el
before the troops came from their trenches. But enough remained to be
a hindrance, and quickly the men with cutters surged forward to open
the way.

It was while the Americans were held up here that the Germans took
fearful and heavy toll of them with their machine guns, which were now
sputtering with terrific firing. Scores of brave men went down, some
never to rise again. Others, only slightly wounded, staggered for a
minute, paused behind some dead comrade's body to adjust a bandage,
and then went on.

Forward they rushed. Through the barbed wire now, trampling down the
cruel strands, never heeding the bleeding wounds it tore in them,
never heeding the storm of bullets, minding not the burst of shrapnel
or high explosive.

On and on they went, yelling and shouting; maddened with righteous
anger against a ruthless foe. Forward once more. Somehow, though how
they did it they never knew, Ned, Bob, and Jerry stuck close to one
another. Since the death of the Southerner the three chums were in
line together, and stormed on. Their rifles were hot in their hands,
but still they fired.

"The first-line trenches!" yelled Ned, as he pointed through the
smoke.

And there, indeed, they were. They had passed over No Man's Land
through a storm of death which held many back. They had mastered the
barrier of the wire, and now were at the first line of the German
defense. And so fierce and terrible had been the rush of the Americans
the Germans had fallen back, so that, save for lifeless gray bodies,
the trenches were unoccupied.

"Forward! Forward! Don't stop! Go on!" yelled the officers.

A certain objective had been set, and the commanders were fearful lest
the troops, thinking that to capture the first German trenches was
enough, would stop there.

But they need not have been apprehensive. The boys of Uncle Sam were
not of that sort. They wanted to come in closer contact with the
Boches. And they did.

On over the first-line trenches they rushed, but now the fighting
became hotter, for they were in the midst of machine-gun nests, placed
there for just such a contingency. Death was on every side
now--horrible death. A bullet clipped Jerry's ear, but he only
laughed--half madly and unconsciously, no doubt--and rushed on. A man
was killed in front of him, and, falling forward, tripped the tall
lad, so that, for one terrible instant Bob and Ned thought their chum
had been killed. But Jerry sprang up again, and, seein