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That is, if we don't go over the top at 'em first." "I hope we'll be there!" murmured Joe. "And I hope we get a good light so we can film the fighting." "They'll be almost light enough from the star-shells, bombs and big guns," said Private Drew. "Say, you ought to see the illumination some nights when the Boches start to get busy! Coney Island is nothing to it, Buddy!"
He climbed up a tree and gazed at the German positions, and made sketches while he hummed little tunes and said between them, "Ah, les sacres Boches!.. . If only I could fight again!" I remember a pleasant dinner in the old town of Noyon, in a little restaurant where two pretty girls waited. They had come from Paris with their parents to start this business, now that Noyon was safe.
"Out there" one was glad to sleep three hours on the hard ground, or once in a month of Sundays on a wisp of straw, glad to turn out at three o'clock in the morning and warm up by marching thirty kilometres with a knapsack on one's back, sweating freely for eight or ten hours at a time.... Glad above all to get in touch with the enemy, and rest a little lying down under a bank, while one peppered the boches.... This young Cyrano declared that fighting rested you after a march, and when he described an engagement you would have said that he was at a concert or a "movie."
It took a lot more nerve to draw a breath then than it did to fly over the German lines with the Boches popping away from all sides. I didn't mind the wounds I sustained, but the gas! Gee, it was horrible." "Your ma said in her letter to me that you'd had pneumonia twice since you got back," said Mrs. Vick. "Was that due to the gas?" "I suppose so.
I knew you couldn't go very fast. Then all at once I saw I was afire. One of my wings had caught from something probably an explosive shell. Well, I had to turn back. Meantime those planes arriving from our side had swept the Boches clean off. I saw I wasn't getting much of anywhere and I just managed to light down here." "But what about that chap over there?" "Bother!
The Boches have learned that there's no monopoly in Frightfulness." In due season we shook hands with our cheery sub., and left him beaming after us from the threshold of the dingy hut.
Where two sandy wood roads crossed, a mounted gendarme halted them and examined their papers. "My poor child," he said to the girl, shaking his head, "the wounded at Nivelle were taken away during the night. They are fighting there now in the streets." "In Nivelle streets!" faltered the girl. "Oui, mademoiselle. Of the carillon little remains. The Boches have been shelling it since daylight.
He pointed out on the map where he wished me to take up positions, and closed the interview by saying that he thought I should at once proceed to reconnoitre the proposed sites, and lay all my plans for getting into position, as we were going to conduct an operation on the Boches at dawn the next day. I left, and started at once on my plans.
In No Man's Land they met a large enemy wiring party and their object was not attained. Three nights later, however, a German was captured, and again on the 12th the raiding party went out, this time with the object of killing Boches. They entered the enemy trench, and after doing considerable damage with bombs and rifles, returned without casualty.
Old women wept at the sight of those gay wounded, the lightly touched, glad of escape, rejoicing in their luck and in the glory of life which was theirs still and cried out to them with shrill words of praise and exultation. "Nous les aurons les sales Boches! Ah, ils sont foutus, ces bandits! C'est la victoire, grace a vous, petits soldats anglais!" Victory!
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