; Corporal William B. Cutting and
Private Mario Muzzi.

York, to escape the guns he saw sweeping toward him, had dived to the
ground between two shrubs.

The fire of other machine guns was added to those already in action and
streams of lead continued to pour through the thicket. But the toll of
the dead and wounded of the Americans had been taken.

The Germans kept their line of fire about waist-high so they would not
kill their own men, some of whom they could see groveling on the ground.

York had seen the murder of his pals in the first onset. He had heard
some one say, "Let's get out of here; we are in the German line!" Then
all had been silence on the American side.

German prisoners lay on the ground before him, in view of the gunners on
the hilltop. 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. 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 bodie