Lieutenant Whitcomb

The great push had served a big purpose; it was to be followed by others quickly. In this manner it was hoped to strike the most effective blows at the enemy, giving it little time to recover. It could not be expected, however, that the Germans would take the matter at all calmly; they must be met with two blows to their one.

The place that Herbert had chosen was a small natural depression of a few feet; a pile of stones and hastily filled sand bags helped this much until a trench, really a nearly square hole, had been dug. Then this was roofed over with some half-charred planks and boards brought from a nearby pig-sty which the Huns had tried to burn, but could not.

Herbert and Cartright succeeded in throwing some earth on the roof without being hit by shells and other gun fire that had begun to come their way and they were delighted to notice that an anti-aircraft gun, undoubtedly well guarded, had been installed not a fourth of a mile back of them, insuring much safety from that quarter, at least.

When night fell half the squad went on guard outside; the others worked like beavers, and without food until the task was done, to successfully camouflage the shelter, using grass and weeds pulled up by the roots from the half frozen ground and placed upright on the roof. The entrance down earth steps was made through the dead-leaved branches of a large uprooted bush.

Meanwhile, with Cartright as his most skilled assistant, Herbert was placing the fifty pounds of explosives in a large niche cut in the side of the pit and guarded by stakes, from which spot, under cover of darkness, a wire was laid for fully four hundred yards and the battery that was to set the charge off was buried in the ground and the spot marked.

The Germans did not seem at first to pay much attention to the pit until the final act of camouflage. A messenger, at night, sneaked to the pit and informed Corporal Whitcomb that it was deemed advisable to take this step now, as from airplane observations the previous day the Huns were getting ready to make a heavy counter-attack.

At once, therefore, a flexible steel flag-staff was firmly planted beside the pit and from it, with the first streaks of the coming day, the enemy viewed a division staff headquarters flag and a signal station flag flying in the sharp breeze. Then the shells flew, but the flags also kept right on flying. The steel staff was struck and shaken again and again, but its tough flexibility saved it; the flags showed many a hole, but still they fluttered proudly and the Boches went mad.

Snipers tried to down the banners and incidentally pick off a few of the supposed officers and observers that must grace such a spot, but the squad of American experts with the rifle was more than ready for them and they quit that game both through the day and the night following. Perhaps because of this or the night-long bright moonlight, no raid was attempted; perhaps it was because a bigger move was in process of formation.

And on the next day the enemy launched a mighty counter-thrust to regain lost ground.

A barrage fire was laid down and it continued for a full hour. Private Wood took it upon himself to make some observations as to how the flags and staff were bearing this and he got too far above the shelter with his head. There are those who will do, against all sane judgment, most foolish, unnecessary things, and Wood was one such.

Sad, indeed, was every member of the squad as all stood about with uncovered heads and placed poor, uncoffined Henry Wood into a hastily dug grave in the bottom of the pit, Finley, a minister's son, stumbling, half bashfully, over a short prayer.

Suddenly the barrage fire was lifted and over a wide front the Huns were coming.

"Get out, fellows, and back, or they'll catch us! We can outrun the best of them, but do it! Stick together, if possible, but all report later to Captain Leighton! Cartright and I are going to wait for the Huns and set off the mine."

The men all filed out through the birch branches and retreated straight back toward a certain spot, each waving a small American flag, as per agreement with the men in that section of the trench. But Appenzeller and Finley protested. The former uttered nothing less than a command.

"Corporal, let's stand and soak it to 'em for a little! We can reach 'em from this rise nicely as they come over the hill, and I'm good for about a dozen. Finley is, too. We all are!"

Of course, in its sporting sense, this sort of thing appealed to Herbert and, moreover, he must have regarded it as a duty. A little good shooting would undoubtedly account for a good many of the Boches. But he and Cartright could not join in, as they had a more important duty to perform. But the others might do as they pleased.

"You fellows that want to, try it on them," he said. "We will have to leave you. But don't get caught or headed off! Go to it!"

Herbert and Cartright ran to the wire end. The corporal stood with the battery in his hand, watching through his field glasses the doings of the enemy. The Huns could not pass what they believed was a headquarters and signal station without, at least, an investigation. They swarmed toward the flag and pit from their advancing lines, no doubt believing they were to receive a warm reception and intent upon taking important prisoners.

The young American corporal was conscious of a greater degree of excitement than he had ever experienced before and with it there was uppermost that gentle humanity that makes a better man, even of a soldier.

"They're rushing up, Cartright! And they're a little puzzled, perhaps. They think they're going to get the very devil presently and they're preparing for a rush. It will be awful, old man! Say, how do you feel about it?"

"I'd like to blow the whole bunch up so high that they'd stick fast up there; clean beyond our attraction of gravitation! And I'd like to see the Kaiser and old Hindenburg in the bunch!" growled Cartright.

"Well, say, then, you take this battery and spring it! I guess I'm chicken-hearted. It seems like murder, but of course it's war."

"You bet I'll spring it! Give the word; that's all! Say, what's going on over yonder? For Heaven's sake, Corp; look there!" Cartright almost shrieked the last word.

And Herbert, for a moment forgetting his first duty, gazed where the other's hand indicated.

The four had been putting in their best licks, as it were. No doubt but that they had reduced the number of approaching Germans, four hundred yards, nearly a quarter of a mile distant, and their guns must have been hot. But sweeping forward on the other side of a rise of ground, a place also hidden somewhat by hedges and battle-ruined buildings, a large body of the enemy came suddenly almost between the four and any chance they had to retreat in that direction.

That also offered the only chance the boys had to withdraw in safety, for almost at the same instant a rapid-fire gun had discovered them; and to try to get away over the clear ground directly behind them would have proved certain death. And so, stooping and looking back, they made straight for the hedge and saw the unintended trap too late. In a moment Hun soldiers, detached at a command and running forward on either side, had surrounded them. There was nothing to do but surrender.

With a groan Herbert turned back to the important business in hand. There were now no scruples in his heart as to performing any acts of war. The whole business is merely one of retaliation, anyway, from first to last.

"There they are, a whole company or more, right on the spot! And some are down in the pit! Spring it, old man; push it! Ah! It worked! Poor devils! They could not have expected that. Come, we've got to beat it!"

The retreat of the two was largely made under the cover of a little natural valley, somewhat thicketed. In only one place were they exposed: while crossing a narrow bit of open field. They were hardly half way across it, Cartright, also an athlete, running just behind Herbert, when the corporal heard again that well-known sound that a bullet makes in striking a yielding substance, in tearing through flesh. A little moan followed it.

Herbert stopped and turned. "Hit, old man? Where?"

"Go on, Corp! Get out of this, or they'll get you, too!"

"And leave you? Not for all the Boches. Arms all right; are they? Get 'em around my neck and hold on! Honk, honk!"

It was a long, hard struggle. The wounded man, the last private of Herbert's second squad, was a heavy fellow. Herb was still unhurt, and he managed, though sometimes seeing black, to get into cover again, and there he could go more slowly, though he dared not stop. It seemed like hours, perhaps, instead of minutes, and the torture of struggling on and on with a weight greater than his own upon his back appeared a thousand times worse than anything of endurance that he had ever known on gridiron or long distance runs. Still he kept right on going, with ever the thought of the avenging Huns behind.

And at last he knew not how far he had progressed and had begun almost to lose interest in the matter, having the mad desire to get on and on, fighting another mad desire to rest and ease his straining muscles, when in his ears welcome sounds were heard.

"Drop him, fellow! You've done enough. We'll take him. Hey, Johnny, I guess we'll have to carry both of 'em!"

Not an hour later Herbert saluted Captain Leighton in the trench. The rapid firing of guns, big and little, was everywhere; the counter-attack of the Boches had successfully been repulsed and the new drive was scheduled to take place, following another and very terrible barrage. The captain grasped the boy's hand.

"Splendid work, Whitcomb! Put out of business about two hundred of them; let her go just at the right time. Cartright has given me an account of it. And your bringing him in was great! No; he isn't badly wounded. Gone back; left grateful remembrances for you. But that's not the matter in hand—feel all right now? Good! Well, then, I have been empowered to brevet a lieutenant for this platoon; Loring was killed yesterday. I have chosen you and you ought to know why; reasons are too numerous to mention. Your commission will arrive soon. Probably you'll be the youngest commissioned officer in the army. Well, come with me."

They walked down the trench, stopping here and there where the officers of squads waited with their men for the word to "go over the top and at 'em!" To each group the captain's words were pretty much the same:

"Men, you all know Whitcomb and you've all heard of his work. He's your commanding officer now, lieutenant of this platoon. The order to advance now will come in about ten minutes, I think."

A low cheer, intense with feeling, with expectation, with eagerness, greeted these words; there were mingled expressions of approval of their new leader and the idea of again going forward against the Germans.

Lieutenant Whitcomb never could remember much about the new push. He went with his men over the top; they charged in open formation again across the country over which he had come back with poor Cartright.

They cut and tore aside wire entanglements; they faced and overcame machine-gun fire; they encountered long bursts of liquid flame and with rifle and revolver fire at short range finished the devils who dealt it. They leaped over piles of sand bags and into trenches, using only their pistols against a brave attempt to meet them with bayonets, and when all of the Huns in the first line had been accounted for or made prisoners the Americans went up and on again, always forward.

And then the gas. It came at them like a small typhoon of white and blue smoke, showing again the iridescent colors, the gray-black center of its spreading force, and this time there was no Susan Nipper to disperse the poisonous fumes with her fiery tongue lashes sent into their midst.

Herbert knew the awful danger that confronted them and he feared that his men, with only the lust of battle in their eyes, hardly comprehended it. He turned and dashed down the line.

"Your masks, men! Every man get on his gas mask! Keep your wits about you! Get on those masks in a hurry, but get them on right! You're down and out, if you don't!"

Bent on saving his men, bent on disproving Captain Leighton's half-jesting comment as to his luck with a command, he forgot for the moment his own safety, his own mask, and the fumes were upon them.

Captain Leighton rose with difficulty from the bountifully spread table and looking about him at the kindly faces, seeing the broad, gentle humor of his host who had asked a few words from him, he said:

"You good people here at home, though you read and hear of these things and try to imagine them, can really have no adequate conception of them; of the hardships, the discomforts, the cold and the lack of sufficient rest amidst constant dangers and the almost continuous hammering of guns. And then, when in battle—well, no poor words of mine can picture it.

"You, Mr. Flynn, and you, Madam, the proud mother of this boy"—the captain stood with his hand across Roy's shoulder—"would feel a thousand times more proud if you could fully know what he went through when he lost his limb. And with a spirit like his, this loss cannot dim for one moment the usefulness of the lad in the world's activities. He will be doing his duty wherever he sets his—foot, as he did with both feet in and out of the trenches. I saw this even more plainly when we three came over, invalided home, in the good ship Ingomar.

"And now, Mr. and Mrs. Flynn, I want to call on my young friend here on my other side, as you know, your son's dearest friend, to say a few words to these charming guests who are so appreciative. Though his eyes are slightly and permanently impaired as a result of a gas attack, though he cannot again enter the ranks, the country thereby being the loser, his energies also are not diminished. Most of you know him—some of you well—Lieutenant Whitcomb."

Herbert rose slowly, awkwardly, protestingly, his face, behind the big, round, new spectacles, very red.

"I always have to thank Captain Leighton, late the captain of our company, for the kindness of his words concerning me. I have tried many times to express this to him, but talking is out of my line, as you can see. What we did over there was just all in the game; that's all. We bucked into the fortunes of war; it's a sort of accident, a sort of on-purpose accident, all the way through. It's duty first and it's all the time a concentrated Hades.

"But why always look at the dark side of this? It's going to be a better world after this war; a better understanding between nations. Everyone agrees to that. America will be the model upon which the nations will run their governments, and no people will want to fight, except for a just cause. If everybody feels like that, as the United States feels about it, why, then, nobody can make an unjust cause and wars will be over and done away with. Thank you; thanks!

"I want to say one thing more, and this is entirely personal. It concerns our host and hostess and their son, my chum. I want to thank them all, publicly, for something they have done for me. Oh, yes, Roy, old man, I will say it. While I was away over there and getting these eyes bunged up, and all that, Mr. Flynn here took it upon himself to inquire into my affairs with my guardian. It seems that instead of being a beggar, I am not quite that, and now, Mr. Flynn is my guardian. And so Roy and I, next term, go back again to dear old Brighton and take up our studies where we left off. That's the best news I can tell you about ourselves, if it interests you at all, and I know how Uncle and Aunty Flynn—that's what I call them now—feel about it. Roy can tell you far better than I could ever express it just how he and I feel about it."

Herbert sat down, still red of face, and Roy was up instantly, leaning on his crutch, but his old self seen in his round, freckled face.

"Whurrah! as me old granddad used to say over in Ireland. Eh, dad? This boy here can't talk as well as he can shoot and scrap, and so you can see what kind of a soldier he was. There was no danger he feared; no duty he shunned; no gentleness he——"

"Oh, blarney!" escaped from Herbert.

"Bedad, you see it! Modesty is his only sister and if you say 'hurrah for you!' to him he wants to fight. But though I never would have gone over and lost this leg if it hadn't been for him, yet I'd do it again, and if I'm a bit sorry for it, I'm glad of it. So there you have it and it's the way we soldiers all feel!"

THE END

Critics uniformly agree that parents can safely place in the hands of boys and girls any book written by Edward S. Ellis