[CHAPTER VIII]
In it
Ploof! Ploof! Bang! P-ssst, wam! Zing, zing, zing! T-r-r-r-r-r—rip! Ploooof! Something of this nature, if it can at all be conveyed by words, came in waves, roars and spasms of sound to the ears of Don and Billy, as their ambulance truck traversed part of the five or six miles of cross-road between the evacuation hospitals near the Amiens road, not twenty miles south of that shell-torn town, and the front line of the Allied army where American troops, newly arrived from training camps, were brigaded with the French soldiers; that is, a number of regiments of one nation were included with those of the other in the same sector, sometimes companies, even platoons, of Americans and French fighting side by side against the savage attacks of an enemy far superior in numbers.
“We’ve just sent a dozen or more to your people down there—nearly all light cases—but there’s been some sort of a scrap over toward the southeast. You can’t find a road, for the enemy holds that, but you can turn in across the fields to your right, or follow an old farm road; one of our men did so yesterday. It is just beyond, where some reserves are digging in by the edge of a ruined farm; both the house and barn have been struck by shells or sky bombs. If you can go any farther from there you’ll have to ask your way, but probably the P. C. beyond won’t let you go on. There are two dressing stations to the west of some woods on a low hill; that will be still farther to your right as you follow the new trail. Go to it!”
This was the all-too-brief order Don received from Major Little, the hospital-chief when the lads reached the broad tents on the cross-road early one morning. Without further words Don leaped into his car and glided on along the narrow road for about two miles; then he began dodging shell holes, one here that involved half of the wheel tracks, another, farther on, which took in all of the road and had been partly filled and partly bridged with timbers from an old building near. Beyond this, small shell-holes had torn up the once smooth surface here and there. After the ambulance had traversed another mile, at the best speed possible over such a highway, it overtook a string of ammunition trucks going into position, ready for progress or retreat. Dodging around these and avoiding other shell-holes was difficult for the half mile on to where the artillery had debouched. Once, not two hundred feet ahead, a big shell came over with a swish and snarl and landed in the field near the road, sending up a cloud of sod, dirt and stones and sprinkling the ambulance and its drivers with bits of gravel. One sizable stone landed on the hood with a whang and bounced against the windshield just hard enough to crack it, exactly in line with Billy Mearns’ face.
“Pal, we seem to be under fire,” remarked Don, and Billy, with a grunt of relief, replied:
“Yes, and if that glass hadn’t been there I’d have bitten that stone in half to show I didn’t care whether it came this way or not. But say, if we’d been just where that shell landed we would have had to sing Tosti’s ‘Good-bye.’ They’re rude things, aren’t they, the way they mess up the landscape?”
Don glanced at his smiling companion. A fellow who could take such matters so calmly, and jest over them, was a lad after his own heart.
The sound of fighting came to the boys now with increasing fury. They were not experienced enough to tell whether it was a regular battle, or merely a skirmish. Anyway, it was lively enough for an introduction to green hands far from home.
They came to where the reserve regiment was digging in. Some of them camped in the open, with a few little canopy tents spread. A few fires were burning. A few officers stood or squatted around talking and laughing. Sentries were pacing up and down. A sentinel stood in the road and faced about toward them, but when he saw the Red Cross on the front and side of the car and had scanned the faces of the drivers he asked no questions but let them pass. Don slowed up enough to hear him say: