ose to it, came other flashes. The bullets whined
harmlessly above us.

Was this a small, mobile party? If so, they would be slinking about.
But during half an hour of their intermittent firing the position of
the flashes never changed. That looked like funk holes! And if it was
a case of funk holes, by all the nasty little elves of tough luck, _we
had stumbled right into a German position_!

By watching the direction of the flashes I tried to determine their
front. Cupping my hand over the radio-lighted dial of my compass, I
studied it in connection with their bursts of fire. They seemed to be
firing north. But north was our own battalion front, and theirs,
according to the military logic of things, south, unless--unless they
had swung in from our flank behind us and had dug in facing our rear!

No amount of juggling of the compass could satisfactorily account for
the position of those bodies. So I settled down to waiting tactics.
Clearly, it's wise to let your enemy think you have moved off while he
is most on the alert for your movement. After that he relaxes
vigilance, and you stand a better chance of getting away without
foreign substances under the skin.

I whispered--oh, very softly--that we would stay here for some time.
Possibly an hour. And then I fell asleep!

Munson woke me by gently pounding on my thigh. I don't remember the
time. Must have been around midnight. The funk holes were quiet now,
and we wormed away in a new direction without drawing fire. I
recollect seeing the shiny hobnails and the horseshoe of steel on the
runners' boots as I crawled back past them to take the lead. I
wondered at what distance they were visible.

Occasionally my helmet would come afoul of a vine or small branch; and
then like cathedral bells to my overstrained ears the edge of the
helmet would make a little ringing sound. I berated myself for ever
having removed its burlap camouflage, though it gathered all the sand
in the world to deposit in my hair.

Once I heard Munson struggling to restrain a cough. We froze to the
ground while he sputtered as softly as he could. And I was to know
later what mental as well as physical torture the sensation is. For
hours it seemed, painstakingly, inch by inch, we wormed our way out of
those funk holes. _Out_, as I thought. But it was deeper into them
that we went!

I was congratulating myself on leaving the hotbed, as I headed for a
bush, when, just at the f