ead.

One of the raiding party threw a hand grenade inside the structure.
There was a powerful explosion, not enough, indeed, to wreck the stout
place, but sufficient to send the inmates scurrying out--what were
left of them.

"_Kamerad! Kamerad!_" some of the wounded ones cried, and others held
up their hands.

"Come on!" shouted the lieutenant. "Gather 'em in and let's get back.
This place is getting too hot for us."

He spoke with truth, for on all sides the big guns were now beginning
to bark, and a general engagement might be precipitated.

Some of the Americans snatched guns from the now cowed Germans, and
prodded them back along the trench with the points of the bayonets.
Others held hand grenades or automatic pistols ready, and the order to
retreat was given.

Half a dozen Hun prisoners had been captured, but at a price, for when
the lieutenant, hurrying his men back across No Man's Land, began to
look over his party, he found three were missing. They had either been
killed or wounded, or were left prisoners in the trenches.

"Are you there, boys?" asked Jerry again, of his chums, and he
received reassuring answers from both.

"Hurt?" was his next inquiry, as they raced across the stretch,
stopping every time there was a burst of star shells, and crouching
down, making their prisoners do the same, to take shelter in some
shell holes, some half-filled with water and others containing dead
bodies.

"I'm all right," Bob answered. "Only a bit scratched by some Hun's
bayonet, I guess."

"A bullet or a bayonet touched me in the side," came from Ned. "It's
bleeding a bit, but not much. I'm all right."

Some of the others who were able to come back were not so fortunate,
however, and two died later of wounds received in that night raid.

But the main party succeeded in getting back to the American lines,
and hurried through the opening in the barbed wire, where a relief or
a rescue party, whichever might be required, was in waiting.

"Good work!" commended the captain to his lieutenant. "And you got
some prisoners?"

"Six!"

"That's fine. Couldn't be better. Get down now, there may be a Hun
barrage in a minute. They'll be ripping mad when they find out what's
happened. This was one of their main posts, and Prussians were on
guard."

Jerry and Ned were each guarding a Hun prisoner, making him walk along
ahead with upraised hands, while the guns, taken away from the Germans
themselves, served as com