In the rush and hubbub of marching orders Belle and her brood were forgotten by every one but the young marine. It never once entered his head to leave her or her pups behind. Somewhere he found a market basket and tumbled the litter into that. He could carry the pups, he explained, and the mother dog would trot at his heels.
Now the amount of hardware a marine is expected to carry on the march is carefully calculated to the maximum strength of the average soldier, yet this leatherneck found extra muscle somewhere for his precious basket. If it came to the worst, he thought, he could jettison his pack. It was not very clear in his mind what he would do with his charges during a battle, but he trusted to luck and Verdun Belle.
For twenty-five miles he carried his burden along the parched French highway. No one wanted to jeer him out of it, nor could have if they would. When there followed a long advance by camion, he yielded his place to the basket of wriggling pups, while he himself hung on the tail-board.
But there was more hiking, and the basket proved too much. It seemed that the battle line was somewhere far off. Solemnly the young marine killed four of the puppies, discarded the basket and slipped the other three into his shirt. Thus he trudged on his way, carrying those three, pouched in forest green, as a kangaroo carries its young, while the mother dog trotted trustingly behind.
One night he found that one of the black-and-white pups was dead. The road by this time was black with hurrying troops, lumbering lorries jostling the line of advancing ambulances, and dust-gray columns of soldiers moving on as far ahead and as far behind as the eye could see. Passing silently in the other direction was the desolate procession of refugees from the invaded countryside. Now and then a herd of cows or a little cluster of fugitives from some desolated village, trundling their most cherished possessions in wheelbarrows and baby carts, would cause an eddy in the traffic.
Somewhere in this crowding and confusion Belle was lost. In the morning there was no sign of her, and the young marine did not know what to do. He begged a cup of milk from an old French woman, and with the eye dropper from his kit he tried to feed the two pups. It did not work well. Faintly the wind brought down the valley from far ahead the sound of cannon. Soon he would be in the thick of it, and there was no Belle to care for the pups.
Two ambulances of a field hospital were passing in the unending caravan. A lieutenant who looked human was in the front seat of one of them, a sergeant beside him. The leatherneck ran up to them, blurted out his story, gazed at them imploringly and thrust the puppies into their hands. "Take good care of them," he said; "I don't suppose I'll ever see them again."
And he was gone. A little later in the day that field hospital was pitching its tents and setting up its kitchens and tables in a deserted farm. Amid all the hurry of preparation for the big job ahead they found time to worry about those pups. The problem was food. Corned willy was tried and found wanting. Finally the first sergeant hunted up a farm-bred private, and the two of them spent that evening chasing four nervous and distrustful cows around a pasture trying vainly to capture enough milk to provide supper for the new members of the hospital staff.