On the way to Arras the boys had their first experience aboard an
armored motor car, equipped with machine guns. Quite a promotion from
the teamster’s seat of a supply wagon!
How the sergeant ever consented to let his charges join the crew of
Belgians operating the war machine is not known. Perhaps he was not
told until it was too late to object.
But there they were, Billy and Henri, as large as life, out “Uhlan
hunting,” as the soldiers put it. The boys knew that a Uhlan was a kind
of light cavalry, or lancer, in the German army, and they had heard
that he was “game,” but never before in the sense of game to be hunted.
As for that, hardly a day passed but the boys learned something new
from the soldiers.
But a short time before at La Bassee they had seen one of these armored
cars return from a dash ahead of the main body loaded with spoils in
the shape of lancer caps, busbies, helmets, lances, rifles, and other
trophies, which the crew distributed as souvenirs to a crowd in the
market place.
The next day one of the cars that went out never came back. The Uhlans
probably took it for a trophy.
Whenever you see a splendid piece of tapestry or hangings displayed
in a window, museum, or house, you may think of Arras, the little old
town on the right bank of the narrow little river Scarpe, right in the
center of the line of battle between Lille and Amiens, and remember
that our boys were now following that line in France.
From the armored car the boys in the distance saw that famous old
belfry, said to be 240 feet high, rising gracefully above the town
hall, and on top of which was a huge crown. A day later this tower was
wrecked by a shell in furious bombardment.
During this journey in the armored car the boys were filled with
admiration of the dash and skill displayed by the Belgian crew. They
were also greatly interested in the hardy cyclists, who apparently
without effort kept up with the pace of the big machine. In some of the
villages through which they passed, the inhabitants met the cyclists
with kisses, in some of the roads the cyclists met barricades and
machine guns.
“If a doctor told you that you needed change to help your health,
Henri, you can write him that you’re getting it.”
Billy was finding this new war game very much to his liking.
“You’ll have word from the doctor without writing,” retorted Henri, “if
you don’t quit standing up in the car.”
Even then bullets were whizzing past them. The car had suddenly come
upon a small party of the German mounted troops, firing with short-arms
from the saddle.
The Belgian gunners instantly responded from the car and swept the road.
“On to Arras!”
Billy made the grim soldiers smile with his enthusiasm.
When the car rolled into the quaint old town of Arras, the boys
confessed that they had never seen quite the like of it before.
“There’s a building that I’d like to move to Bangor,” said Billy,
pointing to the Hotel de Ville, one of the finest in France, with its
Gothic façade rising upon seven arches of different sizes.
“There’s a lot of rare old houses here, I tell you,” asserted Henri,
“but I never saw them until now, except on postcards. By the way,
Billy, take a look at those and think of the days of Christopher
Columbus.”
Henri referred to the Petite place and the Grande place, curious relics
of the long gone days of Spanish rule, with their queer gables and old
arcades resting on curiously shaped sand-stone columns.
“This is the town, you know,” advised Henri, “where Robespierre was
born.”
“Humph! This war has kicked up a bigger muss in France than ‘Roby’ ever
did.”
Billy was not inclined to concede that anything had ever created a stir
ahead of that in which he was mixing.
The stir of the next day was, indeed, something to be remembered. Some
of the biggest of the German guns were brought into action.
Billy and Henri had been napping, and never were naps more rudely
disturbed.
Shells from the great guns used by the bombarding forces had a way of
starting on their course with a minute-long shriek, which seemed to
come from the shell itself. When the boys’ eyes had been cleared from
sleep they could not only plainly see the projectiles in the beginning
of their flight, but also distinctly observe the bellowing air rushing
back to fill the vacancy left by the discharge and bounding and
rebounding in a disturbed sea of gas.
“What a sight!” cried Billy when the first period of nervous strain had
passed.
“Something fierce.” Henri’s comment was boy-like.
The boys were pacing in one of the antique streets with fragments of
wood and chips of stone falling about them when they heard a shout,
followed down the avenue by the shouter. It was the sergeant rattling
like a milk wagon with his military fixings.
“Hustle, you young bearcats; get to cover!”
With that the sergeant yanked each boy by the shoulder into a hospital
building nearby.
“Here’s help for you,” said the sergeant to one of the Red Cross
nurses. “Keep them busy, and,” he added with especial emphasis,
“inside.”
That gentle nurse, a young English girl, the boys learned afterward,
was struck by a shell and carried dying on a litter from a battlefield
where she had been attending the wounded. Her name was Winnie Bell,
and she rests in the cemetery at Le Mans, with the bodies of French
and German soldiers around her, in whose service she gave up her noble
young life.
The boys moved about with the nurse among the wounded, constantly
growing in number.
“Oh! the pity of it all,” she murmured, putting a cup of water to the
quivering lips of a sufferer, a mere lad, wearing the brilliant uniform
of a French trooper, with a gaping wound in his shoulder.
Henri, leaning forward to give the nurse a bandage from the packet he
was carrying, caught sight of the soldier’s upturned face.
“My brother Francois!” he moaned, dropping on his knees beside the
litter.
The wounded soldier opened his eyes, and the agony of his hurt did not
keep him from smiling.