"A single-seater is all I can manage just at present. Suit? Good. EG 19's the bird. Mornin'."
Enquiries at the hangars showed that EG 19 had alighted, owing to slight engine defects, in a field at a distance of two miles from the aerodrome. That occurred three days previously, and the former pilot had been sent away to another squadron. Repairs had been effected, and the machine was now ready for flight.
"I'll take a tender," declared Derek. "Come along, old man, and keep me company. You can return in the tender, you know."
"Right-o!" agreed Kaye, divesting himself of his flying-coat and tossing it to an orderly. "Just as likely I'll tramp back after I've seen you started."
The tender, a covered-in Ford van, was soon forthcoming, and the two chums seated themselves under the canvas tilt. The view was strictly limited to the ground already covered, but this mattered little, since the two pilots had plenty to talk about.
The road was typically French. It ran in a straight line as far as the eye could see. In the centre was a strip of pavé, interrupted at frequent intervals by shell-holes—some of recent origin, others filled in with material that was subsiding badly. On either side of the pavé was nothing more nor less than a morass, the road being torn up by ceaseless heavy traffic. Bordering the highway on either hand were tall, leafless trees, many of them having been splintered and cut down by shell-fire.
Swinging along the mud-covered pavé was a battalion newly arrived from the base—men with shoulders hunched under the weight of their equipment. They were marching at ease—incongruous term. Most of them were smoking. Some were carrying their comrades' rifles in addition to their own. Others were tugging at their new equipment to ease the cutting strain upon their shoulders. Few, very few, were limping. It was not the fault of the army that they limped, for the army takes particular pains to equip the men with good marching-boots. It was the neglect of ordinary precautions that was punishing them.
They marched well notwithstanding. Weeks of hard training were apparent in the bearing of the Tommies, as, with tunics unbuttoned at the neck, revealing bronzed throats that blended with the sombre khaki uniforms, they moved along the highway at the regulation pace of three and a half miles an hour.
"Those fellows will give a good account of themselves, I guess," remarked Kaye. "Sometimes, old thing, I almost wish that I were in the infantry."
"They get all the kicks," rejoined Daventry. "Our guns start strafing the Boche. Boche gets angry and starts to shell back. Shell what? Not our guns so much as the poor beggars of infantry in the trenches. They always get it in the neck."