CHAPTER I

DANGEROUS WORK

“This sure is hot work!” exclaimed Blake Stewart, as he rose to his feet and brushed off his clothes.

“That’s what,” agreed his friend and partner, Joe Duncan, who likewise had thrown himself to the ground when a shell had landed and burst within a few yards of him. “I’ve barked my shins so often that I’ll have a case of housemaid’s knee if this keeps up.”

“My eardrums got a dose when that last shell exploded,” remarked their lanky understudy and assistant, Charlie Anderson. “But we’re still alive and kicking and that’s something.”

“Especially kicking,” grinned Blake, as he turned once more to the faithful camera with which the group were taking moving pictures of a German bombardment. “Lucky that some of that shrapnel didn’t smash this.”

“It might be good dope to get into a little safer position,” suggested Joe. “Those Huns are switching their fire over this way, and we’ve had more shells drop around here in the last five minutes than we had before all the morning. Let’s shift to that shell hole over to the left.”

Blake cast an eye in the direction indicated.

“It might be a little safer,” he admitted, “but I’m afraid that part of the action would be shut off by that clump of trees. Better stick it out here a little while longer. We haven’t had such a chance for a long time and I hate to lose it.”

“All right,” agreed Joe cheerfully, for, like his partner, he was game, and would have gone through fire and water to get a good picture.

“A fellow ought to have as many lives as a cat when he sets put to do this kind of work,” grumbled Charlie.

“Quit your grouching,” laughed Blake. “You know you wouldn’t miss this for a farm. Think of the sensation this picture will make when it’s shown. Some day you’ll be sitting in a darkened theater seeing this thing unreeled, and you’ll pat yourself on the back and say proudly: ‘I helped to take that picture.’”

“Maybe,” assented Charlie grudgingly. “And then again when these are shown, I may be lying in a nice little box six feet under ground.”

“Well, you’ll be over all your troubles then,” Blake was beginning to say, when Joe Duncan interrupted.

“Look at that!” he cried excitedly. “I could see the shell leaving the gun that time!”

“Easy there,” returned Blake. “Your eyesight isn’t quite as good as all that, Joe. What you saw was the bunch of wadding that followed the shell. The film got it anyway, and it looks enough like a shell to make most people believe it is one. But we’ll put the right caption on it, for there isn’t going to be any fake in this series of films. It’s going to be the real thing.”

“Right you are,” agreed Joe. “We sure don’t need any faking in pictures like these. All the reels have to do is to tell the story just as it is, and they’ll make a tremendous hit.”

It was a hot day in early September, and the position of the sun indicated that it was almost noon. Ordinarily the boys would have had some shelter from the fierce rays that beat down upon them, for they were standing just within the edge of what nature had meant to be a forest, and at this early stage of autumn the trees would have been in full foliage.

But it was a forest no longer. Shot and shell had ploughed through it until every vestige of twig and leaf had been torn away. Even the bark had been stripped from the trunks, and the trees stood there in ghastly whiteness, like so many ghosts watching over a valley of the dead.

And there were plenty of dead to watch over, for all that morning there had been fierce fighting and the ground was thickly covered with motionless figures.

The American forces for some days past had been in hot pursuit of the Germans, who were making their way back to the Rhine. But that day the enemy had made a stand and put up a bitter resistance. They had taken up their position at the top of a hill, and there they had planted their artillery, which all the morning had been searching the American lines in a tremendous cannonade.

The Yankee guns had replied with a fire equally intense, and it was this spirited artillery duel that the young moving picture operators had been fixing on their films.

Suddenly there was a lull in the action and the boys looked at each other inquiringly.

“Seems to be a slowing down,” commented Joe.

“And about time,” grunted Charlie. “I didn’t know there were as many shells in the world as they’ve been firing this morning.”

“It isn’t because they’re out of ammunition, you can bet,” remarked Blake. “Not on our side, anyway. Trust Uncle Sam to keep his boys well supplied. We do things in millions in this war.”

“Right you are in that!” ejaculated Charlie Anderson vehemently.

“Perhaps they’ve slowed down to cool off the guns,” suggested Joe.

“I should think they’d be red hot by this time,” Charlie observed. “And maybe those gunners aren’t doing some sweating! They’re stripped to the waist.”

“I think the real reason is that there’s something else in the wind,” said Blake. “Perhaps our boys are going to charge. They may figure out that by this time the artillery fire has beaten down the enemy’s wires so that our men can go up and clean out the trenches.”

“Good guess, old man!” cried Joe, as a long file of khaki-clad soldiers emerged from the American lines and started up the hill. “There they go now. Great! Bully boys! Oh, how I wish I were with them!”

“Now the guns are opening up again!” exclaimed Blake. “They’re laying down a barrage in front of the boys.”

It was a sight that might well have stirred the pulse of anyone not dead to all emotion. Up the hill, wave upon wave, went the American boys, over the shell-ploughed ground, clambering over the trunks of fallen trees, skirting the edge of open craters, sometimes stumbling, but always advancing. Before them went a wall of fire laid down by their own gunners to screen their advance.

But now the enemy’s guns opened up again with redoubled fury. Lanes were made in the charging lines. Men threw up their hands and fell until the ground was dotted with crumpled figures. Their places were taken at once by others, and the long lines went on and on until they burst like a storm upon the enemy’s trenches at the crest of the hill.

Then there was fighting such as the boys had not yet seen in the war. The Germans, forced from their trenches, came out into the open in swarms, and their gray uniforms mingled in a terrific struggle with the khaki of the American troops. The guns stopped, as each side was afraid of firing into its own men. It became a fierce, hand-to-hand contest.

There was little rifle fire also, for the men had resorted to the bayonet, jabbing, hacking, stabbing, at times using the gun butt as well as the point. Against the sky line on the ridge the view from below was perfect, and the boys were fairly dancing with excitement as the film clicked off the story of the fight.

“Our fellows will win!” cried Blake. “The Huns can’t stand before our bayonets. When it comes to hand-to-hand fighting it’s all over with Fritz.”

“That’s right,” agreed Joe. “There’s no one in the world that can stand before our boys at close quarters.”

“The Boches are bringing up reinforcements though,” said Charlie anxiously. “Look at that bunch in gray coming down on their flank.”

“But there goes a new wave of our fellows up the hill,” put in Joe excitedly. “They’ll even it up all right.”

It was not to be an easy victory, however, for the Germans fought with the fury of desperation. It was a critical point in their line of defence, and they had been ordered to hold it at any cost. Crack troops that had been held in reserve were hurried up to meet the American onslaught. But the Yankee boys’ blood was up and they were not to be denied.

For half an hour the fight continued, and then a rousing cheer ran along the American lines. The ridge was taken, the trenches were cleared, and the beaten enemy had fallen back to his second line of defense.

“Hurrah!” yelled Blake wildly. “I knew they’d do it.”

“They’re the stuff!” shouted Joe. “Oh, boy, how they did put it over them!”

“And these are the greenhorns they said were going to break and run as soon as they caught sight of a Prussian uniform,” exulted Charlie.

“They run all right,” grinned Blake, “but you’ll notice they run toward the Huns instead of away from them. It’s Fritz who’s getting exercise in running toward the Rhine.”

“We hear a lot of German arms, But, oh, those German legs!”

chanted Joe.

“There go the guns again!” exclaimed Blake.

Now that the hand-to-hand fighting was over, the German artillery had again opened up, and a perfect hail of shot and shell tore over the ridge that the Americans had captured and down the slope into the further lines.

“Look there!” exclaimed Joe suddenly, as he pointed to a spot halfway up the hill.

The others looked in the direction he indicated and saw a wounded soldier trying to crawl back toward them.

“Poor fellow,” broke out Charlie sympathetically. “He seems to be pretty badly hurt, and the shells are falling all around him. But the ambulances will be along pretty soon.”

“Ambulances nothing!” cried Blake. “Charlie, you stay here and take care of this film. I’m going out to bring that fellow in. What do you say, Joe? Are you game?”

“Am I?” replied Joe. “That’s my middle name. I’m with you, old man. Come along.”

A moment later, with their blood on fire, the chums were on their way up that hill of death.

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