CHAPTER XVI
THE AIRSHIP RAID
The signs multiplied now that they were approaching the battle lines.Apart from the ominous roar which had now become unceasing, war showedits grim face on every hand.
They dashed through "rest billets"--the towns behind the lines wherethe exhausted soldiers, who had served their term in the trenches, weresent back for a few days or weeks of rest while fresh troops took theirplaces.
The roads became more congested with trucks carrying supplies andammunition to the front. Ambulances came past in an endless stream,bearing their quota of wounded men. Hospitals were everywhere, markedwith a Red Cross that bespoke their mission of mercy and healing.
And there were cemeteries too, with their endless rows of simple woodencrosses on which were inscribed the names and regimental numbers ofthose who slept beneath.
Cripples, too, there were, with missing legs or arms, and blinded ones,who had looked for the last time on scenes of warfare.
It was the seamy side of war that thrust itself upon their sight. Butthough it sobered, it did not daunt these eager young Americans who hadcome to do their part and "see it through." It only deepened theirindignation at the merciless military power that had brought such woeand misery upon the world, and each breathed a vow to himself that hewould not rest until that power was curbed and punished as it deservedto be.
"This looks like the real thing," remarked Frank.
"That's what!" agreed Bart. "You can see already that war is whatSherman said it was."
"This is nothing," put in Billy. "It's only the fringe. It's onlywhen we get in the trenches that we'll know anything about it."
"Some of us may not know much then," put in Tom. "It all depends onhow long we succeed in dodging the bullets."
"Yes," observed Billy. "Or our experience may be like that of theTommy who said 'First, I 'ears a 'orrible noise and the next thing I'ears the nurse sayin', "Sit up and drink this!"'"
There was a laugh that broke the tension, and before long they reachedthe district that had been chosen for their intensive training.
It was a wide stretch of rolling country several miles in extent, andit had been chosen because it resembled in its main features the actualterritory where the fight was going on.
There were brooks and hills, valleys and quarries, woods andmeadowlands with a few small hamlets of scattered houses.
There were no spacious barracks such as they had been used to in thecantonments at home. The troops were quartered here and there asopportunity offered.
Thousands of dog tents had been erected on the level places and inthese the majority of the men were sheltered.
Every cottage and chateau also had its quota, and farmhouses with theiroutlying barns and stables were utilized to the utmost.
"Hope they don't separate us, fellows," said Frank, as he watched thecorporals and sergeants picking out various squads and assigning themtheir billets.
"Gee, so do I," echoed Bart. "The old bunch has been together eversince we left Camport and I have a hunch our luck's going to continue."
The "hunch" proved to have a solid foundation, for the four army boyswere all sent off together with about forty more of their comrades toan old mill that stood near the edge of the camp.
It was a low, rambling structure with plenty of windows that gave itample light and an air of homely comfort that delighted the youngsoldiers.
"This is what I call luck," chortled Tom, as he looked about him andglanced up at the well-thatched roof that seemed rain-proof.
"It beats a dog tent by a thousand miles," returned Billy.
"It doesn't matter so much while the weather's still warm," said Bart,"but oh, boy! when the winter comes, maybe it won't be good to have asnug roof like this over our heads."
A little cottage adjoining the mill served as a mess hall for the squadbilleted there and the presiding genius of the place was a French cook,who had as his assistant a young Irish lad whose most prominent pointswere a shock of red hair and a mischievous disposition.
"Anatole is a good chef, all right," Frank remarked one day, shortlyafter they had had a most appetizing meal. "He may have his faults andprobably does, but he cooks to beat the band."
"Yes," agreed Bart, "he's a dandy cook but he's got a hair-triggertemper. I've heard him bawling out his helper in all the Frenchepithets there are, and that's quite a few apparently."
"Righto!" laughed Frank. "There's a big lot of them and Anatole knowsthem all. He could give points to the driver of a team of army mules.You've got to hand it to him for being thorough anyway. Without thatoutlet he'd probably go crazy."
"Possibly," assented Bart. "There's no telling. But listen. 'Speakof the cook and you'll hear him shouting' or words to that effect.Great Scott! He's mad for fair this time."
"You've said it!" ejaculated Frank. "He's about as angry as it'spossible for a Frenchman to be--and that's going some."
Fate had willed that that day the Irish helper in a spirit of impishperversity should have annoyed the cook in various covert and ingeniousways until the latter's irritation broke all bounds.
The cottage door flew open and the boy bounced out, about two jumpsahead of the cook whose face was crimson and eyes bulging.
"Pat has an air of haste about him," remarked Frank with a grin.
"He'd better have," laughed Bart. "Anatole is up in the air for fair."
"Leetle rat zat you air!" shouted the enraged cook, shaking a ladlefuriously at his helper who stood at a safe distance wearing atantalizing grin. "Sacre! but you drive me cr-r-r-azy weet your seelytricks. You air one Irish monkey, zat ees what you air! Ef I get hol'of you--ah, you weel not forget eet soon, I tell you zat!" and he madea clumsy rush for the boy who easily dodged around a corner of thecottage. The cook raced after him and the pair made several circuitsof the little building, although it was evident that the cook hadabsolutely no chance of catching his agile tormentor.
They made a highly ludicrous sight, and Frank and Bart, who happened tobe the only spectators of the scene, roared with laughter, stampingabout and hammering each other on the shoulder in the excess of theirmerriment.
But the cook was not long in discovering the futility of his effortsand gave up the chase, puffing and blowing like a grampus. His wrathhad in nowise abated however, and he shook his fist impotently at theboy, who by his very silence and the ease with which he eluded himdrove the unfortunate chef into a very paroxysm of fury.
"_Mille tonnerres!_" he shouted, and hurled the heavy ladle he had beencarrying straight at his assistant's head. But the lad ducked in time,and the heavy missile went whistling past him and found lodgment in theunderbrush beyond.
"Better luck nixt toime," jeered the imp. "Try agin, why don't ye?Ye've got plinty uv thim ladles left. 'Tis the bist uv exercise,throwin' thim things is."
Frank and Bart shouted afresh, while the outraged cook tore his hair indesperation and gave vent to a stream of epithets. The boy saidnothing, but put his hand to his ear and affected to listen in a mannerfar more irritating than words could possibly have been.
The cook's face grew more crimson than before and his naturallyprotruding eyes seemed about to leave their sockets. He danced wildlyabout, shaking his clenched fists madly in the air. At last however,just when he seemed threatened with a stroke of apoplexy, he stoppedfrom sheer exhaustion and for the first time became conscious of thepresence of Frank and Bart who were leaning on each other for support,convulsed with laughter and the tears streaming from their eyes.
He glared malevolently at them for a few moments but finding that thishad little effect at last turned and went into the cottage stillmuttering imprecations on the head of his assistant.
"Help, help!" gasped Frank. "Hold me up, Bart, or I'll go down. My,but that was rich."
"All of that," agreed Bart, wiping the tears from his eyes. "If we'donly had a moving picture machine and a phonograph handy to take downthat scene. It would be the bigg
est hit of the age."
"It would have meant oodles of coin and no mistake," assented Bart."We'd have been beyond the reach of want for the rest of our naturallives."
"Anatole's got a circus clown beaten by a thousand miles," repliedFrank. "It's too bad that the rest of the fellows couldn't have beenhere to see the circus. But I suppose it's ungrateful to criticizefate after she's been so kind to us."
"I should say so," chuckled Bart. "If I live to be a hundred yearsold, I never expect to see anything funnier," and at the remembrance ofthe comical scene he started laughing afresh with his hand pressedagainst his side.
"Just the same," said Frank, when they had at last quieted down, "Iwouldn't like to be in that red-headed helper's shoes. He's got to gointo the cottage soon, and when he does I have a hunch that somethingwill happen to him."
"I think it's extremely likely," agreed Bart, "and I can't say but whathe deserves it. It seems to me that Anatole has something coming tohim in the way of revenge."
It was with considerable amusement that the two chums watched theactions of the Irish lad. For some time he kept clear of the cottage,but then the door opened and the cook's head appeared in the doorway.
"Come here, you Mickey!" he called, in tones meant to be reassuring,"and peel ze potatoes."
With a good deal of caution the boy reluctantly approached, but stoppedjust out of the cook's reach for a parley.
"Wot ye goin' ter do wit' me whin ye git holt uv me?" he queried. "Iwuz only foolin' wit' ye before. Can't ye take a little joke?"
"Nevaire mind," replied the cook realizing his advantage. "Come an'get beezy, else I tell ze captain you air--wat you calleet?--inzubordinate. Zen he make you come."
The boy glanced desperately around in search of some way of escape fromhis predicament, but finding none finally went reluctantly into thecottage.
"Here's where retribution falls on him," said Frank with a grin.
He was not mistaken, for the boy had scarcely entered when there issuedforth the sound of several lusty smacks. Then came a high-pitchedscolding which showed that Anatole had had recourse to moral as well asphysical suasion.
"I don't know but what I'd rather have the licking than the scolding,"chuckled Bart as they listened to the voluble eloquence of the chef.
"Either one's bad enough," laughed Frank. "I guess our youngred-headed friend has got all that was coming to him."
Now the intensive training of the boys began in earnest. And trainingnow had a meaning that it had never had while they were still onAmerican soil.
For at that time they had not fully grasped the fact that they wereactually at war. There had been a certain dream-like quality about itthat had been like a scene from a play.
The only cannon they had heard were those fired in salute or atpractice. The zip of a bullet had only meant that that bullet wasspeeding toward a wooden target.
But now the roar of cannon, multiplied a thousand fold above everythingthey had heard before, meant that deadly missiles were seeking outhuman life in an effort to maim and destroy.
And soon--how soon they did not know, but still soon--they themselveswould be the target for whining bullets and shrieking shells.
Practice now meant something. Expertness might mean the differencebetween saving life or losing it. A new spirit ran through the menlike an electric current. No need now for their officers to urge themon. If anything, they had to hold the young soldiers back, lest theyburn up their vitality and exhaust their strength before they were putto the final test.
As far as possible, the camp became a mimic battlefield. Trenches weredug, precisely like those that they would soon be holding against theattacks of the enemy.
Barbed wire fences were built by one regiment and cut through andbeaten down by another, which, for the time being, was chosen to playthe part of the enemy.
The bayonet practice was no longer against dummies but against a pickedsquad of their own comrades. And each side in these mimic battles wasso eager to win that at times they almost forgot themselves, withslight wounds and bruises as a result before their officers couldintervene.
"We're getting there, Bart!" cried Frank, as he wiped the perspirationfrom his brow, after a particularly strenuous encounter. "I'd back ourboys right now to hold their own against any bunch of equal size thatthe Boches can send against them."
"We sure are doing dandy work," assented Bart. "I wonder when they'regoing to put us on the firing line?"
"Before long I hope," chimed in Tom. "I'm aching to get a whack atthem. It's the only way I can let off steam," he added, ruefully. "Icame near running one of the boys through with my bayonet to-day."
"I wonder where they'll put us," conjectured Billy. "I suppose they'llsandwich us in with some of the French troops for a while until we getour bearings."
"Maybe," said Frank. "But I'd like better to have us fellows take upsome sector and hold it all by ourselves. The tri-color's a fine flag,but when I fire my first bullet at a Hun I want to be under the Starsand Stripes."
"You've said it!" declared Tom.
"You fellows are regular fire-eaters," laughed Dick Lever, a youngfellow with whom the boys had struck up a friendship.
He wore an aviator's uniform and was a fine type of young American. Hewas one of those who, on seeing war impending, had not waited for theformal declaration, but, at their own expense, had sailed to the oldcountry to help France and, so doing, the United States.
Bronzed, upstanding, clear-eyed, he had succeeded in making the armyboys like him immensely and had imparted to them many useful andinteresting stories of modern warfare.
"You're a good one to talk," said Billy. "When it comes to fireeating, you aren't so slow yourself. I heard from one of the fellowsyesterday what you did at the battle of the Somme."
Dick blushed like a girl.
"That was nothing," he protested. "Just part of the day's work."
"What's the dope?" asked Tom with interest. "I haven't heard thestory, and from the beginning, it ought to be good."
"Will Scott was telling me about it," said Billy. "He says that Dickhere went over the German lines and started a little war all byhimself. He flew low near the ground, letting loose his machine gun ata whole regiment of German soldiers just forming up for action. Wentalong a little further and lambasted a bunch of German officers in anautomobile, killed two of them and made the others jump out and hideunder the machine. Then came back and, just for good measure, let flyhis machine gun at the same regiment he'd soaked going out. After thatI guess he knocked off and called it a day's work.
"That's why he wears that decoration," he added, pointing to the crosson Dick's jacket.
"See him blush," chaffed Tom. "It's funny how these fellows that canface any number of bullets, turn coward when it comes to praise. You'dalmost think we were accusing him of a crime."
"Any other of the boys would have done the same if he had had mychance," said Dick. "Sometimes I go days at a time without having achance for a scrap. That just happened to be my lucky day."
"The Huns didn't call it that," laughed Frank.
Dick who, as a matter of custom, had been scanning the sky, uttered asharp exclamation.
"Here's another bit of luck, fellows, perhaps," he cried, and withoutfurther farewell, was off like a shot toward his machine, which hadbeen waiting, with his mechanic to guard it, a hundred yards away.
High up in the sky appeared a squadron of airships that by theirmarkings and designs the boys recognized as enemy planes. They wereevidently bent on adventure and had come much further beyond the linesthan usual.
The French were quick to accept the challenge and the anti-aircraftguns got into action at once. Puffs of shrapnel burst like whiteclouds in and about the marauding planes.
Even as the boys watched, one missile found its mark, and the plane,out of control, whirled round and round and then fell swiftly to theground within the French lines.
But not with guns
alone did the Allies respond. Like a flock offalcons, a squadron of French aeroplanes shot swiftly up into the air,climbing, climbing in the effort for altitude, so that they might swoopdown upon their prey from above.
"There goes Dick's plane in the van!" cried Frank, his voice tense withexcitement.
"That's the place for America!" exclaimed Tom. "Always in the van!"