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 At twelve, the scouting party, stripped to sweaters, jeans and moccasins, wrung the hands of officers and comrades, slipped over the parapet, and crawled out into the Flemish murk to their tryst with death. With a knife in his teeth and another bound to his left wrist with a thong, Joe Lecroix moved snakelike through the slime toward the trench-head fifty yards away. By agreement he was to attempt first to learn the number of men in the post and wait for the others to come up; they would then divide, three circling to the communicating trench in the rear, and at a whistle all rush the sentries with the knife. It was a long chance that they might wipe out the Prussians without warning the enemy's main trench, but the desperate nature of the work only steeled the muscles of Joe Lecroix, filling his heart with a wild exultation.

While his comrades of the forlorn hope had sent home many messages before starting, Lecroix had dictated but one, addressed to the factor at Half-Way-House.