REPRISALS
“Billy, you aren’t kilt entirely, eh? Well, then, hop out and crank
her; maybe that volcano didn’t stall her. We’ll turn round, if she
runs, and hunt for those stretcher chaps; guess we can find ’em. Say,
I’ll bet they’re sorry they saw us coming.”
“No, for here they come again! It could not have reached them. Oooh,
but wasn’t it a daisy? For about one second I longed to be back in
the good, old United States. Hah! Wait till I spin her. There she
goes as fine as a hand organ!”
Don backed and turned the car; then the lads went to the German.
“Well, Fritz, feel better?” Don asked, speaking English.
No answer; a blank stare. Billy comprehended and at once got some
fun out of the incident. It was a funereal affair that didn’t have a
humorous side for him. He held his spread hand, palm down, over his
head, moved it about like the flying of an airplane, pointed to it
and to the Hun with his other finger; then making the hand take a big
drop through the air and double up on the ground again pointed to the
airman. The latter understood at once and scowled at his combined
rescuers and captors; then flopped back on the stretcher. The boys
restored him to his place in the car and turned to meet the men
from the dressing-station. They all looked fagged out, tired beyond
endurance. As a matter of fact, they were to keep on many more hours
longer. Their conversation was brief, but to the point.
“Red Cross? Get these men back as quickly as you can and return at
once. We are in an _abri_ there by the woods. Tell Major Little that
the lieutenant wants more ambulances right away. We have eleven
wounded; two ‘going West.’”
“All right, I’ll put the juice to her, Sergeant?” Don saw the three
bent stripes on the man’s sleeve. The four shifted the wounded, one
of whom was unconscious, to the unfolded white stretchers of the car,
strapped them down, folded their own brown army stretchers and turned
back.
“What does he mean by ‘going West’?” Billy whispered, as they got
under way.
“Dying,” replied Don. “Guess it’s an Indian phrase--‘toward the
setting sun.’ Poor chaps!”
“O my! I’m afraid one of these,” Billy pointed his thumb over his
shoulder, “won’t stay ‘East’ long. I hope he does, but you see, I
really ought to study medicine. I get hunches about that sort of
thing, you know.”
They flew over the even ground, and moved slowly over the rough.
Again in the farm road they were swiftly passing the house when a cry
from one of their passengers arrested their attention. It was a cry
for water.
Don pressed down his brake and turned to Billy. “That canteen--” he
began.
“I think that a real cold drink,” suggested the young man, “would do
more good. Oughtn’t they to have a well here? Suppose I see.”
“We’ll both go and get a pull, too; then bring some back. Come on!”
Don said.
The quaint little half-stone domicile, in the very midst of this
shell-torn area, faced directly east; the rear was, therefore, away
and thus somewhat sheltered from the enemy’s lines. There had been a
French or American dressing station in the front room, but a German
77-m. shell had come along and demolished the wall and a portion of
the interior. The boys quickly passed under the newly leafing fruit
trees, where bird arrivals were singing, and reached the rear of the
house. Here, in the mellowing spring-time warmth, an old woman and an
old man were sitting; the one on the door step, the other, upon an
ancient stone seat, leaning his head on his cane. By the side of the
old woman’s knee a little child of about four years gazed up at the
visitors with wide-open, blue eyes.
Don, knowing no French and forgetting that Billy knew a little,
resorted to pantomime. He made a cup of his hand and lifted it to
his lips; the old man pronounced the word water very distinctly and
pointed to a well-sweep among the shrubbery. While Don drew forth
a moss-covered bucket of water that looked sparkling, Billy was
recalling his school-day language and getting information. Yes, the
old couple were trusting in the mercy of a Higher Power; if it were
His will to take them, well and good, but they hoped it would be
quick and without suffering. Rather than leave their lifetime abode,
where they had always known comfort and happiness, they would risk
the present dangers, which they hardly seemed to realize. They would
dare almost anything rather than wander to strange regions.
And here was little Marie, happy with her grandparents, though her
father had died in the war and her mother from grief and illness
soon after. Well, the good General Foch, now that he had been made
commander of all the armies, would soon chase the wicked boches away.
The French would fight on forever, and so would the good English. And
then the Americans were coming, they said. Were the young men English?
American! “_Vive l’ Amerique!_” Ah, it was good to see them. And how
soon, oh, how soon would the great army arrive and rid France, dear,
suffering, half-destroyed France, from the wicked, hateful boches?
“_A bas les boches!_”
Don had taken water to the wounded men, two of whom received it
eagerly; the other lay in a stupor. The passengers, the boy now saw,
were two Frenchman, besides the German airman.
“Come on, Billy!” Don called, and shaking hands with the old people
and lifting the child for a kiss, hastened away. As he leaped into
the machine and Billy ran to the front end, grasping the crank, they
heard again, now not high overhead, the roar of a flying motor and
there came an airplane, marked with the black Maltese cross, sailing
across their road and very nearly over them.
“I guess he can see our Red Cross sign,” Billy said, but Don, having
heard many stories, was taking no chances; he started and flew
swiftly down the road. Blam! Something exploded far behind them
and to one side of the road. Again, within a few seconds, another
detonation, much nearer, came to their ears. Billy was craning his
neck out of the side of the car.
“He’s after us! Would you think it? I suspect he’ll get us, too,
unless we beat him out to the soldiers. They’ve got anti-aircraft
guns, haven’t they, Don?”
“Sure, and he’s got to go some. Just watch us!”
It was a race for a few seconds, though the airman must have been
wary, flying low as he did. He could not gain on the car, and soon,
with a long sweep, he was turning back, flying now even lower. Where
were the Allied airmen? Not one in sight! As Don neared the main
road again and reached the little hillock he slowed up, on hearing
the crack of light artillery in the fields. The anti-aircraft guns
had got busy and the Hun had reason to keep his distance. But if he
was foiled in his attempt to wreck an Allied Red Cross ambulance he
surely meant to find some prey for his perverted desire to destroy.
He had seen the place from where the ambulance had started as he
approached; certainly there must be a dressing station in the little
farm house.
Billy, looking back then, saw it. The murderous Hun flew lower still
over the spot of peacefulness and beauty; if he had any sense of
pastoral loveliness, hate and the German desire for mastery had
drowned it all. Something falling straight down from the airplane
passed exactly over the little stone and frame dwelling and then a
great column of flame, of black and gray smoke, of stones and bits
of splintered wood leaped upward and sunk to earth again. A cloud of
smoke and dust drifted away in the wind.
“Oh, Don! The house, the old people, the little girl!” said Billy
with a sob, and Don, clamping down his brakes, gazed at his
companion. It was the first time he had seen him with anything
different from a smile on his gentle face, even when danger was
literally heaped up in front of them. But now the young man’s soft
eyes had a horror in them and a gray pallor had taken the place of
the pink, almost girlish complexion.
Don looked back and saw the holocaust wrought by the Hun.
“That--that murderous devil!” he exclaimed.
The wounded airman in the car turn his face toward Don and made a
remark in German, probably not expecting it to be understood. Don
replied in German:
“One of your airmen has blown up the little farmhouse where we got
the drink! No doubt the good people are killed!”
“But it is war and a good hit is to be praised. Besides, these
degenerate French--”
Don turned on the fellow with the glare of an angry wildcat; in his
excitement his German mostly gave way to English.
“What’s that? _You teufel! You_ say that! And when we are treating
you decently? Well, we shall just fix you, you--!”
“Oooh, Don! Look, look!”
The airman had once more turned about, evidently to fly back over
his work of destruction to feast his eyes on its completeness. Then
he met his Waterloo. The long swerves took him beyond and near the
woods, where a French 75, aimed by a cool-headed American gunner
barked upward just once. With a burst of flame the airplane pitched
to the earth. The brutal driver, who refused to respect an ambulance,
a supposed dressing station, or the modest home of non-combatants,
was probably strapped on his seat and unable to extricate himself
went down to the most horrible of deaths.
“Ah, he got his, all righty!” Don shouted; then turning: “And here’s
another who’s going to get his! Billy, this Hun, this skunk here, is
praising the act of that devil! We’ll just dump him out and let him
lie here and suffer and bleed to death. Come on; give a hand!”
“No, no, Don! You can’t mean that. It would not be humane.”
“Humane? I’d be humane to a dog, a cat, a worm even, I hope, but not
to a thing like this. Come--!”
“‘As they should do unto you’, Don. I know this is war and he’s a
Hun, but it’s all the more of an excuse that he is only partly
human; he doesn’t know any better and he has feelings, some. Let’s
go on, Don, please, now.” Don leaped to his seat with Billy and they
continued on their way.