"Sure I'll take him," said Mr. Scammell. "He says he admires me."
So Hiram Sill became a member of Number Two Platoon. He worked with the energy of a tiger and with the good nature of a lamb. He talked a great deal, but always with a view to acquiring or imparting knowledge. When he found that his military duties and the cultivation of friendships did not use up all his time and energy, he set himself to the task of ascertaining how many Americans were enrolled in the First and Second Canadian divisions. Then indeed he became a busy man; and still his cry continued to be that soldiering was a business.
CHAPTER IV
PRIVATE SILL ACTS
ON the night of September 15, 1915, the brigade of which the 26th Battalion was a unit crossed from Folkstone to Boulogne without accident. All the ranks were in the highest spirits, fondly imagining that the dull routine of training was dead forever and that the practice of actual warfare was as entertaining as dangerous.
The brigade moved up by way of the fine old city of Saint Omer and the big Flemish town of Hazebrouck. By the fourth day after landing in France the whole brigade was established in the forward area of operations, along with the other brigades of the new division. On the night of the 19th the battalion marched up and went into hutments and billets close behind the Kemmel front. That night, from the hill above their huts, the men from New Brunswick beheld for the first time that fixed, fire-pulsing line beyond which lay the menace of Germany.
The battalion went in under cover of darkness, and by midnight had taken over from the former defenders the headquarters of companies, the dugouts in the support trenches and the sentry posts in the fire trench. There were Dick Starkley and his comrades holding back the Huns from the throat of civilization. It was an amazing and inspiring position to be in for the first time. In front of them, just beneath and behind the soaring and falling star shells and Very lights, crouched the most ruthless and powerful armies of the world.
To the right and left, every now and then, machine guns broke forth in swift, rapping fire. When the fire was from the positions opposite, the bullets snapped in the air like the crackings of a whip. The white stars went up and down. Great guns thumped occasionally; now and then a high shell whined overhead; now and then the burst of an exploding shell sounded before or behind. It was a quiet night; but to the new battalion it was full of thrills. The sentries never took their eyes from the mysterious region beyond their wire. Every blob of blackness beyond their defenses set their pulses racing and sent their hands to their weapons.
Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie stood shoulder to shoulder on the fire step for hours, staring with all their eyes and listening with all their ears. Hiram Sill sat at their feet and talked about how he felt on this very particular occasion. His friends paid no attention to him.