"Certainly," he replied, "their work is most important. They were entirely right in not turning off the road for an officer's automobile. Everything depends on the transports, you know."
Whereupon I began to have a greater respect for the light, rattling supply wagons that we passed by the dozen on the road to Lens, and found myself thinking how unjustly those men might be regarded. "What did you do in the war?" ... "I drove a supply cart." ... How unheroic it sounds. Yet the Ober-Lieutenant told me that those men astride the bulky, unpicturesque dray horses were often put to the severest tests of courage.
"During our drive on Paris," he said, "the French would often succeed in covering a segment of road with their long range artillery, and continually drop shells upon it. They knew, of course, that our infantry, by making a detour through the fields, could avoid this death zone, but they shelled on, knowing that our transport trains would have to go by the road. So the transports would make a rush for it, and of course many were killed."
Another mile passed without our seeing any more of the gray wagon trains, and now the distant artillery grumbled louder. Two Uhlans cantered by, scanning us, and further on we passed another patrol. A corral of the familiar gray-topped wagons beside red brick farm buildings showed the location of a base of supplies, and in front of the house we saw a naked soldier unconcernedly scrubbing himself in a tub of water. And always the sullen roaring guns grew steadier and more disconcertingly clear.
"On this section of the line," Ober-Lieutenant explained, "the Staff told me that the French generally begin their heaviest firing every day at half past three."
I asked him why that was—it was like the curtain going up in a theater at a certain time. But he did not know, and could not even guess. I was wondering how much further we were going to rush towards that unearthly booming when at a muddy crossroad, patrolled by a Uhlan, as motionless as Remington might have painted him, we made a quick turn and plowed away. Apparently we were bound for a weather-beaten house and barn, half hidden by a leafless clump of willows, apparently shorn by shrapnel, for the broken branches hung down dead in a perfect arc as though the projectile had burst, perhaps right there above the tiny moss-banked stream, and sprayed its leaden shower.
As our motor, which had been heavily crawling along the farmhouse lane, finally sogged in the mud, refusing to go further, I followed Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann out of the machine, across the yard to where a sentry stood before the barn door. They exchanged words and then the barn door slid back a trifle, a youngish man, wearing the black leather helmet and coat of the aviation corps, appearing in the aperture. Excusing himself, Herrmann drew him aside and now and then I heard their voices raised in assent; they were evidently discussing my proposed flight. I guessed that Herrmann wanted to know exactly how much danger there would be. Conjecturing that he was apparently satisfied that the risk was a minimum, and that the aviator had been instructed to bring me nowhere near the firing line, I waited for their conference to break up.
Their talk evidently finished to the satisfaction of both, introductions were in order. Then the aviator, Hals, shouted a command into the barn and instantly there issued from the gloom within, four soldiers. I watched them roll back the creaking door and then, as though it were a fragile thing, they began slowly to push out the aeroplane—a monoplane I judged, as its long, tapering fuselage protruded into the farm yard, and then I saw with a start that the wings were a biplane's—a strange craft.
Events passed with bewildering rapidity. Half in a daze I saw the tall, solemn-looking aviator survey my warm clothing with an approving nod. The next instant I was buckling on a steel head protector, and when I noticed the machine again, it had been wheeled out into the flat, neighboring field. A level place I observed, packed hard with shale and dirt, made into a landing place for the planes. I caught a glimpse, at the extreme end of the field near the house, of two soldiers, fitting two wooden objects, painted the drab green of the field, into two pairs of prepared holes, one thirty feet behind the other. They were stout hoops, supported by posts, and rimmed with electric light bulbs. I noticed that the rear was perhaps two feet less in diameter than the other, and that when you stood directly in front of them, they gave the effect of concentric circles, their circumference but a foot apart.
"What is that for?" I asked Hals, and he explained that if it grew dark, the lights were lit, and if from above the aviator saw two fiery circles concentric, he knew that he could fly straight for them and alight in safety.