They had to watch their footing more and more to avoid falling into craters where the ground had been torn up by shells. There was no beauty in that part of fertile France that had once been like a "garden of the Lord."
War had breathed upon it, blighting and blasting every living thing, except the dauntless spirit of the people who were fighting and would fight to the last gasp in defense of liberty and civilization.
At last they reached a line of sentinels by whom they were greeted, not with challenges, but with exclamations of delight and welcome.
A little further on they came to a great gash in the earth that stretched in either direction like a huge black, zigzag blot.
They had reached the trenches!
But they did not stop there. Onward they went again, past another line of trenches.
"Gee! we must be going to the first line of trenches!" whispered Bart.
"That's what!" answered Frank.