Instantly backward along that German machine
gun barrel would come an American bullet--crashing into the head of the
Boche who manned the gun.
The prisoners on the ground squirmed under the fire that was passing
over them. Their bodies were in a tortuous motion. But York held them
there; it made the gunners keep their fire high.
Every shot York made was carefully placed. As a hunter stops in the
forest and gazes straight ahead, his mind, receptive to the slightest
movement of a squirrel or the rustle of leaves in any of the trees
before him, so this Tennessee mountaineer faced and fought that line of
blazing machine guns on the ridge of the hill before him. His mind was
sensitive to the point in the line that at that instant threatened a
real danger, and instinctively he turned to it.
Down the row of prisoners on the ground he saw the German major with a
pistol in his hand, and he made the officer throw the gun to him. Later
its magazine was found to have been emptied.
He noted that after he shot at a gun-pit, there was a break in the line
of flame at that point, and an interval would pass before that gun would
again be manned and become a source of danger to him. He also realized
that where there was a sudden break of ten or fifteen feet in the line
of flame, and the trunk of a tree rose within that space, that soon a
German gun and helmet would me peeking around the tree's trunk.
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