The journey through France up to the front was anything but pleasant. The train was slow and the cars uncomfortable, but the boys made the best of it, and finally one afternoon, as the queer little engine and cars rolled slowly up to what served for a station, there came to their ears dull boomings.
"Thunder?" asked Joe, for the day was hot and sultry.
"Guns at the front," remarked a French officer, who had been detailed to be their guide the last part of the journey.
"At the front at last! Hurrah!" cried Joe.
"Perhaps you will not feel like cheering when you have been here a week or two," said the French officer.
"Sure we will!" declared Charlie. "We can do something now besides look at London chimney pots. We can get action!"
As the boys looked about on the beautiful little French village where they were to be quartered for some time, it was hard to realize that, a few miles away, men were engaged in deadly strife, that guns were booming, killing and maiming, and that soon they might be looking on the tangled barbed-wire defense of No Man's Land.
But the dull booming, now and then rising to a higher note, told them the grim truth.
They were at the war front at last!