A boy fell injured between the barbed wire in front
of his trench and the enemy, in that No Man’s
Land of so many tragedies. His comrades, afraid
of hitting him, stopped firing.
“Go on!” he called to them. “No
matter about me. Shoot at them!”
So they fired, and he writhed for a moment.
“I got one of yours that time!” he said.
The Germans retired, but the boy still lay on the
ground, beyond reach. He ceased moving, and they
thought he was dead. One may believe that they
hoped he was dead. It was more merciful than the
slow dying of No Man’s Land. But after
a time he raised his head.
“Look out,” he called. “They
are coming again. They are almost up to me!”
That is all of that story.
FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION
The car stopped. We were at the wireless and
telephone headquarters for the French Army of the
North. It was a low brick building, and outside,
just off the roadway, was a high van full of telephone
instruments. That it was moved from one place
to another was shown when, later in the day, returning
by that route, we found the van had disappeared.
It was two o’clock. The German wireless
from Berlin had just come in. At three the receiving
station would hear from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
It was curious to stand there and watch the operator,
receivers on his ears, picking up the German message.
It was curious to think that, just a little way over
there, across a field or two, the German operator
was doing the same thing, and that in an hour he would
be receiving the French message.
All the batteries of the army corps are—or
were—controlled from that little station.
The colonel in charge came out to greet us, and to
him Captain Boisseau gave General Foch’s request
to show me batteries in action.
The colonel was very willing. He would go with
us himself. I conquered a strong desire to stand
with the telephone building between me and the German
lines, now so near, and looked about. A French
aeroplane was overhead, but there was little bustle
and activity along the road. It is a curious
fact in this war that the nearer one is to the front
the quieter things become. Three or four miles
behind there is bustle and movement. A mile behind,
and only an occasional dispatch rider, a few men mending
roads, an officer’s car, a few horses tethered
in a wood, a broken gun carriage, a horse being shod
behind a wall, a soldier on a lookout platform in
a tree, thickets and hedges that on occasion spout
fire and death—that is the country round
Ypres and just behind the line, in daylight.
We were between Ypres and the Allied line, in that
arc which the Germans are, as I write, trying so hard
to break through. The papers say that they are
shelling Ypres and that it is burning. They were
shelling it that day also. But now, as then, I
cannot believe it is burning. There was nothing
left to burn.
