“Only this, that I loom up so much more than anybody else, and there’s lots of chances of them seeing me, that’s all. But then a fellow can only die once, and perhaps I won’t know what hits me, which is some comfort.”
“Hug the ground for all you’re worth then,” the other told him.
“I am, till I can hardly breathe,” replied Pudge. “How long are we going to stay here do you think, Frank?”
“Not a great while, if we know it,” came the answer, which proved that Frank, as usual, was already figuring on some masterly move.
“But think of the nerve of the Germans occupying that windmill right back of the British lines, would you?” exclaimed Billy, as though that fact interested him more than anything else.
“Well, you can expect nearly anything in this desperate fighting,” Frank told him. “Only the other day I was reading about a case where they had made a fort out of an old windmill that had a concrete foundation and walls. The Allies tried ever so many times to dislodge the German sharpshooters, but couldn’t. Then the airmen took a hand, but failed to drop a bomb where it would do the business.”
“How did they manage it in the end, Frank?” asked Billy, always eager to hear the explanation of any puzzle.
“After they had lost a lot of men in direct assaults, the Allies dug a tunnel up under the windmill, laid a mine, and exploded it,” Frank continued.
“And that did the business, did it?” questioned Pudge, also deeply interested for personal reasons.
“It shattered things, and killed every German in the place,” said Frank. “Do you know they found more than a dozen quick-firing guns there? They had made it a regular fort, even though they knew not a single man of them could ever escape in the end.”