Looking aloft, then, Don and Billy saw the victorious English plane going straight away at high speed toward the enemy’s lines and rising higher in air at every second.
“Work cut out for us right ahead there,” Don remarked, as he settled back in his seat and began to speed up his motor. “We didn’t think that our first ‘blessé’ would be a Hun, did we?”
“No. What’s a ‘blessé’?”
“Why, I think that’s what the French call a wounded man. I hear them using it that way.”
“I know a little French, but very little; I hadn’t heard that expression before. Many of these war-time French words bother me muchly. Look out; another shell-hole! Say, this must be a regular farm.”
They saw the house standing in a clump of trees. The roadway led straight past it; with increased speed the ambulance flew by and in a little while came to the fallen airplane.
The winged intruder, ‘winged’ also as a flying game bird is by the accurate fire of a sportsman, lay twisted, beyond repair, its wings, uprights and stays crushed and broken. Almost beneath the flattened wheels on the other side, crumpled up on the ground, lay the unconscious airman. He had either leaped at the last moment, landing almost where the airplane had, or he had been jarred from his seat by the impact.
The boys were out of the car and beside him at once. Observing that he still breathed, they gently turned him over, trying to find where he was injured; then they saw a mass of clotted blood on his shoulder and discovered the bullet hole.
First Aid was in order. Don ran to the ambulance and returned with a kit. Billy followed to unfasten a stretcher and a blanket. With utmost care, yet moving swiftly, though both lads were admittedly nervous over their first case, they got him on the stretcher, removed his upper garments, bathed the wound, plugged it with antiseptic gauze and then, covering him with the blanket, slid the stretcher into the car.
What next to do? There was room for two or three more; why return with but one? And just beyond here lay the dressing stations, which they could reach in less than two minutes. Don made up his mind quickly and drove the car farther down the narrow farm road and over another field—a pasture. Half way across and toward them, four men were walking in single file. The boys had just made out that these were stretcher-bearers when suddenly the men stopped, ducked down and the foremost one raised his arm signaling for the car to stop. The next instant they were hidden from view by a fountain of earth between them and the ambulance and not over seventy-five feet from the car. The earth shook with the tremendous concussion of the explosion. It was one of the largest shells. The ambulance was stopped as though it had butted into a stone wall; Don felt a mass of glass fly against him and the car lifted partly up and swung aside. When he regained his senses and could see about him through the settling cloud of dust, he discovered that the car had been flung crosswise, that the windshield was smashed, and that the top was bent back, and very much askew. Billy, not having a grip on a steering wheel, as Don had, and having partly risen, was now on his back on the bottom of the car, behind the seat, his long legs sticking out over the back. He regained his normal position only by turning a back somersault and climbing forward. That the lads were not hurt was almost a miracle.