none where he looked. he turned back, the men following after him like lost sheep, and after sneaking along the wire for some minutes, stopped.
“hey, you over there in the trench. pass the word along that the raiding party’s coming in,” the sergeant of the intelligence section called toward the trench.
one of the sentries in the firing bay heard him, obeyed, and the raiding party dashed through the wire and spilled into the trench. the company commander, a former professor of english at a texas college, emerged from a near-by dugout and warmly wrung the hand of the lieutenant from the intelligence section.
“my god, i thought you boys were surely to be killed! you see, i—i must have forgotten that the raiding party was still out, and when i heard that machine-gun firing i thought the germans were making an attack, so i signalled for a barrage.”
“but you sent up the gas signal instead of the barrage signal,” bedford interposed.
“yes, that was just it. i thought that i was firing a red rocket and instead i was firing a green one.” he broke off quickly. “but you got in all right?”
“all right but for one man,” said bedford.
“and where is he?” the captain asked.
“he—he’s dead,” hicks told the assembly.
bedford turned quickly. “hicks, how do you know he’s dead?”
“well, i saw him. you can see for yourself. he’s out there dead.”
