“Hit in the upper leg,” he whispered in reply to the queries.

“Go back, sir, go back!” we urged, but Captain Straight was obdurate.  He had made up his mind that he was going to see the thing through, and stick to it he would no matter what the cost to himself.  He realized that only by some super-human effort would we now be able to take the enemy trench.  The machine gun fire was hellish.  The infantry fire was blinding.  A bullet would flash through the sleeve of a tunic, rip off the brim of a cap, bang against a water-bottle, bury itself in the mass of a knapsack.  It seemed as though no one could live in such a hail of lead.  But no one had fallen down on the task of the day.  Each battalion was advancing, with slowness and awful pain, but all were advancing.

Captain Straight knew how we were placed for effectives, both in officers and men.  He knew how we adored him.  He lay a few minutes to get his breath, then attempted to stand, but could not, as one leg was completely out of commission.  He dragged himself along with his hands, catching hold of the tufts of grass or digging his fingers into the soft earth.  He made thirty or forty yards in this way, then one long blast of his whistle and we rushed ahead, to fall flat on a level with him as he sounded the two-blast command.  Probably ten times he dragged himself forward, and ten times we rushed and dropped in that awful charge.  The captain gritted his teeth, for his pain must have been horrible.  He waved his arm as he lay and waited ahead of us—­“Come on, lads—­come on!” And we came.

I don’t know what other men may have felt in that last advance.  For myself, the thought flashed across my mind—­“What’s the use?  It is certain death to stay here longer; why not lie down, wait till the worst is over and be able to fight again—­it is useless, hopeless—­it is suicide to attempt such a task.”  Then just ahead of us I saw Captain Straight crawling slowly but surely, and through the “Zing!” of bullets I heard his voice, fainter but still earnest and full of courage, cry out:  “Come on, lads—­come on!”

He was one of the first to roll over into that improvised German trench.

No, we could not have failed; we could not have stopped.  As one of our young boys said afterward:  “Fellows, I’d have followed him to Hell and then some!”

It was Hell all right, but no matter; we had gone through it, and got what we had come for—­the German trench.

Out of the seven hundred and fifty of us who advanced, a little over two hundred and fifty gained the German trench; and of that number twenty-five or more fell dead as soon as they reached the enemy, and got that revenge for which they had come.

I doubt if there will again be a battle fought in this war where the feeling of the men will be as bitter as at St. Julien.  Men were found dead with their bayonets through the body of some Hun, men who had been shot themselves thirty yards down the field of advance.  Their bodies were dead, as we understand death, but the God-given spirit was alive, and that spirit carried the earthbound flesh forward to do its work, to avenge comrades murdered and womanhood outraged.  It was marvelous—­it may have been a miracle.  It was done, and for all time has proved to the boys who fought out there the power of the spirit over the flesh.