CHAPTER IV
DECEIVING THE ENEMY
The moving picture boys slept well that night after the tremendous strain and excitement of the day, and awoke the next morning none the worse for their adventure, except that they were feeling a certain soreness that vanished, however, as the morning progressed.
Blake found himself the object of congratulations from many of the officers and men, for the news of his close call had spread rapidly.
“You just escaped by the skin of your teeth,” observed Lieutenant Baker, a young officer with whom they had struck up a warm friendship.
“I sure did,” agreed Blake. “A few minutes more and everything would have been all up with me.”
“Well, you were lucky to escape with your life,” said the lieutenant. “That’s more than many of the poor fellows did.”
“Yes,” replied Blake regretfully, “Joe was telling me that a good many of our fellows were killed by the explosion. But he said, too, that the Heinies got it a good deal worse than we did.”
“That’s true,” confirmed Baker. “It was a sort of boomerang for the Huns. They slipped their trolley some way and set the mine off a few minutes too late. This German efficiency that we hear so much about isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.”
“It’s getting to be deficiency, I guess,” grinned Joe. “Our boys sure gave them an awful wallop yesterday.”
“We must have captured a raft of them,” exulted Blake. “When we were going up the hill yesterday, it looked as though there were hundreds of the Heinies coming back as prisoners.”
“Certainly was a bunch,” grinned Charlie.
“Yes,” replied the lieutenant with a smile of satisfaction, “we killed a good many but we captured more. They’re getting easier to take than they used to be.”
“Right you are,” chuckled Joe. “They don’t seem to like our game. I heard that one of them said the other day that the Americans were easy to kill but impossible to stop.”
“Impossible is right,” declared Baker. “We’ve got them on the run now and it’s all up with them. It’s only a matter of time before we get to that sacred Rhine of theirs and then they’ll throw up their hands. If they don’t we’ll just have to finish up the job and go straight through to Berlin.”
“That’s just what I’m hoping for,” said Blake grimly. “I don’t want them to quit too soon. That would make it too easy for them. I’d like to see the war pushed on German soil. I want them to taste a little of what they’ve given to France and Belgium. I want them to hear the roar of cannon and the screaming of shells in their own cities and villages. I want to see their roads choked with refugees fleeing for their lives. Of course, we wouldn’t do to them what they’ve done to the French and Belgians. We simply couldn’t. It isn’t in our nature. We couldn’t stand up old men and little boys and shoot them down. We couldn’t kill helpless women and babies, but I would like to see some of their cities go up in flames and their villages turned into piles of rubbish.”
He stopped, almost breathless with the intensity of his feeling.
“Blake is getting eloquent this morning,” laughed Joe.
“Yes,” assented the lieutenant with a smile, “but he doesn’t put it a bit too strongly. He’s only saying what civilized people all over the world are feeling. But there isn’t a chance of anything of the kind happening. Those fellows bluster a lot, but when it comes right to the pinch they’ll quit like a lot of yellow dogs. They’ll make door-mats of themselves before they’ll take a chance of having their cities and towns devastated.”
“That’s where the French and Belgians had it all over them,” broke in Joe. “All Belgium had to do to save her beautiful cities from ruin was to quit at the start. But her honor wasn’t for sale. The same with the French. They had the stuff in them to stick to the end, to fight to the last ditch. Look at them when things seemed so dark this Spring. Did they quit? Not a bit of it. You didn’t hear a whine or yelp out of them. But the Heinies will quit soon enough when they find things going against them. You mark my words and see what kind of a prophet I am.”
“I think you’re right,” said the lieutenant, “but we’ll see. The thing that counts just now is that we’re licking them to a frazzle. You were speaking of the prisoners we took yesterday, but we got a good many of their guns, too. Do you care to take a look at them? We’ve got them all parked up here back of the Second Division.”
“Sure we would,” replied Blake, and he was echoed by the others heartily.
A few minutes’ walk brought them to a field where the captured guns had been collected. They made an impressive showing. There were over sixty of them, of all calibers from the lighter field-pieces to the heavier monsters of tremendous range and power.
“So these are the fellows that were barking at us yesterday,” remarked Blake with exultation in his tones.
“Mighty big bunch of them,” observed Joe.
“And look at the way they’re painted,” said Charlie.
“All the colors of the rainbow. They actually make your eyes ache when you look at them,” added Joe.
“But they make your heart glad to count them,” chuckled Blake.
“Hard to keep your eyes on ’em long enough to count ’em, though, fixed up like that,” observed Charlie Anderson.
“What’s the idea of all this gaudy stuff?” asked Joe. “We’ve been keeping the Germans so busy that I shouldn’t think they’d have much time for art.”
“That isn’t art,” said the lieutenant dryly. “That’s business. It’s camouflage.”
“Oh, that’s it!” exclaimed Blake with interest. “I knew that they camouflaged almost everything else on earth and I knew they camouflage the position of the guns, but I didn’t know they used it on the guns themselves.”
“They don’t as a rule,” explained the lieutenant. “When they’re holding a position on a certain front for any length of time, they content themselves with hiding the guns so that the aviators can’t spot them, but since we’ve forced them out into the open they’ve had to camouflage the guns themselves. And it does pretty well as a makeshift, too, for it’s mighty hard to locate them, with all these spots and stripes to deceive the eye. Now, for instance, if this,” pointing to one of the big guns near him, “were perfectly black, you could stand a hundred feet off with a rifle and hit it without half trying. It would be no trick at all because it would be a plain target. But if you tried to get a bead on this gun now with all its colors, it would make your eyes water, and ten to one you wouldn’t come within several yards of it.”
“That camouflage is a great idea,” said Joe admiringly.
“Big time stuff,” agreed Blake.
“It certainly is,” acquiesced the lieutenant. “But this is nothing to some of the stunts these camouflage artists pull off. You moving picture fellows are no slouches when it comes to faking things, I’ll admit. You can make an audience think that it sees a man jump from the ground to the top of the Woolworth Building. But if you could see some of the things that our boys do in the camouflage training camps it would make you sit up and take notice.”
“They’d have to be pretty good if they put anything over on us,” said Joe, coming to the defense of his profession.
“I’m from Missouri,” remarked Blake incredulously. “You’ll have to show me.”
“I’ll show you all right,” laughed Baker. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. There’s a camouflage camp of ours only a few miles from here in a village back of the lines. We’ll be busy here for the next day or two, consolidating our positions and bringing up our artillery in preparation for another advance. If I can arrange it this afternoon, I’ll get one of the army autos and whirl you fellows over. It’s likely enough there’ll be some orders to be sent over there and I’ll ask our colonel to let me take them. Would you like to go?”
“What a question,” laughed Blake Stewart, eager for the trip.
“You don’t have to ask us twice,” grinned Joe.
“Don’t leave me behind, Lieutenant Baker,” pleaded Charlie.
“All right,” concluded the lieutenant. “It’s a go then. I think I can arrange it.”
His supposition was correct, for shortly after mess he sent an orderly to the boys asking them to come to his quarters.
They complied promptly and found him sitting in an army auto waiting for them.
“Ready, eh?” he greeted them. “Pile in then and we’ll break all the speed laws between here and Hoboken.”
In a twinkling they were in beside him. He took the wheel, and the big machine at once sprang forward.
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