Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
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[Illustration: TOM TURNED ON HIS SEARCHLIGHT AND SAW A GERMAN SOLDIER,
HATLESS AND COATLESS. Frontispiece (Page 8)]
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TOM SLADE
MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH-BEARER
BY PERCY K. FITZHUGH
AUTHOR OF
TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT, TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE CAMP, TOM SLADE ON THE RIVER,
TOM SLADE WITH THE COLORS, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY R. EMMETT OWEN
PUBLISHED WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK.
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Copyright, 1918, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface vii
I. For Service as Required 1
II. Aid and Comfort to the Enemy 8
III. The Old Compass 14
IV. The Old Familiar Faces 20
V. Getting Ready 25
VI. Over the Top 36
VII. A Shot 45
VIII. In the Woods 50
IX. The Mysterious Fugitive 57
X. The Jersey Snipe 62
XI. On Guard 68
XII. What's In a Name? 73
XIII. The Fountains of Destruction 79
XIV. Tom Uses His First Bullet 84
XV. The Gun Pit 89
XVI. Prisoners 97
XVII. Shades of Archibald Archer 105
XVIII. The Big Coup 111
XIX. Tom is Questioned 119
XX. The Major's Papers 127
XXI. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere 133
XXII. "Uncle Sam" 140
XXIII. Up a Tree 150
XXIV. "To Him That Overcometh" 156
XXV. "What You Have to Do--" 162
XXVI. A Surprise 169
XXVII. Smoke and Fire 175
XXVIII. "Made in Germany" 184
XXIX. "Now You See It, Now You Don't" 194
XXX. He Disappears 205
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PREFACE
It was good advice that Rudyard Kipling gave his "young British soldier"
in regard to the latter's rifle:
"She's human as you are--you treat her as sich
And she'll fight for the young British soldier."
Tommy Atkins' rifle was by no means the first inanimate or dumb thing to
prove human and to deserve human treatment. Animals of all sorts have
been given this quality. Jack London's dog, in _The Call of the Wild_,
has human interest. So has the immortal _Black Beauty_.
But we are not concerned with animals now. Kipling's ocean liner has
human interest--a soul. I need not tell you that a boat is human. Its
every erratic quality of crankiness, its veritable heroism under stress,
its temperament (if you like that word) makes it very human indeed. That
is why a man will often let his boat rot rather than sell it.
This is not true of all inanimate things. It depends. I have never heard
of a steam roller or a poison gas bomb being beloved by anybody. I
should not care to associate with a hand grenade. It is a matter of
taste; I dare say I could learn to love a British tank, but I could
never make a friend and confidante of a balloon. An aeroplane might
prove a good pal--we shall have to see.
Davy Crockett actually made a friend and confidante of his famous gun,
_Betsy_. And _Betsy_ is known in history. It is said that the gun crews
on armed liners have found this human quality in their guns, and many of
these have been given names--_Billy Sunday_, _Teddy Roosevelt_, etc.
I need not tell you that a camp-fire is human and that trees are human.
The pioneers of old, pressing into the dim wilderness, christened their
old flintlocks and talked to them as a man may talk to a man. The
woodsman's axe was "deare and greatly beloved," we are told.
The hard-pressed Indian warrior knelt in the forest and besought that
life-long comrade, his bow, not to desert or fail him. King Philip kept
in his quiver a favorite arrow which he never used because it had
earned retirement by saving his own life.
What Paul Revere may have said to his horse in that stirring midnight
ride we do not know. But may we not suppose that he urged his trusty
steed forward with resolute and inspiring words about the glorious
errand they were upon?
Perhaps the lonely ringer of the immortal bell up in the Old South
steeple muttered some urgent word of incentive to that iron clanger as
it beat against its ringing wall of brass.
So I have made _Uncle Sam_, the motorcycle, the friend and companion of
_Tom Slade_. I have withheld none of their confidences--or trifling
differences. I dare say they were both weary and impatient at times.
If he is not companionable to you, then so much the worse for you and
for our story. But he was the friend, the inseparable associate and
co-patriot of _Tom Slade, the Dispatch Rider_.
You will not like him any the less because of the noise he made in
trudging up a hill, or because his mud-guard was broken off, or his tire
wounded in the great cause, or his polished headlight knocked into a tin
can. You will not ridicule the old splint of a shingle which was bound
with such surgical nicety among his rusting spokes. If you do, then you
are the kind of a boy who would laugh at a wounded soldier and you had
better not read this book.
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TOM SLADE
MOTORCYCLE DISPATCH-BEARER
CHAPTER I
FOR SERVICE AS REQUIRED
Swiftly and silently along the moonlit road sped the dispatch-rider. Out
of the East he had come, where the battle line runs between blue
mountains and the country is quiet and peaceful, and the boys in khaki
long for action and think wistfully of Picardy and Flanders. He was a
lucky young fellow, this dispatch-rider, and all the boys had told him
so.
"We'll miss you, Thatchy," they had said.
And "Thatchy" had answered characteristically, "I'm sorry, too, kind of,
in a way."
His name was not Thatchy, but they had called him so because his thick
shock of light hair, which persisted in falling down over his forehead
and ears, had not a little the appearance of the thatched roofs on the
French peasant's cottages. He, with a loquacious young companion, had
blown into the Toul sector from no one seemed to know exactly where,
more than that he had originally been a ship's boy, had been in a German
prison camp, and had escaped through Alsace and reached the American
forces after a perilous journey.
Lately he had been running back and forth on his motorcycle between the
lines and points south in a region which had not been defiled by the
invader, but now he was going far into the West "for service as
required."
That was what the slip of paper from headquarters had said, and he did
not speculate as to what those services would be, but he knew that they
would not be exactly holding Sunday-School picnics in the neighborhood
of Montdidier. Billy Brownway, machine gunner, had assured Thatchy that
undoubtedly he was wanted to represent the messenger service on the War
Council at Versailles. But Thatchy did not mind that kind of talk.
West of Revigny, he crossed the old trench line, and came into the area
which the Blond Beast had crossed and devastated in the first year of
the war. Planks lay across the empty trenches and as he rode over first
the French and then the enemy ditches, he looked down and could see in
the moonlight some of the ghastly trophies of war. Somehow they affected
him more than had the fresher results of combat which he had seen even
in the quiet sector he had left.
Silently he sped along the thirty-mile stretch from Revigny to Châlons,
where a little group of French children pressed about him when he paused
for gasoline.
"Yankee!" they called, chattering at him and meddling with his machine.
"Le cheveu!" one brazen youngster shouted, running his hand through his
own hair by way of demonstrating Thatchy's most conspicuous
characteristic.
Thatchy poked him good-humoredly. "La route, est-belle bonne?" he asked.
The child nodded enthusiastically, while the others broke out laughing
at Thatchy's queer French, and poured a verbal torrent at him by way of
explaining that the road to the South would take him through Vertus and
Montmirail, while the one to the north led to Epernay.
"I'll bump my nose into the salient if I take that one," he said more
to himself than to them, but one little fellow, catching the word
_salient_ took a chance on _nose_ and jumped up and down in joyous
abandon, calling, "Bump le nez--le _salient_!" apparently in keen
appreciation of the absurdity of the rider's phrase.
He rode away with a clamoring chorus behind him and he heard one brazen
youngster boldly mimicking his manner of asking if the roads were good.
These children lived in tumble-down houses which were all but ruins, and
played in shell holes as if these cruel, ragged gaps in the earth had
been made by the kind Boche for their especial entertainment.
A mile or two west of Châlons the rider crossed the historic Marne on a
makeshift bridge built from the materials of a ruined house and the
remnants of the former span.
On he sped, along the quiet, moonlit road, through the little village of
Thibie, past many a quaint old heavily-roofed brick cottage, over the
stream at Chaintrix and into Vertus, and along the straight, even
stretch of road for Montmirail. Not so long ago he might have gone from
Châlons in a bee-line from Montdidier, but the big, ugly salient stuck
out like a huge snout now, as if it were sniffing in longing
anticipation at that tempting morsel, Paris; so he must circle around it
and then turn almost straight north.
At La Ferte, among the hills, he paused at a crossroads and, alighting
from his machine, stood watching as a long, silent procession of wagons
passed by in the quiet night, moving southward. He knew now what it
meant to go into the West. One after another they passed in deathlike
stillness, the Red Cross upon the side of each plainly visible in the
moonlight. As he paused, the rider could hear the thunder of great guns
in the north. Many stretchers, borne by men afoot, followed the wagons
and he could hear the groans of those who tossed restlessly upon them.
"Look out for shell holes," he heard someone say. So there were
Americans in the fighting, he thought.
He ran along the edge of the hills now on the fifteen-mile stretch to
Meaux, where he intended to follow the road northward through Senlis and
across the old trenches near Clermont. He could hear the booming all the
while, but it seemed weary and spent, like a runner who has slackened
his pace and begun to pant.
At Meaux he crossed the path of another silent cavalcade of stretchers
and ambulances and wounded soldiers who were being supported as they
limped along. They spoke in French and one voice came out of an
ambulance, seeming hollow and far off, as though from a grave. Then came
a lot of German prisoners tramping along, some sullen and some with a
fine air of bravado sneering at their guards.
The rider knew where he was going and how to get there and he did not
venture any inquiries either as to his way or what had been going on.
Happenings in Flanders and Picardy are known in America before they are
known to the boys in Alsace. He knew there was fighting in the West and
that Fritz had poked a big bulge into the French line, for his superiors
had given him a road map with the bulge pencilled upon it so that he
might go around it and not bump his nose into it, as he had said. But he
had not expected to see such obvious signs of fighting and it made him
realize that at last he was getting into the war with a vengeance.
Instead of following the road leading northwest out of Meaux, he took
the one leading northeast up through Villers-Cotterets, intending to run
along the edge of the forest to Campiegne and then verge westward to
the billet villages northwest of Montdidier, where he was to report.
This route brought him within ten miles of the west arm of the salient,
but the way was quiet and there was no sign of the fighting as he rode
along in the woody solitude. It reminded him of his home far back in
America and of the woods where he and his scout companions had camped
and hiked and followed the peaceful pursuits of stalking and trailing.
He was thinking of home as he rode leisurely along the winding forest
road, when suddenly he was startled by a rustling sound among the trees.
"Who goes there?" he demanded in pursuance of his general instructions
for such an emergency, at the same time drawing his pistol. "Halt!"
He was the scout again now, keen, observant. But there was no answer to
his challenge and he narrowed his eyes to mere slits, peering into the
tree-studded solitude, waiting.
Then suddenly, close by him he heard that unmistakable sound, the
clanking of a chain, and accompanying it a voice saying, "Kamerad."
CHAPTER TWO
AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY
Tom Slade, dispatch-rider, knew well enough what _kamerad_ meant. He had
learned at least that much of German warfare and German honor, even in
the quiet Toul sector. He knew that the German olive branch was
poisoned; that German treachery was a fine art--a part of the German
efficiency. Had not Private Coleburn, whom Tom knew well, listened to
that kindly uttered word and been stabbed with a Prussian bayonet in the
darkness of No Man's Land?
"Stand up," said Tom. "Nobody can talk to _me_ crouching down like
that."
"Ach!" said the voice in the unmistakable tone of pain. "Vot goot--see!"
Tom turned on his searchlight and saw crawling toward him a German
soldier, hatless and coatless, whose white face seemed all the more pale
and ghastly for the smear of blood upon it. He was quite without arms,
in proof of which he raised his open hands and slapped his sides and
hips. As he did so a long piece of heavy chain, which was manacled to
his wrist clanged and rattled.
"Ach!" he said, shaking his head as if in agony.
"Put your hands down. All right," said Tom. "Can you speak English?"
"Kamerad," he repeated and shrugged his shoulders as if that were
enough.
"You escape?" said Tom, trying to make himself understood. "How did you
get back of the French lines?"
"Shot broke--yach," the man said, his face lapsing again into a hopeless
expression of suffering.
"All right," said Tom, simply. "Comrade--I say it too. All right?"
The soldier's face showed unmistakable relief through his suffering.
"Let's see what's the matter," Tom said, though he knew the other only
vaguely understood him. Turning the wheel so as the better to focus the
light upon the man, he saw that he had been wounded in the foot, which
was shoeless and bleeding freely, but that the chief cause of his
suffering was the raw condition of his wrist where the manacle
encircled it and the heavy chain pulled. It seemed to Tom as if this
cruel sore might have been caused by the chain dragging behind him and
perhaps catching on the ground as he fled.
"The French didn't put that on?" he queried, rather puzzled.
The soldier shook his head. "Herr General," said he.
"Not the Americans?"
"Herr General--gun."
Then suddenly there flashed into Tom's mind something he had heard about
German artillerymen being chained to their guns. So that was it. And
some French gunner, or an American maybe, had unconsciously set this
poor wretch free by smashing his chain with a shell.
"You're in the French lines," Tom said. "Did you mean to come here?
You're a prisoner."
"Ach, diss iss petter," the man said, only half understanding.
"Yes, I guess it is," said Tom. "I'll bind your foot up and then I'll
take that chain off if I can and bind your wrist. Then we'll have to
find the nearest dressing station. I suppose you got lost in this
forest. I been in the German forest myself," he added; "it's
fine--better than this. I got to admit they've got fine lakes there."
Whether he said this by way of comforting the stranger--though he knew
the man understood but little of it--or just out of the blunt honesty
which refused to twist everything German into a thing of evil, it would
be hard to say. He had about him that quality of candor which could not
be shaken even by righteous enmity.
Tearing two strips from his shirt, he used the narrower one to make a
tourniquet, which he tied above the man's ankle.
"If you haven't got poison in it, it won't be so bad," he said. "Now
I'll take off that chain."
He raised his machine upon its rest so that the power wheel was free of
the ground. Then, to the wounded Boche's puzzled surprise, he removed
the tire and fumbling in his little tool kit he took out a piece of
emery cloth which he used for cleaning his plugs and platinum contact
points, and bent it over the edge of the rim, binding it to the spokes
with the length of insulated wire which he always carried. It was a
crude and makeshift contrivance at best, but at last he succeeded, by
dint of much bending and winding and tying of the pliable copper wire
among the spokes of the wheel, in fastening the emery cloth over the
fairly sharp rim so that it stayed in place when he started his power
and in about two revolutions it cut a piece of wire with which he tested
the power of his improvised mechanical file.
"Often I sharpened a jackknife that way on the fly-wheel of a motor
boat," he said. The Boche did not understand him, but he was quick to
see the possibilities of this whirling hacksaw and he seemed to
acknowledge, with as much grace as a German may, the Yankee ingenuity of
his liberator.
"Give me your wrist," said Tom, reaching for it; "I won't hurt it any
more than I have to; here--here's a good scheme."
He carefully stuffed his handkerchief around under the metal band which
encircled the soldier's wrist and having thus formed a cushion to
receive the pressure and protect the raw flesh, he closed his switch
again and gently subjected the manacle to the revolving wheel, holding
it upon the edge of the concave tire bed.
If the emery cloth had extended all the way around the wheel he could
have taken the manacle off in less time than it had taken Kaiser Bill to
lock it on, for the contrivance rivalled a buzzsaw. As it was, he had
to stop every minute or two to rearrange the worn emery cloth and bind
it in place anew. But for all that he succeeded in less than fifteen
minutes in working a furrow almost through the metal band so that a
little careful manipulating and squeezing and pressing of it enabled him
to break it and force it open.
"There you are," he said, removing the handkerchief so as to get a
better look at the cruel sore beneath; "didn't hurt much, did it? That's
what Uncle Sam's trying to do for all the rest of you fellers--only you
haven't got sense enough to know it."
CHAPTER THREE
THE OLD COMPASS
Tom took the limping Boche, his first war prisoner, to the Red Cross
station at Vivieres where they had knives and scissors and bandages and
antiseptics, but nothing with which to remove Prussian manacles, and all
the king's horses and all the king's men and the willing, kindly nurses
there could have done little for the poor Boche if Tom Slade, alias
Thatchy, had not administered his own particular kind of first aid.
The French doctors sent him forth with unstinted praise which he only
half understood, and as he sped along the road for Compiegne he wondered
who could have been the allied gunner who at long range had cut Fritzie
loose from the piece of artillery to which he had been chained.
"That feller and I did a good job anyway," he thought.
At Compiegne the whole town was in a ferment as he passed through.
Hundreds of refugees with mule carts and wheelbarrows laden with their
household goods, were leaving the town in anticipation of the German
advance. They made a mournful procession as they passed out of the town
along the south road with babies crying and children clamoring about the
clumsy, overladen vehicles. He saw many boys in khaki here and there and
it cheered and inspired him to know that his country was represented in
the fighting. He had to pause in the street to let a company of them
pass by on their way northward to the trench line and it did his heart
good to hear their cheery laughter and typical American banter.
"Got any cigarettes, kiddo?" one called.
"Where you going--north?" asked another.
"To the billets west of Montdidier," Tom answered. "I'm for new service.
I came from Toul sector."
"Good-_night_! That's Sleepy Hollow over there."
From Compiegne he followed the road across the Aronde and up through
Mery and Tricot into Le Cardonnois. The roads were full of Americans and
as he passed a little company of them he called,
"How far is ----?" naming the village of his destination.
"About two miles," one of them answered; "straight north."
"Tell 'em to give 'em Hell," another called.
This laconic utterance was the first intimation which Tom had that
anything special was brewing in the neighborhood, and he answered with
characteristic literalness, "All right, I will."
The road northward from Le Cardonnois was through a hilly country, where
there were few houses. About half a mile farther on he reached the
junction of another road which appeared also to lead northward, verging
slightly in an easterly direction. He had made so many turns that he was
a little puzzled as to which was the true north road, so he stopped and
took out the trusty little compass which he always carried, and held it
in the glare of his headlight, thinking to verify his course.
Undoubtedly the westward road was the one leading to his destination for
as he walked a little way along the other road he found that it bent
still more to the eastward and he believed that it must reach the French
front after another mile or two.
As he looked again at the cheap, tin-encased compass he smiled a little
ruefully, for it reminded him of Archibald Archer, with whom he had
escaped from the prison camp in Germany and made his perilous flight
through the Black Forest into Switzerland and to the American forces
near Toul.
Archibald Archer! Where, in all that war-scourged country, was Archibald
Archer now, Tom wondered. No doubt, chatting familiarly with generals
and field marshals somewhere, in blithe disregard of dignity and
authority; for he was a brazen youngster and an indefatigable souvenir
hunter.
So vivid were Tom's thoughts of Archer that, being off his machine, he
sat down by the roadside to eat the rations which his anxiety to reach
his destination had deterred him from eating before.
"That's just like him," he thought, holding the compass out so that it
caught the subdued rays of his dimmed headlight; "always marking things
up, or whittling his initials or looking for souvenirs."
The particular specimen of Archer's handiwork which opened this train of
reminiscence was part and parcel of the mischievous habit which
apparently had begun very early in his career, when he renovated the
habiliments of the heroes and statesmen in his school geography by
pencilling high hats and sunbonnets on their honored heads and giving
them flowing moustaches and frock coats.
In the prison camp from which they had escaped he had carved his
initials on fence and shack, but his masterpiece was the conversion of
the N on this same glassless compass into a very presentable S (though
turned sideways) and the S into a very presentable N.
The occasion of his doing this was a singular experience the two boys
had had in their flight through Germany when, after being carried across
a lake on a floating island while asleep, they had swum back and
retraced their steps northward supposing that they were still going
south.
"Either we're wrong or the compass is wrong, Slady," the bewildered
Archer had said, and he had forthwith altered the compass points before
they discovered the explanation of their singular experience.
After reaching the American forces Archer had gone forth to more
adventures and new glories in the transportation department, the line of
his activities being between Paris and the coast, and Tom had seen him
no more. He had given the compass to Tom as a "souvenir," and Tom,
whose sober nature had found much entertainment in Archer's
sprightliness, had cherished it as such. It was useful sometimes, too,
though he had to be careful always to remember that it was the "wrong
way round."
"He'll turn up like a bad penny some day," he thought now, smiling a
little. "He said he'd bring me the clock from a Paris cathedral for a
souvenir, and he'd change the twelve to twenty-two on it."
He remembered that he had asked Archer _what_ cathedral in Paris, and
Archer had answered, "The Cathedral de la Plaster of Paris."
"He's a sketch," thought Tom.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES
"That's the way it is," thought Tom, "you get to know fellers and like
'em, and then you get separated and you don't see 'em any more."
Perhaps he was the least bit homesick, coming into this new sector where
all were strangers to him. In any event, as he sat there finishing his
meal he fell to thinking of the past and of the "fellers" he had known.
He had known a good many for despite his soberness there was something
about him which people liked. Most of his friends had taken delight in
jollying him and he was one of those boys who are always being nicknamed
wherever they go. Over in the Toul sector they "joshed" and "kidded" him
from morning till night but woe be to you if you had sought to harm him!
He had been sorry, in a way, to leave the Toul sector, just as he had
been sorry to leave Bridgeboro when he got his first job on a ship.
"That's one thing fellers can't understand," he thought, "how you can be
sorry about a thing and glad too. Girls understand better--I'll say that
much for 'em, even though I--even though they never had much use for
me----"
He fell to thinking of the scout troop of which he had been a member
away back in America, of Mr. Ellsworth, the scoutmaster, who had lifted
him out of the gutter, and of Roy Blakeley who was always fooling, and
Peewee Harris. Peewee must be quite a boy by now--not a tenderfootlet
any more, as Roy had called him.
And then there was Rossie Bent who worked in the bank and who had run
away the night before Registration Day, hoping to escape military
service. Tom fell to thinking of him and of how he had traced him up to
a lonely mountain top and made him go back and register just in time to
escape disgrace and punishment.
"He thought he was a coward till he got the uniform on," he thought.
"That's what makes the difference. I bet he's one of the bravest
soldiers over here now. Funny if I should meet him. I always liked him
anyway, even when people said he was conceited. Maybe he had a right to
be. If girls liked me as much as they did him maybe _I'd_ be conceited.
Anyway, I'd like to see him again, that's one sure thing."
When he had finished his meal he felt of his tires, gave his grease cup
a turn, mounted his machine and was off to the north for whatever
awaited him there, whether it be death or glory or just hard work; and
to new friends whom he would meet and part with, who doubtless would
"josh" him and make fun of his hair and tell him extravagant yarns and
belittle and discredit his soberly and simply told "adventures," and yet
who would like him nevertheless.
"That's the funny thing about some fellers," he thought, "you never can
tell whether they like you or not. Rossie used to say girls were hard to
understand, but, gee, I think fellers are harder!"
Swiftly and silently along the moonlit road he sped, the dispatch-rider
who had come from the blue hills of Alsace across the war-scorched area
into the din and fire and stenching suffocation and red-running streams
of Picardy "for service as required." Two miles behind the straining
line he rode and parallel with it, straight northward, keeping his keen,
steady eyes fixed upon the road for shell holes. Over to the east he
could hear the thundering boom of artillery and once the air just above
him seemed to buzz as if some mammoth wasp had passed. But he rode
steadily, easily, without a tremor.
When he dismounted in front of headquarters at the little village of his
destination his stolid face was grimy from his long ride and the dust of
the blue Alsatian mountains mingled with the dust of devastated France
upon his khaki uniform (which was proper and fitting) and his rebellious
hair was streaky and matted and sprawled down over his frowning
forehead.
A little group of soldiers gathered about him after he had given his
paper to the commanding officer, for he had come a long way and they
knew the nature of his present service if he did not. They watched him
rather curiously, for it was not customary to bring a dispatch-rider
from such a distance when there were others available in the
neighborhood. He was the second sensation of that memorable night, for
scarcely two hours before General Pershing himself had arrived and he
was at that very minute in conference with other officers in the little
red brick cottage. Even as the group of soldiers clustered about the
rider, officers hurried in and out with maps, and one young fellow, an
aviator apparently, suddenly emerged and hurried away.
"What's going to be doing?" Tom asked, taking notice of all these
activities and speaking in his dull way.
Evidently the boys had already taken his measure and formulated their
policy, for one answered,
"Peace has been declared and they're trying to decide whether we'd
better take Berlin or have it sent C.O.D."
"A soldier I met a couple of miles back," said Tom, "told me to tell you
to give 'em Hell."
It was characteristic of him that although he never used profanity he
delivered the soldier's message exactly as it had been given him.
CHAPTER FIVE
GETTING READY
Tom wheeled his machine over to a long brick cottage which stood flush
with the road and attended to it with the same care and affection as a
man might show a favorite horse. Then he sat down with several others on
a long stone bench and waited.
There was something in the very air which told him that important
matters were impending and though he believed that they had not expected
him to arrive just at this time he wondered whether he might not be
utilized now that he was here. So he sat quietly where he was, observant
of everything, but asking no questions.
There was a continuous stream of officers entering and emerging from the
headquarters opposite and twice within half an hour companies of
soldiers were brought into formation and passed silently away along the
dark road.
"You'll be in Germany in a couple of hours," called a private sitting
alongside Tom as some of them passed.
"Cantigny isn't Germany," another said.
"Sure it is," retorted a third; "all the land they hold is German soil.
Call us up when you get a chance," he added in a louder tone to the
receding ranks.
"Is Cantigny near here?" Tom asked.
"Just across the ditches."
"Are we going to try to take it?"
"_Try_ to? We're going to wrap it up and bring it home."
Tom was going to ask the soldier if he thought there would be any chance
for _him_, though he knew well enough that his business was behind the
lines and that the most he could hope for was to carry the good news (if
such it proved to be) still farther back, away from the fighting.
"This is going to be the first offensive of your old Uncle Samuel and if
we don't get the whole front page in the New York papers we'll be
peeved," Tom's neighbor condescended to inform him.
Whatever Uncle Samuel was up to he was certainly very busy about it and
very quiet. On the little village green which the cottage faced groups
of officers talked earnestly.
An enormous spool on wheels, which in the darkness seemed a mile high,
was rolled silently from somewhere or other, the wheels staked and bound
to the ground, and braces were erected against it. Very little sound was
made and there were no lights save in the houses, which seemed all to be
swarming with soldiers. Not a civilian was to be seen. Several soldiers
walked away from the big wheel and it moved around slowly like one of
those gigantic passenger-carrying wheels in an amusement resort.
Presently some one remarked that Collie was in and there was a hurrying
away--toward the rear of the village, as it seemed to Tom.
"Who's Collie?" he ventured to ask.
"Collie? Oh, he's the Stormy Petrel; he's been piking around over the
Fritzies' heads, I s'pose."
Evidently Collie, or the Stormy Petrel, was an aviator who had alighted
somewhere about the village with some sort of a report.
"Collie can't see in the daylight," his neighbor added; "he and the
Jersey Snipe have got Fritzie vexed. You going to run between here and
the coast?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do," said Tom. "I don't suppose I'll go
over the top, I'd like to go to Cantigny."
"Never mind, they'll bring it back to you. Did you know the old gent is
here?"
"Pershing?"
"Yup. Going to run the show himself."
"Are you going?"
"Not as far as I know. I was in the orchestra--front row--last week. Got
a touch of trench fever."
"D'you mean the front line trenches?" Tom asked.
"Yup. Oh, look at Bricky!" he added suddenly. "You carrying wire,
Bricky? There's a target for a sniper for you--hair as red as----"
"Just stick around at the other end of it," interrupted "Bricky" as he
passed, "and listen to what you hear."
"Here come the tanks," said Tom's neighbor, "and there's the Jersey
Snipe perched on the one over at the other end. Good-_night_, Fritzie!"
The whole scene reminded Tom vaguely of the hasty, quiet picking up and
departure of the circus in the night which, as a little boy, he had sat
up to watch. There were the tanks, half a dozen of them (and he knew
there were more elsewhere), covered with soldiers and waiting in the
darkness like elephants. Troops were constantly departing, for the front
trenches he supposed.
Though he had never yet been before the lines, his experience as a rider
and his close touch with the fighting men had given him a pretty good
military sense in the matter of geography--that is, he understood now
without being told the geographical relation of one place to another in
the immediate neighborhood. Dispatch-riders acquire this sort of extra
sense very quickly and they come to have a knowledge of the lay of the
land infinitely more accurate than that of the average private soldier.
Tom knew that this village, which was now the scene of hurried
preparation and mysterious comings and goings, was directly behind the
trench area. He knew that somewhere back of the village was the
artillery, and he believed that the village of Cantigny stood in the
same relation to the German trenches that this billet village stood to
the Allied trenches; that is, that it was just behind the German lines
and that the German artillery was still farther back. He had heard
enough talk about trench warfare to know how the Americans intended to
conduct this operation.
But he had never seen an offensive in preparation, either large or
small, for there had been no American offensives--only raids, and of
course he had not participated in these. It seemed to him that now, at
last, he was drawn to the very threshold of active warfare only to be
compelled to sit silent and gaze upon a scene every detail of which
aroused his longing for action. The hurried consultation of officers,
the rapid falling in line in the darkness, the clear brisk words of
command, the quick mechanical response, the departure of one group after
another, the thought of that aviator alighting behind the village, the
sight of the great, ugly tanks and the big spool aroused his patriotism
and his craving for adventure as nothing else had in all the months of
his service. He was nearer to the trenches than ever before.
"If you're riding to Clermont," he heard a soldier say, apparently to
him, "you'd better take the south road; turn out when you get to Airian.
The other's full of shell holes from the old trench line."
"Best way is to go down through Estrees and follow the road back across
the old trench line," said another.
Tom listened absently. He knew he could find the best way, that was his
business, but he did not want to go to Clermont. It seemed to him that
he was always going away from the war while others were going toward it.
While these boys were rushing forward he would be rushing backward. That
was always the way.
"There's a lot of skeletons in those old trenches. You can follow the
ditches almost down to Paris."
"They won't send him farther than Creil," another said. "The wires are
up all the way from Creil down."
"You never can tell whether they'll stay up or not--not with this
seventy-five mile bean-shooter Fritzie's playing with. Ever been to
Paris, kid?"
"No, but I s'pose I'll be sent there now--maybe," Tom answered.
"They'll keep you moving up this way, all right. You were picked for
this sector--d'you know that?"
"I don't know why."
"Don't get rattled easy--that's what I heard."
This was gratifying if it was true. Tom had not known why he had been
sent so far and he had wondered.
Presently a Signal Corps captain came out of Headquarters, spoke briefly
with two officers who were near the big wire spool, and then turned
toward the bench on which Tom was sitting. His neighbors arose and
saluted and he did the same.
"Never been under fire, I suppose?" said the captain, addressing Tom to
his great surprise.
"Not before the lines, I haven't. The machine I had before this one was
knocked all out of shape by a shell. I was riding from Toul to----"
"All right," interrupted the captain somewhat impatiently. Tom was used
to being interrupted in the midst of his sometimes rambling answers. He
could never learn the good military rule of being brief and explicit.
"How do you feel about going over the top? You don't have to."
"It's just what I was thinking about," said Tom eagerly. "If you'd be
willing, I'd like to."
"Of course you'd be under fire. Care to volunteer? Emergency work."
"Often I wished----"
"Care to volunteer?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"All right; go inside and get some sleep. They'll wake you up in about
an hour. Machine in good shape?"
This was nothing less than an insult. "I always keep it in good shape,"
said Tom. "I got extra----"
"All right. Go in and get some sleep; you haven't got long. The wire
boys will take care of you."
He strode away and began to talk hurriedly with another man who showed
him some papers and Tom watched him as one in a trance.
"Now you're in for it, kiddo," he heard some one say.
"R. I. P. for yours," volunteered another.
Tom knew well enough what R. I. P. meant. Often in his lonely night
rides through the towns close to the fighting he had seen it on row
after row of rough, carved wooden crosses.
"There won't be much _resting in peace_ to-night. How about it, Toul
sector?"
"I didn't feel very sleepy, anyway," said Tom.
He slept upon one of the makeshift straw bunks on the stone floor of the
cellar under the cottage. With the first streak of dawn he arose and
went quietly out and sat on a powder keg under a small window, tore
several pages out of his pocket blank-book and using his knee for a
desk, wrote:
"DEAR MARGARET:
"Maybe you'll be surprised, kind of, to get a letter from me. And
maybe you won't like me calling you Margaret. I told Roy to show
you my letters, cause I knew he'd be going into Temple Camp
office on account of the troop getting ready to go to Camp and I
knew he'd see you. I'd like to be going up to camp with them, and
I'd kind of like to be back in the office, too. I remember how I
used to be scared of you and you said you must be worse than the
Germans 'cause I wasn't afraid of them. I hope you're working
there yet and I'd like to see Mr. Burton, too.
"I was going to write to Roy but I decided I'd send a letter to
you because whenever something is going to happen the fellows
write letters home and leave them to be mailed in case they don't
get back. So if you get this you'll know I'm killed. Most of them
write to girls or their mothers, and as long as I haven't got any
mother I thought I'd write to you. Because maybe you'd like to
hear I'm killed more than anybody. I mean maybe you'd be more
interested.
"I'm going to go over the top with this regiment. I got sent way
over to this sector for special service. A fellow told me he
heard it was because I got a level head. I can't tell you where I
am, but this morning we're going to take a town. I didn't have to
go, 'cause I'm a non-com., but I volunteered. I don't know what
I'll have to do.
"I ain't exactly scared, but it kind of makes me think about home
and all like that. I often wished I'd meet Roscoe Bent over here.
Maybe he wrote to you. I bet everybody likes him wherever he is
over here. It's funny how I got to thinking about you last night.
I'll--there goes the bugle, so I can't write any more. Anyway,
you won't get it unless I'm killed. Maybe you won't like my
writing, but every fellow writes to a girl the last thing. It
seems kind of lonely if you can't write to a girl.
"Your friend,
"TOM SLADE."
CHAPTER SIX
OVER THE TOP
The first haze of dawn was not dispelled when the artillery began to
thunder and Tom knew that the big job was on. Stolid as he was and used
to the roar of the great guns, he made hasty work of his breakfast for
he was nervous and anxious to be on the move.
Most of the troops that were to go seemed to have gone already. He
joined the two signal corps men, one of whom carried the wire and the
other a telephone apparatus, and as they moved along the road other
signal corps men picked up the wire behind them at intervals, carrying
it along.
Tom was as proud of his machine as a general could be of his horse, and
he wheeled it along beside him, keeping pace with the slow advance of
his companions, his heart beating high.
"If you have to come back with any message, you'll remember
Headquarters, won't you?" one asked him.
"I always remember Headquarters," said Tom.
"And don't get rattled."
"I never get rattled."
"Watch the roads carefully as we go, so you can get back all right.
Noise don't bother you?"
"No, I'm used to artillery--I mean the noise," said Tom.
"You probably won't have much to do unless in an emergency. If Fritzie
cuts the wire or it should get tangled and we couldn't reach the airmen
quick enough you'd have to beat it back. There's two roads out of
Cantigny. Remember to take the south one. We're attacking on a mile
front. If you took----"
"If I have to come back," said Tom, "I'll come the same way. You needn't
worry."
His advisor felt sufficiently squelched. And indeed, he had no cause to
worry. The Powers that Be had sent Thatchy into the West where the
battle line was changing every day and roads were being made and
destroyed and given new directions; where the highway which took one to
Headquarters one day led into the lair of the Hun on the next, and all
the land was topsy-turvy and changing like the designs in a
kaleidoscope--for the very good reason that Thatchy invariably reached
his destination and could be depended upon to come back, through all the
chaos, as a cat returns to her home. The prison camps in Germany were
not without Allied dispatch-riders who had become "rattled" and had
blundered into the enemy's arms, but Thatchy had a kind of uncanny extra
sense, a bump of locality, if you will, and that is why they had sent
him into this geographical tangle where maps became out of date as fast
as they were made.
The sun was not yet up when they reached a wider road running crossways
to the one out of the village and here many troops were waiting as far
up and down the road as Tom could see. A narrow ditch led away from the
opposite side of the road through the fields beyond, and looking up and
down the road he could see that there were other ditches like it.
The tanks were already lumbering and waddling across the fields, for all
the world like great clumsy mud turtles, with soldiers perched upon them
as if they were having a straw ride. Before Tom and his companions
entered the nearest ditch he could see crowds of soldiers disappearing
into other ditches far up the road.
[Illustration: SHOWING WHERE THE AMERICANS WERE BILLETED: CANTIGNY,
WHICH THEY CAPTURED AND THE ROUTE TAKEN BY TOM AND THE CARRIERS. ARROWS
SHOW THE AREA OF ATTACK.]
The fields above them were covered with shell holes, a little cemetery
flanked one side of the zigzag way, and the big dugouts of the reserves
were everywhere in this backyard of the trench area. Out of narrow,
crooked side avenues soldiers poured into the communication trench which
the wire carriers were following, falling in ahead of them.
"We'll get into the road after the boys go over and then you'll have
more room for your machine. Close quarters, hey?" Tom's nearest
companion said.
When they reached the second-line trench the boys were leaving it, by
hundreds as it seemed to Tom, and crowding through the crooked
communication trenches. The wire carriers followed on, holding up the
wire at intervals. Once when Tom peeped over the edge of the
communication trench he saw the tanks waddling along to right and left,
rearing up and bowing as they crossed the trench, like clumsy, trained
hippopotamuses. And all the while the artillery was booming with
continuous, deafening roar.
Tom did not see the first of the boys to go over the top for they were
over by the time he reached the second-line trench, but as he passed
along the fire trench toward the road he could see them crowding over,
and when he reached the road the barbed wire entanglements lay flat in
many places, the boys picking their way across the fallen meshes, the
clumsy tanks waddling on ahead, across No Man's Land. As far as Tom
could see along the line in either direction this shell-torn area was
being crossed by hundreds of boys in khaki holding fixed bayonets, some
going ahead of the tanks and some perching on them.
Above him the whole district seemed to be in pandemonium, men shouting
and their voices drowned by the thunder of artillery.
His first real sight of the attack was when he clambered out of the
trench where it crossed the road and faced the flattened meshes of
barbed wire with its splintered supporting poles all tangled in it.
Never was there such a wreck.
"All right," he shouted down. "It's as flat as a pancake--careful with
the machine--lift the back wheel--that's right!"
He could hardly hear his own voice for the noise, and the very earth
seemed to shake under the heavy barrage fire which protected them. In
one sweeping, hasty glance he saw scores of figures in khaki running
like mad and disappearing into the enemy trenches beyond.
"Do you mean to let the wire rest on this?" he asked, as his machine was
lifted up and the first of the wire carriers came scrambling up after
it; "it might get short-circuited."
"We'll run it over the poles, only hurry," the men answered.
They were evidently the very last of the advancing force, and even as
Tom looked across the shell-torn area of No Man's Land, he could see the
men picking their way over the flattened entanglements and pouring into
the enemy trenches. The tanks had already crossed these and were rearing
and waddling along, irresistible yet ridiculous, like so many heroic mud
turtles going forth to glory. Here and there Tom could see the gray-clad
form of a German clambering out of the trenches and rushing pell-mell to
the rear.
But it was no time to stand and look. Hurriedly they disentangled a
couple of the supporting poles, laying them so that the telephone wire
passed over them free of the barbed meshes and Tom, mounting his
machine, started at top speed along the road across No Man's Land,
dragging the wire after him. Scarcely had he started when he heard that
wasplike whizzing close to him--once, twice, and then a sharp metallic
sound as a bullet hit some part of his machine. He looked back to see
if the wire carriers were following, but there was not a sign of any of
them except his companion who carried the apparatus, and just as Tom
looked this man twirled around like a top, staggered, and fell.
The last of the Americans were picking their way across the tangle of
fallen wire before the German fire trench. He could see them now and
again amid dense clouds of smoke as they scrambled over the enemy
sandbags and disappeared.
On he sped at top speed, not daring to look around again. He could feel
that the wire was dragging and he wondered where its supporters could
be; but he opened his cut-out to get every last bit of power and sped on
with the accumulating train of wire becoming a dead weight behind him.
Now, far ahead, he could see gray-coated figures scrambling frantically
out of the first line trench, and he thought that the Americans must
have carried the attack successfully that far, in any event. Again came
that whizzing sound close to him, and still again a sharp metallic ring
as another bullet struck his machine. For a moment he feared least a
tire had been punctured, but when neither collapsed he took fresh
courage and sped on.