JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE HUN
I
The six motor-cyclists leaped on to their machines and went chugging
down the road. Of course they raced one another; all motor-cyclists
always race--and here was the best of all possible excuses, the
French army in dire need of them, several of its precious
cycle-units wiped out or captured! They tore along, dodging in and
out between trucks and automobiles, ambulances and artillery
caissons, horse-wagons and mule-wagons, achieving again and again
those hair's-breadth escapes which are the joy in life of every
normal motor-cyclist. Now and then, when things were too slow, they
would try a crawl in the ditches, or push their machines over the
ploughed fields. So it happened that Jimmie found himself competing
with his red-headed Irish enemy; there was a narrow opening between
two stalled vehicles, and Jimmie made it by the width of his hand,
and vaulted on to his machine and darted away, free and
exulting--his own boss! He shoved in the juice and made time, you
bet; no “mick” was going to catch up and shout orders at him!
There were long trains of refugees streaming back from the
battle-fields; pitiful peasant-people with horse-carts and dog-carts
and even wheelbarrows, toothless old men and women trudging
alongside, children and babies stuck in amidst bedding and furniture
and saucepans and bird-cages. This was war, as the common people saw
it; but Jimmie could not stop now to think about it--Jimmie was on
his way to the front! There were big observation balloons up over
his head, looking like huge grey elephants with broad ears; there
were aeroplanes whirring about, performing incredible acrobatic
feats, and spraying each other with showers of steel; but Jimmie had
no time for a single glance at these marvels--Jimmie was on his way
to the front!
He swept around a curve, and there directly in front of him was a
hole in the middle of the road, as big as if a steam-shovel had been
working for a week. Jimmie clapped on the brakes, and swerved
sideways, missing a tree and plunging into a cabbage patch. He got
off and said, “Gee!” once or twice; and suddenly it was as if he
were whacked on the side of the ear with a twelve-inch board--the
whole world about him turned into a vast roar of sound, and a
mountain of grey smoke leaped into being in front of him. Jimmie
stared, and saw out of a little clump of bushes a long black object
thrust itself out, like the snout of a gigantic tapir from some
prehistoric age. It was a ten-inch gun, coming back from its recoil;
and Jimmie, smelling its fumes, struggled back to the road with his
machine, before the monster should speak again and stifle him
entirely.
There was a frame-house in the distance, and in front of it a
barnyard, and sheds with thatched roofs. There came a scream,
exactly like the siren of Hook and Ladder Company Number One that
used to go tearing about the streets in Leesville, U.S.A; a light
flashed in one of the sheds, and everything disappeared in a burst
of smoke, which spread itself in the air like a huge duster made
from turkey feathers. There came another shriek, a little nearer,
and the ground rose in a huge black mushroom, which boiled and
writhed like the clouds of an advancing thunderstorm. Boom! Boom!
Two vast, all-pervading roars came to Jimmie's ears; and his knees
began to quake. By heck! He was under fire! He looked ahead; there
must be Germans just up there! Was a fellow supposed to ride on
without knowing?
There was a big battle on, that much was certain; but the uproar was
so distributed that one could hardly tell whether it was in front or
behind. However, the transport was steadily advancing--horse-wagons,
mule-wagons, motor-wagons, all plodding patiently, paying no heed to
the shell-bursts. And then Jimmie took a look behind, and saw that
infernal red-headed Orangeman! He imagined a raucous voice,
shouting: “C'mon here! Whatcher waitin' fer?” Jimmie bounced on to
his machine and turned her loose!
He came to a place where something had hit a load of ammunition, and
there were pieces of a wagon and a driver scattered about; it was a
horrible mess, but Jimmie passed it without much emotion--his whole
soul was centred on beating Pat Cullen into “Chatty Terry”! He came
to the outskirts of a village, and there was a peasant's cottage
with the roof blown off, and a smell fresh out of the infernal
regions, and a terrified old woman standing by the road side with
two terrified children clinging to her skirts. Jimmy stopped his
machine and shouted: “Chatty Terry?” When the old woman did not
answer quickly, he shouted again: “Chatty Terry? Chatty Terry? Don't
you understand French? Chatty Terry?” The old woman apparently did
not understand French.
He rode up the street of the village, and came to a military
policeman directing traffic at a crossing. This fellow understood
English, and said: “Chatty Terry? Eet ees taken!” And when Jimmie
stood dismayed, wondering what he was to do now, the policeman told
him that headquarters had been shifted to this village--it was in
the chateau; he did not say “chatty”, so Jimmie did not understand
his kind of English. But Jimmie rode as directed, and came to a
place with iron gates in front, and a big garden, and a sentry in
front, and a bustle of coming and going, so he knew that he had
reached his destination, and had beaten his Irish enemy!
II
Jimmie's pass was in duplicate French and English, so the sentry
could read it, and signed him to pass in. At the door of the chateau
he showed the paper again, and a French officer in the hall-way
espied him, and exclaimed, “A cyclist? Mon Dieu!” He half-ran Jimmie
into another room, where another officer sat at a big table with a
chart spread out on it, and innumerable filing cabinets on the
walls. “Un courier Americain!” he exclaimed.
“Only one?” asked the officer, in English.
“Five more's comin',” said Jimmie quickly. He hated Pat Cullen like
the devil, but he wouldn't have any French officer think that Pat
would lie down on his job. “The road's cut up, an' there's lots o'
traffic. I come as fast--”
“See!” interrupted the officer--not quite as polite as Frenchmen are
supposed to be. “This packet contains maps, which we make from
aeroplane-photographs--you comprehend? It is for the artillerist--”
The officer paused for a moment; there came a deafening crash
outside, and the window of the room collapsed and something grazed
Jimmie's face.
“Voila!” remarked the officer. “The enemy draws nearer. Our wires
are cut; we send couriers, but they perhaps do not arrive; it needs
that we send many--what you say?--duplicates. You comprehend?”
“Sure!” said Jimmie.
“It is most urgent; the battle depends upon it--the war, it may be.
You comprehend?”
“Sure!” said Jimmie again.
“You are brave, mon garcon?”
Jimmie did not reply so promptly to that; but the officer was too
tactful to wait. Instead, he asked, “You know French?” And when
Jimmie shook his head: “It needs that you learn. Say this: Botteree
Normb Cott. Try it, if it pleases you: Botteree Normb Cott.”
Jimmie, stammering like a schoolboy, tried; the officer made him
repeat the sounds, assuring him gravely that he need have no doubts
whatever; if he would make those precise sounds, any Frenchman would
know what he was looking for. He was to take the main road east from
the village and ride till he came to a fork; then he was to bear to
the right, and when he came to the edge of a dense wood, he was to
take the path to the left, and then say to everybody he met:
“Botteree Normb Cott!”
“Is it that you have a weapon?” inquired the officer; and when
Jimmie answered no, he pressed a button, and spoke quick words to an
orderly, who came running with an automatic revolver and a belt,
which Jimmie proceeded to strap upon him with thrills, half of
delighted pride and half of anguished terror. “You will say to the
men of the botteree that the Americans come soon to the rescue. You
will find them, my brave American?” The officer spoke as if to a son
whom he dearly loved; and Jimmie, who had never received an order in
that tone of voice, reciprocated the affection, and clenched his
hands suddenly and answered, “I'll do my best, sir.” He turned to
leave the room, when whom should he see coming in--Mike Cullen!
Jimmie gave him a wink and a grin, and hustled outside and leaped
upon his machine.
III
And now here was the little machinist from Leesville, U.S.A., flying
down the battered street of this French village with something like
a mid-western cyclone going on in his head. They say that a drowning
man remembers everything that ever happened in his life; perhaps
that was not true of Jimmie, but certainly he remembered every
pacifist argument he had ever heard in his life. For the love of
Mike, what was this he had let himself in for? Bound for the spot
where the whole German army was trying to break through--upon an
errand the most dangerous of any in the war! How in the name of Karl
Marx and the whole revolutionary hierarchy had he managed to get
himself into such a pickle? He, Jimmie Higgins, Bolshevik and
wobbly!
And he was going through with it! He was going to throw his life
away--just because he had started--because he had pledged
himself--because he was carrying maps which might enable a
“botteree” to win the war! Did he really care that much about this
infernal capitalist war? So cried out the proletarian demons in the
soul of Jimmie Higgins; and meantime the engine hammered and
chugged, and a miraculous power in the depths of his
subconsciousness moved the handle-bars so that he dodged shell-holes
and grazed automobiles.
The air was full of the scream of shells and the clatter of their
bursting, an infernal din out of which he could hardly pick
individual sounds. The road ahead was less crowded; the vehicles had
left it, spreading out to one side or the other. How much farther
ahead was that fork? And suppose the Germans had got there, and had
captured “Botteree Normb Cott”--was he going to present them with a
brand new motor-cycle in addition? There were other “botterees”
which he passed; why couldn't he give them the maps? Jimmie rode on,
raging inwardly. If he had been a dispatch rider he would have known
all about this, but he was only a repair man, and they had had no
business to put such a job off on him!
There were woods about him now, the trees smashed up by shells, and
Jimmie considered it the part of prudence to get off his machine and
steal forward and peer out to see if there were Germans in the
opening beyond. And suddenly his knees gave way, because of the
fright he was in, with all this deadly racket. He became violently
sick at his stomach, and began to act as he had acted on the first
three days of his ocean passage from New York. At the same time all
the other functions of his body began to operate. A group of
Frenchmen passing by burst into hilarious laughter; it was
ridiculous and humiliating, but Jimmie was powerless to help it--he
wasn't cut out for a soldier, he hadn't agreed to be a soldier, they
had had no business sending him up here where vast craters of
shell-holes were opening in the ground, and whole trees were being
lifted out of the earth, and the air was full of a stink which might
require a gas-mask or might not--how was poor Jimmie to tell?
IV
He mastered the awful trembling of his knees and the grotesque
efforts of his body to get rid of everything inside him, and got on
his machine again and stole ahead. He could only go a few rods at a
time, because the road was so cut up. Should he leave the machine
and run for it? Or should he go back and tell them their infernal
maps were all wrong, there was no fork in the road? No--for there at
last was the fork, and after Jimmie had ridden and run a hundred
yards farther, there was a wheat-field, and a line of woods, and at
the edge of it four guns belching flame and smoke and racket. Jimmie
stood his machine in a ditch and went tearing across the fields,
wild with relief, because he had found his “Botteree Normb Cott”,
and could hand over his precious packet and get out of this mess as
fast as two wheels would take him.
But to his dismay he found that it wasn't the French battery, it was
an American battery; the French battery was farther ahead, and a
little to the right; the officer gave directions, taking it entirely
for granted that Jimmie would go on to his goal.
But then came another officer. “What have you got there?” And when
Jimmie answered maps, he demanded them; he seemed as greedy for maps
as a child for his gifts on Christmas morning. He ripped open the
packet--what is called “cutting red tape” in the army--and spread
out the papers and began to call out figures to another officer who
sat on a camp stool at a little folding table, with many sheets of
figures in front of him. This officer went on noting down the
information--and the men at the guns went on shoving in shells and
stepping back while the screaming messengers were hurled upon their
way. In the rear were other men, wheeling up ammunition, unloading
one of the big camions which Jimmie had been dodging on the roads.
It was a regular factory, set up there in the middle of the fields,
dispatching destruction to the unseen foe.
“We're having the hell of a time,” remarked the officer, as he
folded up the maps again and handed them to Jimmie. “Our wires have
been cut three times in the last half-hour, and we have to shoot
blind.”
“Where are the Germans?” asked Jimmie.
“Somewhere up ahead there.”
“Have you seen them?”
“Good Lord, no! We hope to move before they're that near!”
Jimmie felt a bit reassured by the quiet, business-like demeanour of
all the men in this death-factory. If they could stand the racket,
no doubt he could; only, they were all together, while he had to go
off by himself. Jimmie wished he had enlisted in the artillery!
He shoved the maps into the inside pocket of his jacket, and chased
back to his machine and set out. He took a side-path as directed,
and then a wood-road--and then he got lost. That was all there was
to it--he was hopelessly lost! The path didn't behave at all as the
one he was looking for. It went through a long stretch of woods with
shattered trees lying this way and that; then it crossed a field of
grain, and then it plunged down into a ravine, and climbed to the
other side, and up a ridge and down again. “Hell!” said Jimmie to
himself. And if you could imagine all the noises in all the
boiler-factories in America, you would have something less than the
racket in that wood through which Jimmie was wandering, saying
“Hell!” to himself.
V
He got to the top of the ridge, puffing and panting and dripping
perspiration; and there suddenly he jumped from his machine and ran
with it behind a tree-trunk and stood anxiously peering out. There
were men ahead; and what sort of men? Jimmie tried to remember the
pictures of Germans he had seen, and did they look like this? The
air was full of smoke, which made it hard to decide; but gradually
Jimmie made out one group, dragging a machine-gun on wheels; they
placed it behind a ridge of ground, and began to shoot in the
direction of Germany. So Jimmie advanced, but with hesitation, not
wanting to interfere with the aiming of the gun, which was making a
noise like a riveting machine, only faster and louder. It had a big
round cylinder for a barrel, and the men were feeding it with long
strips of cartridges out of a box, and were so intent on the process
that they paid no attention whatever to Jimmie. He stood and stared,
spellbound. For these creatures seemed not men, but hairy monsters
out of caves-ragged, plastered with mud, grimed and smoke-blackened,
with their faces drawn, their teeth shining like the teeth of angry
dogs. Jimmie forgot all about the enemy, he saw only this roaring,
flame-vomiting machine and the men who were a part of it.
Suddenly one of the men leaped up, a little hairier and a little
blacker than the rest, and shouted, “Ah derry-air! Ah derry-air!”
And the gun stopped roaring and vomiting flame, and the men laid
hold and began to tug and strain to draw it back. The leader
continued exhorting them; until suddenly an amazing thing
happened--right in the midst of his shouting, the whole of his mouth
and lower jaw disappeared. You did not see what became of it--it
just vanished into nothingness, and there in the place of it was a
red cavern, running blood. The man stood with his startled eyes
shining white in his black and hairy face, and gurgling noises
coming out--as if he thought he was still shouting, or could if he
tried harder.
The others paid not the least attention to this episode; they
continued tugging at the gun. And would you believe it, the man with
no mouth and jaw fell to helping again! The wheels struck a rise in
the ground, and he waved his hands in impotent excitement, and then
rushed at Jimmie, exposing to the horrified little machinist the
full ghastliness of that red cavern running blood.
Jimmie tried his magic formula: “Botteree Normb Cott.” But the man
waved his hands frantically and grabbed Jimmie by the arm--the very
incarnation of that Monster of Militarism which the little machinist
had been dodging for four years! He pushed Jimmie towards the gun,
and the other men shouted: “Asseestay!” So of course there was
nothing for Jimmie to do but lay hold and tug with the rest.
Presently they got the wheels to moving, and rolled the thing up the
ridge. A wagon came bumping through the woods, and the men at the
gun gave a gasp which was meant to be a cheer, and one of them laid
hold of Jimmie again, crying: “Portay! Portay!” He dragged out a
heavy box and loaded it into Jimmie's arms and carried another
himself, and so in a few moments the machine-gun was drumming, and
Jimmie went on carrying boxes. The men who were driving the wagon
leaped upon the horses and drove away; and still Jimmie carried
boxes, blindly, desperately. Was it because he was afraid of the
little French demon who was shouting at him? No, not exactly,
because when he went back with a box he saw the little demon
suddenly double up like a jack-knife and fall forward. He did not
make a sound, he did not even kick; he lay with his face in the dirt
and leaves--and Jimmie ran back for another box.
VI
He did it because he understood that the Germans were coming. He had
not seen them; but when the gun fell silent he heard whining sounds
in the air, as if from a litter of elephantine puppies. Sometimes
the twigs of trees fell on him, the dirt in front of him flew up
into his face; and always, of course, everywhere about him was that
roar of bursting shells which he had come to accept as a natural
part of life. And suddenly another man went down, and another--there
were only two left, and one of them signalled to Jimmie what to do,
and Jimmie did not say a word, he just went to work and learned to
run a machine-gun by the method favoured by modern educators--by
doing.
Presently the man who was aiming the gun clapped his hand to his
forehead and fell backwards. Jimmie was at his side, and the gun was
shooting--so what more natural than for Jimmie to move into position
and look along the sights? It was a fact that he had never aimed any
sort of gun in his life before; but he was apt with machinery--and
disposed to meddle into things, as we know.
Jimmie looked along the sights; and suddenly it seemed as if the
line of distant woods leaped into life, the bushes vomiting grey
figures which ran forward, and fell down, and then leaped up and ran
and fell down again. “Eel vienn!” hissed the man at Jimmie's side.
So Jimmie moved the gun here and there, pointing it wherever he saw
the grey figures.
Did he kill any Germans? He was never entirely sure in his own mind;
always the idea pursued him that may be he had been making a fool of
himself, shooting bullets into the ground or up into the air--and
the poilus at his side thinking he must know all about it, because
he was one of those wonderful Americans who had come across the seas
to save la belle France! The Germans kept falling, but that proved
nothing, for that was the method of their advance, anyway, and
Jimmie had no time to count and see how many fell and how many got
up again. All he knew was that they kept coming--more and more of
them, and nearer and nearer, and the Frenchmen muttered curses, and
the gun hammered and roared, until the barrel grew so hot that it
burned. And then suddenly it stopped dead!
“Sockray!” cried the two Frenchmen, and began frantically working to
take the gun to pieces; but before they had worked a minute one of
them clapped his hand to his side and fell back with a cry, and a
second later Jimmie felt a frightful blow on his left arm, and when
he tried to lift it and see what was wrong, half of it hung loose,
and blood ran out of his sleeve!
VII
That was too much for the remaining Frenchman. He caught Jimmie by
the other arm, exclaiming “Vennay! Vennay!” Apparently that meant to
run away; Jimmie didn't want to run away, but the Frenchman
chattered so fast, and tugged so hard, and Jimmie was half-dazed
anyhow with pain, so he let himself be dragged back. And presently
they came to a dead soldier lying with a gun by his side, and the
Frenchman grabbed the gun and unstrapped the cartridge belt, and
then threw himself down behind a big rock. Jimmie remembered the
automatic which he had strapped at his waist; he held it out to the
Frenchman, shaking his head and saying, “No savvy! No work!”--as if
he thought the Frenchman would understand bad English better than
good English! But the Frenchman understood the head-shaking, and
showed Jimmie how to move the little catch which released the
trigger for firing. With hasty fingers he tore off the sleeve of
Jimmie's shirt, and bound up his arm tightly with a bandage from his
kit; then he raised up over the rock and cursed the sockray Bosh and
began to fire. Jimmie got up the nerve to peer out, and there were
the grey figures, much nearer now, and he knew they were Germans
because they were like the pictures he had seen. They were running
at him, firing as they came, and Jimmie fired his revolver, shutting
his eyes because he was scared of it. But then, finding that it
behaved all right, he fired again, and this time he did not close
his eyes, because he saw a big German running straight towards him,
the fury of battle in his face. It was plain what this German meant
to do--to leap on Jimmie with his sharp bayonet; and somehow Jimmie
never once thought of his pacifist arguments--he fired, and saw the
German fall, and was murderously glad at the sight.
There were shots from behind him; apparently there had been a lot of
Frenchmen hidden in these woods, and the enemy was not finding it
easy to advance. Jimmie's companion jumped up and ran again, and
Jimmie followed, and a hundred yards or so back they came to a
shell-hole with half a dozen poilus in it. Jimmy tumbled in, and the
men chattered at him, and gave him more cartridges, so that when the
Germans appeared again he did his part. A bullet took a lump of hair
off his temple, and shrapnel exploding near by almost split his
ear-drums; but still he went on shooting. His heart was really in
the job now, he was going to stop these Bosh or bust. With five
Frenchmen, two of them wounded, he held the shell-hole for an hour;
one of them ran back and staggered up with a supply of ammunition,
and loaded up a rifle for Jimmie, and laid it so that he could
manage it with one hand. So Jimmie went on shooting, half-dead,
half-blind, half-choked with powder smoke.
The sockray Bosh made another charge, and this was the end, every
man in the shell-hole knew. There were literally swarms of the grey
figures, their bullets came like a shower of hail. Jimmie decided to
wait till the enemy was near enough for him to aim the revolver with
effect. He crouched, watching a Frenchman with the life-blood oozing
out of a hole in his chest; then he raised up and emptied his
automatic, and still there were Germans rushing on.
Jimmie was so very tired now, he really did not care very much what
happened; he knelt in the hole, looking up, and suddenly he saw the
huge figure of a German looming above him, his rifle poised. Jimmie
closed his eyes and waited for the blow, and suddenly the German
came down with a crash on top of him.
Jimmie thought for sure he must be dead; he lay wondering, was this
immortality? But it did not seem like either heaven or hell as he
had imagined them, and gradually he realized that the German was
writhing and moaning. Jimmie wriggled from under, and looked up,
just in time to see another German loom over the shell-hole and
pitch forward and hit on his face.
It was evident that somebody farther back was attending to these
Germans; so Jimmie lay still, with a feeble flicker of hope in his
heart. The rattle of shots went on, a battle that lasted ten or
fifteen minutes, but Jimmie was too tired to peer out and see how
matters were going. Presently he heard someone running up behind
him, and he looked around and up, and saw two men jump into the
shell-hole. He took one glance, and his heart leaped. The doughboys!
VIII
Yes, sir, there were two doughboys in the shell-hole! Jimmie had
seen so many tens of thousands of them that he had no doubt.
Compared with the war-battered poilus, they were like soldiers out
of a fashion-plate: smooth-shaven, with long chins and thin lips,
and a thousand other details which made you realize that home was
home, and better than any other place in the world. And oh, the
beautiful business-like precision of these fashion-plate soldiers!
They never said a word, they never even glanced about; they just
threw themselves down at the edge of the shell-hole, and leaned
their rifles over and set to work. You didn't need to see--you could
tell from the look on these men's faces that they were hitting
something!
Presently came two more, leaping in. Without so much as as a nod of
greeting, they settled down and went to shooting; and when they had
used up most of their cartridges, one of them got up and shouted to
the rear, and there came a man running with a fresh supply in a big
pouch.
Later on came three more with rifles. Apparently there were not so
many Germans now, for these new-comers found time for words. “They
told us to hold a line back there,” said one. “But hell!”
“There's more Huns up ahead,” said another. “Let's get 'em.”
“Just as well now as later,” said a third.
“You stay behind and get that finger tied up,” said the first
speaker; but the other told him to go and get his own fingers tied
up.
Then one of them looked about and spied Jimmie. “Why, here's a
Yank!” he cried. “What you doin' here?”
Jimmie answered: “I'm a motor-cycle man, and they sent me with maps
for a battery, but I think it's been captured long ago.”
“You're wounded,” said the other.
“It ain't much,” said Jimmie, apologetically. “It was a long time
ago, anyhow.”
“Well, you go back,” said the doughboy. “We're here now--it'll be
all right.” He said it, not boastingly, but as a simple matter of
fact. He was a mere boy, a rosy-cheeked kid with a little ugly
pug-nose covered with freckles, and a wide, grinning mouth. But to
Jimmie he seemed just the loveliest boy that had ever come out of
the U.S.A. “Can you walk?” he asked.
“Sure!” said Jimmie.
“And these Frenchies?” The doughboy looked at the others. “You savvy
their lingo?” When Jimmie shook his head, he turned to the
battle-worn hairy ones. “You fellows go back,” he said. “We don't
need you now.” When they stared uncomprehending, he asked: “Polly
voo Francy?”
“We, we!” cried they in one voice.
“Well, then,” said the doughboy, “go back! Go home! Toot sweet! Have
sleep! Rest! We lick 'em Heinies!” As the poilus did not show much
grasp of this kind of “Francy”, the doughboy boosted them to their
feet, pointed to the rear, patted them on the back, and grinned with
his wide mouth. “Good boy! Go home! American! American!”--as if that
was enough to make clear that the work of France in this war was
done! The poilus looked over the top of the shell-hole, and saw a
swarm of those new fashion-plate soldiers, darting forward through
the woods, throwing themselves down and shooting at the sockray
Bosh. They looked at the rosy-cheeked boy with the grateful faces of
dogs, and shouldered their packs and rifles and set out for the
rear, helping Jimmie, who suddenly found himself very weak, and with
a splitting headache.
IX
These doughboys had a song that Jimmie had heard all the time: “The
Yanks are coming!” And now the song needed to be rewritten: “The
Yanks are here!” All these woods through which Jimmie had blundered
with his motor-cycle were now swarming with nice, new, clean-shaven,
freshly-tailored soldier-boys, turned loose to get their first
chance at the Hun. Four years they had been reading about him and
hating him, a year and a half they had been getting ready to hit
him--and now at last they were turned loose and told to go to it!
Back on the roads was an endless procession of motor-trucks, with
doughboys, and also marines, or “leather-necks”, as they were
called. They had started at four o'clock that morning, and ridden
all day packed in like sardines; and here, a mile or two back in the
woods, the trucks had come to a halt, and the sardines had jumped
out and gone into this war!
Jimmie did not realize till long afterwards what a world-drama he
had been witnessing. For four months the Beast had been driving at
Paris; irresistibly, incessantly, eating his way like a forest fire,
spreading ever wider and more fearful desolation--this Beast with
the Brains of an Engineer! The world had shuddered and held its
breath, knowing that if he got to Paris it would mean the end of the
war, and of all things that free men value. And now here he made his
last supreme rush, and the French lines wavered and cracked and gave
way; and so in this desperate crisis they had brought up the
truck-loads of doughboys for their first real test against the
Beast.
The orders had been to hold at all hazards; but that had not been
enough for the doughboys, they and the leather-necks had seized the
offensive and sent the Germans reeling back. The very pride of the
Prussian army had been worsted by these new troops from overseas, at
whom they had mocked, whose very existence they had scouted.
It was a blow from which “Fritz” never recovered; he never gained
another foot, and it was the beginning of a retreat that did not
stop until it reached the Rhine. And the Yanks had done it--the
Yanks, with the help of Jimmie Higgins! For Jimmie had got there
first; Jimmie had held the fort while the Yanks were coming! Yes,
truly; if he hadn't stuck by that machine-gun and helped to work it,
if he hadn't hid in that shell-hole, emptying the contents of a
rifle and an automatic pistol into the charging Huns, if he hadn't
held them up that precious hour--why, they might have swept over
this position, and the Yanks might not have had a chance to deploy,
and the victory of “Chatty Terry” might not have gone resounding
down the ages! The whole course of the world's history might have
been different, if one little Socialist machinist from Leesville,
U.S.A., had not chanced to be wandering through “Bellow Wood” in
search of a fabulous and never-discovered “Botteree Normb Cott!”