The boy awoke at sunup and looked around him with a kind of eager curiosity, rendered possible by his refreshed condition following a very good night’s rest. A soldier does not need a hair mattress to insure slumber in comfort. Sometimes he would be thankful for a dry six feet of earth on which to rest his weary form. Phil congratulated himself as he lay down to sleep on his first night as a prisoner of war not only that he had a dry resting place in the open air, but that the weather was warm.
About two-thirds of the prisoners in this inclosure were French, as nearly as Phil was able to estimate after the dawn of day rendered it possible for him to get a clear view of his surroundings. The invading army had selected what appeared to have been a small village park and fenced it in with barbed wire stapled to the rows of trees that marked the marginal border line. The young Marine “non-com” soon picked out the “colony” of Americans in the place and discovered among them two young fellows, Dan Fentress and Emmet Harding, whose acquaintance he had made at the last billeting place before the Yanks were given the Belleau and Bouresches sector. The three were soon engaged in an animated conversation on the events of the last few days. All expressed themselves as deeply disappointed because it appeared probable that they had struck their last blow for world freedom and must in all probability labor as slaves for the mailed-fisted kaiserites until their more fortunate fellow crusaders drove home the last blow which would make the entire Hohenzollern host throw up their hands and yell “Kamerad!”
“What makes me sorest in my hardest-to-hurt spot,” said Dan, grinding his teeth with impotent rage, “is the fact that I can’t go back home and say that I know I killed a Hun. Not that I wanted to brag about it. I might not even tell anybody about it if I had shot holes through a dozen slayers of women and children. But I’d just like to be able to say I’d made a record to be proud of and—and—then—keep the secret to myself if I liked modesty as well as I’d like real American roast beef in a Hun prison camp.”
“Maybe you’re just playing modest now,” suggested Emmet Harding with a shrewd smile. “Maybe you’ve actually wiped out a score of Huns and are just practicing, to feel how it seems to deny you’re a hero.”
“No, I don’t believe he’s doing any such thing,” interposed Phil almost eagerly. “At least I hope he isn’t, for I want company right now. I’m in the same boat he says he’s in. I don’t know that I’ve even smashed a cootie on a Hun’s hide, although I had a chance to shoot down half a dozen apostles of frightfulness like so many ten-pins, but didn’t do it; and that, very probably, is the reason I’m here now.”
“What!” exclaimed Dan in tones of contemptuous astonishment. “What sort of animal are you—a pacifist? You’d better keep that story under your hat when you get back home.”
“I don’t know whether I’ll be able to,” Phil returned with a forlorn smile. “You see, there’s no person I’d rather tell a joke on than myself, and this is surely a joke on me. At first it looked like a joke on the Huns—”
“Whoever heard of turning the biggest and most bloody war this world has ever known into humor?” Dan interrupted almost angrily.
“I respect your impatience under the circumstances,” Phil returned quietly. “But hear me through before you judge me too harshly. I’m the sort of fellow that wouldn’t be guilty of a Lusitania sinking or of a violation of a Belgian treaty. Neither would I shoot enemy soldiers after they’ve thrown up their hands.”
“Did those six Huns throw up their hands?”