Liquid Fire Projected from the German Trenches.
Courtesy of "L'Illustration."
Liquid Fire Projected from Portable Reservoirs.
Hilly and rugged country made the next night's traveling difficult, and, many times, with their hearts in their mouths, the two fugitives were compelled to dart for a few hundred yards along a road, though every highway leading to Jemelle—which seemed to be a German rendezvous—was choked with troops and supporting wagon-trains.
Near Grupont, they found a woman sitting on the bank of a road, beside the body of a boy, six years old.
"Can we be of any service, Madame?" Croquier asked, stopping.
"Not unless you can raise the dead," she answered bitterly, but dry-eyed. "See you, Monsieur, my little Theophile was playing with a toy gun, a thing of wood, Monsieur, and painted red, which shot a cork on the end of a string, when the Germans came.
"'He will learn to shoot a real gun some day,' an officer said, 'kill the young viper before he learns to bite.' So they shot him and marched on, laughing."[10]