York edged around until he had a clear view of the gun-pits
above him. The stalks of weeds and undergrowth were about him.
There came a lull in the machine gun fire. Several Germans arose as
though to come out of their pits and down the hill to see the battle's
result.
But on the American side the battle was just begun. York, from the
brushes at the end of the thicket, "let fly."
One of the Germans sprang upward, waved his arms above him as he began
his flight into eternity.
The others dropped back into their holes, and there was another clatter
of machine guns and again the bullets slashed across the thicket.
But there was silence on the American side. York waited.
More cautiously, German heads began to rise above their pits. York moved
his rifle deliberately along the line knocking back those heads that
were the more venturesome. The American rifle shoots five times, and a
clip was gone before the Germans realized that the fire upon them was
coming from one point.
They centered on that point.
Around York the ground was torn up. Mud from the plowing bullets
besmirched him. The brush was mowed away above and on either side of
him, and leaves and twigs were falling over him.
But they could only shoot at him. They were given no chance to take
deliberate aim. As they turned the clumsy barrel of a machine gun down
at the fire-sparking point on the hillside a German would raise his head
above his pit to sight it.
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