Читать книгу Over There with the Marines at Chateau Thierry онлайн

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“So my first surmise was right, after all,” Phil mused. “They’re going to attack under cover of the darkness so that they may retreat more successfully if their attack fails.”

Another surprise was coming not only to Phil and Tim, but to many other “dug-in” Marines along the American front. It had to do with the character of the attack.

Suddenly the American lines were swept with a sharp, snappy, vicious machine-gun fire. The boches had crept up under cover of the darkness and succeeded in planting a score or more of machine guns at various places in the timber a hundred yards ahead and started pumping a murderous storm of bullets at the doughboys.

But fortunately it was murderous in sight and sound chiefly, for very few of the Yanks were hit. In the first place, it was almost a random attack, for the muzzles of the guns were elevated a degree or more too high to rake the edges of the funk holes in which the Americans were crouching. Moreover, the intervening trees intercepted many of the bullets, as was evident from the tattoo thuds that could be heard even amid the noisy spitting of the machine guns.