War the Creator by Gelett Burgess

On Wednesday morning another messenger got through with orders to advance. From that corpse-strewn wood there emerged a band of men that might have been taken for theatrical desperadoes. Uniforms in shreds, coats gone, shoes gone, knees sticking through trousers legs, and elbows through sleeves, all plastered with mud to a uniform gray, like khaki; wild-eyed with hunger and reckless now, everyone's nerves on edge, cursing, weeping, mad, ready for anything except more inaction!

_Forward! _ The men, famished as they were, yelled at the sound of that welcome word. Anywhere, out of that infernal wood-anywhere, through any hell, to get at the enemy! Forward they went on the run like hounds after hare, and the run warmed them up. The sun came out and they raced on, steaming. "We didn't mind the shells at all, then," said Coco. "Lying on the ground waiting for them at Bertrix we had nothing to do but be afraid-but now we had no time. All we thought of was to get at those cursed ‘Bosches' as fast as we could. " And so through the bursting shells, across the wide field to rising ground.