“Eight degrees to the left, sir,” he barked, “four thousand yards.”
The men behind the guns were extremely young, but, like most artillerymen, alert, sinewy, springing to their appointed tasks with swift, catlike certainty. The sight of the two strangers seemed to surprise them as much as the man in the grave had startled us.
There were two boy officers in command, one certainly not yet eighteen, his superior officer still under twenty.
“I suppose you’re all right,” said the younger one. “You couldn’t have got this far if you weren’t all right.”
He tried to scowl upon us, but he was not successful. He was too lonely, too honestly glad to see any one from beyond the mountains that hemmed him in. They stretched on either side of him to vast distances, massed barriers of white against a gray, sombre sky; in front of him, to be exact, just four thousand yards in front of him, were Bulgarians he had never seen, but who were always with their shells ordering to “move on,” and behind him lay a muddy road that led to a rail-head, that led to transports, that led to France, to the Channel, and England. It was a long, long way to England. I felt like taking one of the boy officers under each arm, and smuggling him safely home to his mother.
“You don’t seem to have any supports,” I ventured.
The child gazed around him. It was growing dark and gloomier, and the hollows of the white hills were filled with shadows. His men were listening, so he said bravely, with a vague sweep of the hand at the encircling darkness, “Oh, they’re about—somewhere. You might call this,” he added, with pride, “an independent command.”
You well might.
“Report when ready!” chanted his superior officer, aged nineteen.