The Prussian assault was blunted momentarily but not halted, as the dazed survivors continued to stagger forward. André seized on this momentary confusion. “Both ranks, reload! Second rank, present arms!” André called to the standing men in his secondary line. “Fire at will!” The jarring crack of all of those French muskets added further damage to the decimated Prussian line, and now André told his men to stand and brace. “Prepare to receive bayonets!”
His men braced, their own sharp blades raised and pointed to break the Prussian wave like an impenetrable dike. André bent his knees, chin tucked, as he unthinkingly screamed out his thoughts: “Kill the bastards!”
And then the Prussian infantrymen crashed into his line with a staggering ferocity, the weight of thousands of pounds of men and wood and steel colliding against the lines of the bracing Frenchmen. André held his sword ready to parry the thrust of a steel bayonet that pointed toward his belly.
To his left, a Prussian was impaled as he crashed into the French line. André watched as another Prussian behind the dead man filled in the line and stabbed the Frenchman in the face. The man fell backward, in a bloody tangle with his killer, whom he struggled with until he was stabbed a second and third time.
André received the brunt of a shoulder from a large man who bowled into him, crashing into the second rank of French infantry. When he regained his footing, André turned in time to see the bayonet thrust of a squat, stocky man flying toward him. André dodged the thrust and slashed the man’s left shoulder, tearing through uniform and flesh until his blade reached bone.
The smoke from the cannon fire had billowed forward and now settled like a rain cloud, darkening the field with its shadow and stink as the melee unfolded all around him. To his right, Leroux had his musket locked with a Prussian nearly twice his size. André leaped over a body and thrust his sword tip between the Prussian’s shoulders. Leroux, under the weight of the dying man, fell to the ground, the corpse crashing on top of him. A moment later he rolled the man off of him, spitting out blood and a loose tooth. Taking André’s hand, he rose back to his feet, a stunned look on his face.
“Thanks, sir,” was all Leroux could manage, his hands empty of his lost musket. André leaned forward and picked up a gun off a nearby fallen Frenchman. He handed it to Leroux, who nodded, wiping his sweaty, bloodstained face.
André wiped his own brow, panting, as he turned back toward the scrum. As he scanned the throng for his sergeants, his voice rasping out their names, André noticed two enemy soldiers closing in on him. Each of them had bayonets lifted, and he realized that he’d have to face them simultaneously.
André stood with his sword unsheathed, bracing for the assault. The first man lunged from the right, his movements jumpy and undisciplined. André easily parried the thrust and slashed the man’s thigh, causing the Prussian to grunt and stagger backward. In a heartbeat, André delivered a second blow, this time hacking the man’s elbow as his assailant fell to the ground, wounded. He crawled away, moaning in agony.
The second Prussian, larger and more methodical than the first, sized up André from a safe distance. Then, with a startling quickness, the man feinted left and jabbed right, his movement causing André to duck and lose his footing. The man then lifted his rifle and slammed its butt into the side of André’s head. André staggered, falling to his knees as his vision went blurry. He felt a second blow to his head and dropped flat onto the soft grass. The man stood over him now, blocking out the sun, and André saw the blade of the bayonet held aloft as it reflected the midday light. He rolled to his right just in time to hear his enemy’s steel bayonet slice through layers of earth where his head had just rested. The man ripped his blade from the ground, pulling it up covered in dirt and grass, and lowered it in a second attempt, once more just barely missing as André darted out of his way. But the thrust was not entirely ineffective; the blade grazed the side of André’s cheek, just below his hairline, and André gasped, feeling the sting of where the steel had ripped his flesh.
In terrible pain now and feeling a fatigue that ached and burned every muscle in his body, André couldn’t roll in time to dodge a third attempt. He knew this, and so he clenched his jaw and braced himself for the strike that would surely end his life. He thought of Remy, hoping that wherever he was on this bloodstained battlefield, his brother was still alive. Eyes lifted upward toward his killer and the heavens that he hoped would receive him, André’s vision went dark. The sun fled. Would Father be there to receive him?