At the end of twenty minutes our men started jumping out of their
trenches ahead of us and charging across. They were met by the enemy in
mass formation and overwhelmed. They died to a man. The Germans pressed
the attack home and came on, yelling like fiends incarnate, drunk with
the joy of their apparent success and promised victory. On they came,
apparently irresistible. We commenced firing, and I had the satisfaction
of seeing gaps blown in their ranks and many of them biting the dust.
Our poor little battery, however, feazed them but little.

And I want to say right at this time that the idea that seems to be
prevalent in the minds of many that the German is not a good fighting
man is a lamentable mistake; he is a good fighter. He has not perhaps
the initiative of the British, or the avalanche-like ardor in a charge
of the French soldier, but with his officers pressing him behind and in
mass formation, he is as formidable a foe as can be imagined.

Our ammunition was exhausted, not a shell remaining, and we grabbed our
rifles, retreating with the rest, and sniping and dropping as we fell
back. We took parts of the guns with us to prevent Fritz making use of
it, and threw them into a shell hole filled with water, as they were too
heavy to carry and manipulate our rifles at the same time, and that
ability was much more precious to us at that particular time than the
gun-parts. One of my chums had been wounded in the pit before we
retired, and was later taken prisoner, and two of my other chums were
killed in the general retreat. My pals with the other guns, forty feet
to our right, did not get all of their ammunition off before the Boches
were upon them, and they, too, died there; they were incinerated alive
in their little pit by smoke shells that started everything ablaze as
they exploded.