Save for an hour's limbering-up drill, the day was theirs to roam at will about their new environment. Not until the dusk of evening had settled down upon the landscape would they start again on the last lap of their journey.
Immediately after drill, the five Brothers got together and went on a roving tour about the partially wrecked village. By daylight they found it teeming with life. It seemed principally peopled, however, with old women and children, although they encountered a goodly number of French soldiers resting in billets from trench duty.
Here and there they saw small inns, largely patronized by the French poilus. Entering one of them out of curiosity, they were rather disappointed to discover that they could obtain little there in the way of refreshment other than brown bread, cheese and French wines, the latter in which none of them ever indulged.
"For a place that's been all shot to pieces by Boche Kultur, I must say it's a mighty prosy old burg," was Bob's opinion.
The quintet had repaired to their impromptu camp for dinner, and afterward started out again in the hope of finding something really exciting. They had been roaming about for over an hour since dinner, and had, thus far, met with no startling adventures.
Bob's remark arose from the fact that they had just passed a schoolhouse, through the opened windows of which came the high, shrill voices of children, placidly reciting their lessons.
"Funny, isn't it, that those kids can settle down to school with the noise of the guns going on all the time?" mused Roger. "You'd think they'd be scared out of their baby wits."
"They're just like all the rest of these good sports of Frenchies. They've grown so used to it they don't blink an eyelash now," declared Schnitzel. "Wish I'd been born a Frenchman instead of a G. A. The A's all right, but not the G."
"Well, you got the G. out of your system when you enlisted," consoled Bob. "You've no kick coming."