CHEATING THE EYE
“Dandy car you’ve got there,” commented Blake, as the big machine
purred along with scarcely a jar, yet so swiftly that the miles were
fairly eaten up.
“It runs like a dream,” observed Joe.
“It’s a lallapalooza,” added Macaroni.
“The old girl does move along rather lively,” agreed the lieutenant
with a touch of pride in his voice. “Everything that Uncle Sam sends
over is mighty good stuff. There’s nothing too good for the army boys.”
“Maybe the Germans wouldn’t like to get hold of a few of these,”
chuckled Blake. “I hear they’re so short of rubber now that they’ve
stopped using tires, and their old machines go clanking along like so
much scrap iron over the pavement.”
“They’ll be short of more things than rubber before we get through
with them,” remarked the lieutenant.
“Short of breath if they keep on running as they have for the last few
days,” laughed Blake.
“They’ll be good Marathon runners before our boys finish the job,”
grinned Joe.
“Look out for that shell hole, Lieutenant,” cautioned Mac.
“I see it,” responded the officer, as he deftly guided his car past the
edge of a deep crater in the center of the road. “Lucky it’s daytime
instead of night, or we might have had a spill. It’s a shame,” he
added. “These roads of Northern France were among the finest in the
world, but they’ll all be shot to pieces before this war is over.”
They had gone several miles when Blake remarked:
“That’s a pretty big patch of woodland we’re coming to, Lieutenant.
Does the road pass right through it?”
The officer seemed to be busy with one of the clutches and apparently
did not hear the question. The car kept on with unabated speed directly
toward the trees.
“Something funny about those trees, don’t you think?” Joe asked
curiously.
“In what way?” queried Blake.
“Why, there doesn’t seem to be a leaf stirring,” replied Joe, “and yet
there’s a pretty good breeze blowing down here.”
Nearer and nearer the car sped towards the woods.
“Look out, Lieutenant,” cried Mac as he reached forward to clutch the
officer’s arm. “You’re going to run right into that tree.”
Baker paid no attention and a shout of alarm rose from all three as the
machine made straight for a mighty oak.
Then suddenly the oak seemed to split apart, two sentries stood one
on either side of where the tree had been standing, and, as though by
magic, the car glided into a vast rectangular space that the boys saw
at once was one of Uncle Sam’s army training camps.
They looked at each other sheepishly, while the lieutenant broke into a
roar of laughter.
“Stung!” exclaimed Blake.
“One on us,” admitted Joe.
“I sure thought we were goners that time,” muttered Mac, a little
shamefacedly, yet with unmistakable relief for escape from what had
seemed to be imminent peril.
“You movie boys were from Missouri and wanted to be shown,” chaffed the
lieutenant good-naturedly. “Well, I’ve shown you, haven’t I?”
“We acknowledge the corn,” admitted Blake with a laugh. “Whoever
rigged up that fake curtain was a sure enough artist.”
“He’d make a dandy bunco steerer,” grinned Joe. “He’s certainly a gay
deceiver.”
“It isn’t ‘he,’ it’s ‘they,’” corrected the officer. “There’s been an
army of men at work on this curtain. You see, it stretches away for
nearly half a mile. If German batteries caught sight of that, they’d
simply think it was a patch of woods, and no matter how closely they
looked at it through their glasses they couldn’t see any one stirring
and they wouldn’t waste any shells on it.”
“And you don’t even have to knock to get in here,” laughed Blake.
“Those sentries seemed to spring from the ground.”
“They saw us coming,” explained the lieutenant, “and at the right
moment they touched a spring and the curtain rolled back on either
side.”
“It’s certainly great stuff,” commented Blake, as the moving picture
boys and their assistant looked about them with interest.
“I see you’re protected from the sky, too,” observed Joe, as he looked
up at great strips of canvas arranged at intervals over sections of the
road.
“Yes,” replied Baker, “that’s to fool the aviators. Those strips
are covered with grass so that it makes the place look just like an
ordinary field. The men who are in training here carry on their work
under those strips of canvas so that they can’t be seen from above.”
“The aviators or somebody got that horse though,” said Charlie, as he
pointed to where a horse was lying stiff and stark by the side of the
road.
“Poor old brute,” murmured Joe Duncan, sympathetically.
“I should think they’d get him out of the way as soon as possible,”
said Blake, sniffing the air. “It’s pretty hot weather to leave him
lying around.”
As he spoke, a soldier emerged from the body of the horse, stood up to
his full height of six feet or more, stretched himself, yawned, and
then as he caught sight of the lieutenant came smartly at salute.
The boys hardly dared to look at Baker, who was shaking with inward
laughter.
“What a bunch of come-ons we are,” groaned Blake.
“I’m going to keep my mouth shut after this,” asseverated Joe.
“And your nose, too, when you come near dead horses,” joked the
lieutenant. “But come close now and let’s have a look at this defunct
animal.”
The boys examined the dummy horse with some chagrin but great
curiosity. It was an exact reproduction of what a dead horse would
appear to be. The body was swelled beyond the normal size, the head
hung limp, and two of the legs extended stiffly into the air. It was
made of hide stretched over a framework of bamboo.
“See how light it is,” said the officer.
Joe and Blake put their hands beneath it and lifted it easily into the
air.
“That makes it easy to transport,” explained Baker. “The camouflage
corps can rig up one of these in a few minutes. Then it can be slipped
out at night anywhere in No Man’s Land not far from the German lines.
There’s a scout inside it with a rifle and a pair of field glasses and
he can find out most of what the enemy’s doing or planning to do. To
the Germans it’s only one dead horse among many, and they don’t tumble
to it. Get inside, Larkin,” he directed, turning to the young soldier,
“and show us just how the thing is worked.”
With a grin the man obeyed, slipping into the large cavity and
arranging himself comfortably upon his side.
“Now come around to this side of the horse,” said the lieutenant to the
boys.
They did as directed and saw the wicked-looking muzzle of Larkin’s
rifle pointed toward them through a hole in the hide.
“There he is,” said Baker with a laugh, “all ready for business. As
snug and comfortable as you please.”
“Pretty cramped though,” remarked Blake. “He hasn’t room enough to
change his mind.”
“No,” admitted the lieutenant, “he hasn’t all the comforts of home,
but still he does well enough, and that repeating rifle of his would
certainly give the Huns a surprise party if they came prowling around
too near. Only the other day, one of our boys in a contraption like
this wiped out an entire German patrol of half a dozen men. The Heinies
didn’t know where the bullets were coming from. But come along now and
we’ll see some things these fakirs are doing.
“Look at that tree,” he said, after they had walked a little further.
“Do you see anything strange about it?”
“I don’t know about trees,” said Blake suspiciously. “Since you fooled
us when you were running into that fake oak tree back there I’ve grown
distrustful.”
“Oh, this is a real tree,” laughed the lieutenant. “I give you my word
for that. But look at it closely. Anyone in it?”
“Not a soul,” declared Joe promptly.
“Wouldn’t want to bet on it, would you?” asked Baker.
“I wouldn’t bet on anything in this dump,” said Joe emphatically. “I
wouldn’t even bet that I’m alive.”
“Well,” said the lieutenant, “there is a man there, just as big and
tall a man as any of us four, and he isn’t hiding behind the trunk or
any branch of it either. You’re looking at him right now and you don’t
see him.”
The boys rubbed their eyes and looked more closely. It was not a
thickly branched tree, the sun was streaming through it, and they
were sure they could see every inch of it that was toward them. And
Lieutenant Baker had assured them that the man was not on the further
side of the tree.
“Well. I’ll put you out of your misery,” laughed the lieutenant. “Just
fix your eyes on the trunk about two-thirds of the way up. Notice
anything unusual up there?”
“Seems to me it’s a little thicker there,” pronounced Blake.
“Bulges out a bit,” observed Joe.
“Seems to me to be a little crinkly like a caterpillar,” commented
Charlie.
The lieutenant gave a whistle and then the resemblance to a caterpillar
became more pronounced as the whole trunk seemed to crinkle into
successive waves until the foot of the tree was reached. Then with a
quick motion a part of the bark seemed to detach itself from the tree
and to come directly toward them.
“That’s all right, Thompson,” said the officer. “Open up.”
A flap fell from the head of the figure and they saw the face of a man,
rather red from exertion, but wearing a broad smile.
“A little comedy I had staged for your benefit,” laughed the
lieutenant. “I’d phoned over to them that we were coming and gave them
a tip to let us see what they could do in the way of tree climbing.
Come a little closer, Thompson, and let’s have a look at you. Or
rather, back up against the tree and show us how those stripes of yours
harmonize with the bark.”
The man did as directed and they crowded around him.
It was astonishing to see how perfect was the harmony between the
markings of the tree and the garb the man wore. The tree had gray and
white marks, and these were duplicated perfectly in the man’s costume.
At the distance of a few rods it was most difficult to detect the
difference.
“We use these for sniping,” observed the lieutenant. “On a settled
portion of the front we have perhaps twenty, fifty or a hundred of
these men, stationed in tall trees that command almost the entire
space of No Man’s Land in that particular section. Even their rifles
are striped in the same way so as to make no contrast against the
background of the tree. The men are crack shots and they’ve saved many
a Heinie the trouble of taking the long hike back to the Rhine.”
“Well,” remarked Blake, taking a long breath, “this would be no place
for a man with delirium tremens.”
“I’d be a candidate for a padded cell myself if I stayed here long
enough,” affirmed Joe.
“I’m going to hold tight onto my plate at chow to-night,” said Mac,
“or I’ll expect to see it vanish out of my hand. I’ve lost confidence
in everything. Is this solid ground I’m walking on, or is that
camouflaged, too?”
“We haven’t got quite as far as that yet,” replied Lieutenant Baker
with a laugh.
For the next hour the moving picture boys sauntered about the camp,
finding new marvels at every step. Concrete observation posts that
seemed to be mere inequalities in the ground, waving ferns and
grasses from which protruded the muzzles of fourteen-inch guns,
innocent-looking roadways that really were yawning pits covered lightly
with rushes and sods that gave way at the slightest pressure, wooden
guns, dummy tanks and a host of other cunning appliances designed to
bewilder and mystify the enemy.
“Well,” said Blake, when at length they had reluctantly torn themselves
away and were seated once more in the army car, “I have a new respect
for the art of camouflage. I didn’t dream that they’d carried it to
such an extent.”
“Yes,” put in Mac, “it isn’t only the doughboys with bullets that are
winning this war. The artists, too, are doing their bit in beating the
Huns.”
“For my part,” said Joe, as the lieutenant threw in the clutch and the
car started, “it seems to me like a page from the Arabian Nights. All
we need now is a genii coming out of the neck of a bottle and the thing
would be complete.”