"It's always so," he said quite quietly. "You've heard, my friend, that the bullet does not strike you which has not your number on it. It is a great joke, I tell you; my number—my regimental number—is so great that I doubt the bullet was never made that can hold it. But a shell. Ah! that is different—eh? We can smoke now—bien! That is a comfort."
Bill might have found it a comfort too if he had taken yet to smoking; instead, he sat perched up beside this cool Frenchman, listening to his words, turning his head round to watch the bursting shells, and listening to others which hurtled through the air at a distance.
"Uncanny, yes!" he told himself. "It makes one rather feel inclined to shiver, as if a jug of cold water were being poured slowly down one's back. But yes, it is something to be a philosopher, only difficult under such conditions. Somehow it's so different from what it was on the trawler; then everything was movement, hurry, rush, with fighting to be expected; here it's all so peaceful—er—except for the shells."
It was peaceful in its own way, though dangerous enough as many have already discovered; yet, to do him justice, Bill never flinched, and indeed rather enjoyed the whole experience.
"A man gets used to it," said the Sergeant, when they got back to their quarters, having in the meanwhile surreptitiously obtained a report on Bill and his two chums. "You three fellows were not, of course, expected to mind shelling after that trawler affair; but you can take my word for it, son, that shelling gets on a man's nerves even when he thinks he's used to it. You may go up to the trenches night after night; sometimes there's not a shot fired; then you come in for a burst of it and things are lively. If you don't, every odd gun that sounds in your ear may have a shell for you—you're listening for it, expecting it; it's almost as bad as a strafe same as I've been talkin' of. Now, young shaver, you turn in! Precious soon you may be takin' your own convoy up."
Less than a month had passed when Bill was actually driving one of the convoy carts, Larry and Jim being placed in similar responsible positions. Then each got a step in rank and became lance-corporal, and finally, when a few weeks had passed, were full sergeants. Just about then it happened they were transferred from the Franco-American unit to one of the new units working with the American army, which was now swelling visibly and increasing in numbers.
"We're off to the Somme area," Larry said. "Say now, ain't that the place where British chaps fought the Huns somewheres about 1916, when America wasn't yet in the war, and when the President was still tryin' to keep us out of it? Guess it would want a lot of keepin' us out of it now! What was it they said when we came in?—'in with both feet'—eh? Gee. It's more than our feet we're putting into this business."
They went by road to Amiens, where the famous Cathedral overshadows the ancient city, soon to be the objective of the Germans; then they turned due east and rode to Peronne, where, to their amazement, to Bill's huge delight and none the less to the satisfaction of Larry and Jim, they found themselves billeted next to British troops and their unit actually attached to a British division.
"It's getting a sorter mix-up, boys," a friend of theirs explained. "Way north there's Belgians and French and British sorter mixed up together; then there's Portuguese and British and French again sorter mixed up and jumbled lower down; there's us and more British and French, and then more Americans, all of 'em facin' the Hun and ready for him. Folks say as how he's about to start a big offensive. There's hundreds of thousands of German troops on t'other side of 'No Man's Land'. For that we've got to thank the Revolutionists in Russia—or rather, a chap should say, the Bolshevists—who, I reckon, are sorter super-Socialists, and are agin' the law and agin' everything as the Irish might say. Well, we're watching for Mr. Hun and his offensive."
"And meanwhile we go on learning our own particular job with motor transport," said Bill, for this part of the work entrusted to him and his friends interested him even more than that of the horsed transport. "You seem to be able to do so much more with motors; you can go so much faster and farther, and the loads you carry are so much heavier. Then, too, our job is to take up shells; and when you hear the guns shying them over at the Huns you somehow feel that you're doing better work than you were beforehand. An offensive—eh, Larry? Wonder where it'll start? I did hear that this front might be attacked."