The man on the motorcycle dashed up, saluted. "General Ruby?" he inquired, and handed the dispatch to Ben. The latter read it, then motioned the others about him.
"Well, here it is, folks," he said, "Listen to this—'General Grierson to General Ruby. Our flank guard was heavily attacked at Atsion this morning. The Third Brigade of the Fourteenth Division has suffered heavy loss and has been forced back to Chew Road. We are bringing up heavy artillery. The enemy appear to be using large numbers of light-ray guns. Advance guard is recalled to Waterford in support of our left flank.'"
"Oh—oh," said somebody.
"I knew they'd start giving us hell sooner or later," remarked Murray Lee as he climbed into his tank.
At Waterford there was ordered confusion when they arrived. Just outside the town a long line of infantrymen were plying pick and shovel in the formation of a system of trenches. Machine-gun units were installing themselves in stone or brick buildings and constructing barricades around their weapons; line after line of tanks had wheeled into position under cover of woods or in the streets of the town, the little whippets out in front, fast cruiser-tanks behind them and the lumbering battle-tanks with their six-inch guns, farther back.
Artillery was everywhere, mostly in little pits over which the gunners were spreading green strips of camouflage. As the American tanks rolled up, a battery of eight-inch howitzers behind a railroad embankment at the west end of the town was firing slowly and with an air of great solemnity at some target in the invisible distance, the angle of their muzzles showing that they were using the extreme range. A couple of airplanes hummed overhead. But of dead or wounded, of dodos or any other enemy there was no sign. It might have been a parade-war, an elaborately realistic imitation of the real thing for the movies.
Guides directed the Americans to a post down the line toward Chew Road. "What's the news?" asked Ben of an officer whose red tabs showed he belonged to the staff.
"They hit the right wing at Atsion," replied the officer. "Just what happened, I'm not sure. Somebody said they had a lot of those light-ray guns and they just crumpled up our flank like that." He slapped his hands together to show the degree of crumpling the right flank had endured. "We lost about fifteen hundred men in fifteen minutes. Tanks, too. But I think we're stopping them now."
"Any dodos?" asked Ben.
"Just a few. The airplanes shot down a flock of seven just before the battle and after that they kept away.... What is it? General Witherington wants me? Oh, all right, I'll come. Excuse me, sir," and the staff officer was off.