"What's your rank?" continued the officer, determined that the man be rescued properly if at all.
"Master engineer, sir," the American answered.
Evidently that was sufficient for the officer, for he at once assented with:
"You may try. Lend him a hand men."
The "Yank" took a shovel and started tunnelling under the truck. As he wormed himself into the little hole, the shovel was abandoned for a bayonet and he pushed the dirt back with his hands to others, who threw it aside. After an hour's work, he had the dead man out. Another hour, and he had burrowed molelike, to the side of the other man, who still was conscious.
"Do you want to take a chance? It'll be torture getting out," he said to the truck driver.
["Anything to get from here to die outside," the man gasped.]
A rope was shoved in and the American tied it around the man's legs. Slowly, while he guided the battered body of the now unconscious man, comrades pulled them both back through the narrow tunnel.
"I'll see that you're mentioned in regimental orders for your efforts," said the officer to the exhausted "Yank," and he did.
The truck driver had an arm broken, a shoulder crushed and a fractured skull. He was rushed to a hospital on a chance that his life might be saved after so much effort. The work was not in vain, for a few days ago a letter was received from him, well again at his home in England, saying to the former movie star: