Army Boys in the French Trenches Or, Hand to Hand Fighting with the Enemy by Randall, Homer

He consulted a moment with Bart, whose eye lighted up as he nodded assent. Then he stepped up to his captain and saluted.

CHAPTER XXV

STORMING THE RIDGE

"What is it, Sheldon?"

"I think I can silence those guns, sir," Frank said.

A light came into the captain's eyes.

"How?" he asked.

In a few brief words Frank described his plan.

"But it's suicide," protested the captain. "There isn't one chance in a thousand that you'll come out alive."

"I know," said Frank. "But Raymond and I are willing to risk it if you give the word."

The captain pondered for a moment. It was a forlorn hope, but forlorn hopes sometimes won out.

"Go ahead," he said.

Frank nodded to Bart, and in a twinkling they had turned the big barrels over on their sides.

Then each lay on the ground behind his barrel and began to push it toward the enemy.

The men of their company had watched them wonderingly while they made their preparations, and when they realized what the boys had in mind they raised a thundering cheer that rose above the din of battle.

The crews of the two enemy machine guns looked with stupefaction at the big barrels coming toward them. Then they woke from their trance and a storm of bullets beat upon the barrels.

If they had been empty the bullets would have gone through and killed the boys behind them. But they were filled with woolen clothing, which while light enough to enable the boys to push the barrels with comparative ease was just the thing to stop the bullets. The whizzing missiles thudded into the clothing and there they stopped. It was on the same basis as the sandbag which stops a cannon ball that would go through an iron plate.

Steadily the boys kept on, pushing the barrels before them. They did not go on hands and knees, for then they would be exposed to the enemy bullets. It was a caterpillar motion, drawing their bodies along the ground, and was a tremendous tax on their muscles, for they could get no purchase.

One thing in their favor was that the ground sloped a trifle toward the enemy position and this made the barrels roll more easily.

By this time the enemy was growing frantic at this novel method of attack. They could not see their enemy, and they could not kill him. And the sight of those barrels coming toward them, as inexorably as fate, got on their nerves, already tense with the fury of the combat.

Nearer and nearer came the barrels to the guns until they were not more than twenty feet away. Then they stopped.

The German gunners drew fresh hope from this. Had their bullets found their mark in the bodies of their daring enemies?

But there were two very live boys behind those motionless barrels.

Frank and Bart had drawn a handful of grenades from their sacks. At a given signal they drew back their arms and hurled them over the barrels in quick succession.

They fell right in the midst of the machine guns. There was a tremendous explosion that killed some of the gunners and threw the rest into wild confusion.

"Now!" shouted Frank, and he and Bart leaped to their feet and rushed toward the guns.