“I suppose there’ll be a little more fighting yet this morning,” said Tom hopefully. “You know the armistice doesn’t go into force until eleven o’clock.”
“Hear the glutton,” chaffed Frank. “He hasn’t got enough fighting yet. He wants to get another crack at the Hun.”
“I suppose there will be a show of fighting until the last minute,” said Billy. “But I guess it will be a matter of form. The artillery will open up but they’ll fire wild. There’ll be just enough to show that the army’s on the job.”
Billy was right. The morning wore away in a desultory fashion, with every man looking at his wrist watch every five minutes until eleven o’clock approached. Then when the moment came, all the big guns let go at once in one tremendous salvo that seemed as though it would split the heavens.
The war was over!
The silence that followed was the most curious sensation that the Army Boys had known. Day and night, the guns had been growling for months, sometimes faintly, sometimes strongly, but always growling. Now all along that vast battle line of five hundred miles there was that moment of blessed silence for which those millions of men had been waiting and fighting. The end of the long agony had come.
Frank, Billy, and Tom dropped their rifles and looked at each other. Usually they were talkative enough, but just now they were too full for words.
Over the hill in front of them appeared a group of German soldiers. They advanced a little, then hung back, then advanced again, and made signs that indicated that they wanted to talk with the Americans. But they were waved sternly back. The Americans wanted to have nothing to do with them.
The strictest rules had been laid down by the American officers that there was to be no fraternizing with the enemy. While hostilities had ceased, the war was still formally regarded as being on until the actual treaty of peace was signed. It might yet be necessary to take up arms again, and the Americans were going to take no chance of German propaganda getting in its nefarious work.
“A mighty good rule it is too,” commented Frank, as he saw the discomfited Germans slink back into their own lines. “If those fellows had played the game fairly and gallantly as we played it, I’d be the first one to shake hands with them after the fighting was over and let bygones be bygones. But there isn’t a decent rule of civilized warfare that they haven’t violated. I’d as soon shake hands with a rattlesnake.”