Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer Part 4

said Tom. "I got extra----"

"All right. Go in and get some sleep; you haven't got long. The wire boys will take care of you."

He strode away and began to talk hurriedly with another man who showed him some papers and Tom watched him as one in a trance.

"Now you're in for it, kiddo," he heard some one say.

"R. I. P. for yours," volunteered another.

Tom knew well enough what R. I. P. meant. Often in his lonely night rides through the towns close to the fighting he had seen it on row after row of rough, carved wooden crosses.

"There won't be much _resting in peace_ to-night. How about it, Toul sector?"

"I didn't feel very sleepy, anyway," said Tom.

He slept upon one of the makeshift straw bunks on the stone floor of the cellar under the cottage. With the first streak of dawn he arose and went quietly out and sat on a powder keg under a small window, tore several pages out of his pocket blank-book and using his knee for a desk, wrote:

"DEAR MARGARET:

"Maybe you'll be surprised, kind of, to get a letter from me. And maybe you won't like me calling you Margaret. I told Roy to show you my letters, cause I knew he'd be going into Temple Camp office on account of the troop getting ready to go to Camp and I knew he'd see you. I'd like to be going up to camp with them, and I'd kind of like to be back in the office, too. I remember how I used to be scared of you and you said you must be worse than the Germans 'cause I wasn't afraid of them. I hope you're working there yet and I'd like to see Mr. Burton, too.

"I was going to write to Roy but I decided I'd send a letter to you because whenever something is going to happen the fellows write letters home and leave them to be mailed in case they don't get back. So if you get this you'll know I'm killed. Most of them write to girls or their mothers, and as long as I haven't got any mother I thought I'd write to you. Because maybe you'd like to hear I'm killed more than anybody. I mean maybe you'd be more interested.

"I'm going to go over the top with this regiment. I got sent way over to this sector for special service. A fellow told me he heard it was because I got a level head. I can't tell you where I am, but this morning we're going to take a town. I didn't have to go, 'cause I'm a non-com., but I volunteered. I don't know what I'll have to do.

"I ain't exactly scared, but it kind of makes me think about home and all like that. I often wished I'd meet Roscoe Bent over here.

Maybe he wrote to you. I bet everybody likes him wherever he is over here. It's funny how I got to thinking about you last night.

I'll--there goes the bugle, so I can't write any more. Anyway, you won't get it unless I'm killed. Maybe you won't like my writing, but every fellow writes to a girl the last thing. It seems kind of lonely if you can't write to a girl.

"Your friend,

"TOM SLADE."

CHAPTER SIX

OVER THE TOP

The first haze of dawn was not dispelled when the artillery began to thunder and Tom knew that the big job was on. Stolid as he was and used to the roar of the great guns, he made hasty work of his breakfast for he was nervous and anxious to be on the move.

Most of the troops that were to go seemed to have gone already. He joined the two signal corps men, one of whom carried the wire and the other a telephone apparatus, and as they moved along the road other signal corps men picked up the wire behind them at intervals, carrying it along.

Tom was as proud of his machine as a general could be of his horse, and he wheeled it along beside him, keeping pace with the slow advance of his companions, his heart beating high.

"If you have to come back with any message, you'll remember Headquarters, won't you?" one asked him.

"I always remember Headquarters," said Tom.

"And don't get rattled."

"I never get rattled."

"Watch the roads carefully as we go, so you can get back all right.

Noise don't bother you?"

"No, I'm used to artillery--I mean the noise," said Tom.

"You probably won't have much to do unless in an emergency. If Fritzie cuts the wire or it should get tangled and we couldn't reach the airmen quick enough you'd have to beat it back. There's two roads out of Cantigny. Remember to take the south one. We're attacking on a mile front. If you took----"

"If I have to come back," said Tom, "I'll come the same way. You needn't worry."

His advisor felt sufficiently squelched. And indeed, he had no cause to worry. The Powers that Be had sent Thatchy into the West where the battle line was changing every day and roads were being made and destroyed and given new directions; where the highway which took one to Headquarters one day led into the lair of the Hun on the next, and all the land was topsy-turvy and changing like the designs in a kaleidoscope--for the very good reason that Thatchy invariably reached his destination and could be depended upon to come back, through all the chaos, as a cat returns to her home. The prison camps in Germany were not without Allied dispatch-riders who had become "rattled" and had blundered into the enemy's arms, but Thatchy had a kind of uncanny extra sense, a b.u.mp of locality, if you will, and that is why they had sent him into this geographical tangle where maps became out of date as fast as they were made.

The sun was not yet up when they reached a wider road running crossways to the one out of the village and here many troops were waiting as far up and down the road as Tom could see. A narrow ditch led away from the opposite side of the road through the fields beyond, and looking up and down the road he could see that there were other ditches like it.

The tanks were already lumbering and waddling across the fields, for all the world like great clumsy mud turtles, with soldiers perched upon them as if they were having a straw ride. Before Tom and his companions entered the nearest ditch he could see crowds of soldiers disappearing into other ditches far up the road.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHOWING WHERE THE AMERICANS WERE BILLETED: CANTIGNY, WHICH THEY CAPTURED AND THE ROUTE TAKEN BY TOM AND THE CARRIERS. ARROWS SHOW THE AREA OF ATTACK.]

The fields above them were covered with sh.e.l.l holes, a little cemetery flanked one side of the zigzag way, and the big dugouts of the reserves were everywhere in this backyard of the trench area. Out of narrow, crooked side avenues soldiers poured into the communication trench which the wire carriers were following, falling in ahead of them.

"We'll get into the road after the boys go over and then you'll have more room for your machine. Close quarters, hey?" Tom's nearest companion said.

When they reached the second-line trench the boys were leaving it, by hundreds as it seemed to Tom, and crowding through the crooked communication trenches. The wire carriers followed on, holding up the wire at intervals. Once when Tom peeped over the edge of the communication trench he saw the tanks waddling along to right and left, rearing up and bowing as they crossed the trench, like clumsy, trained hippopotamuses. And all the while the artillery was booming with continuous, deafening roar.

Tom did not see the first of the boys to go over the top for they were over by the time he reached the second-line trench, but as he pa.s.sed along the fire trench toward the road he could see them crowding over, and when he reached the road the barbed wire entanglements lay flat in many places, the boys picking their way across the fallen meshes, the clumsy tanks waddling on ahead, across No Man's Land. As far as Tom could see along the line in either direction this sh.e.l.l-torn area was being crossed by hundreds of boys in khaki holding fixed bayonets, some going ahead of the tanks and some perching on them.

Above him the whole district seemed to be in pandemonium, men shouting and their voices drowned by the thunder of artillery.

His first real sight of the attack was when he clambered out of the trench where it crossed the road and faced the flattened meshes of barbed wire with its splintered supporting poles all tangled in it.

Never was there such a wreck.

"All right," he shouted down. "It's as flat as a pancake--careful with the machine--lift the back wheel--that's right!"

He could hardly hear his own voice for the noise, and the very earth seemed to shake under the heavy barrage fire which protected them. In one sweeping, hasty glance he saw scores of figures in khaki running like mad and disappearing into the enemy trenches beyond.

"Do you mean to let the wire rest on this?" he asked, as his machine was lifted up and the first of the wire carriers came scrambling up after it; "it might get short-circuited."

"We'll run it over the poles, only hurry," the men answered.

They were evidently the very last of the advancing force, and even as Tom looked across the sh.e.l.l-torn area of No Man's Land, he could see the men picking their way over the flattened entanglements and pouring into the enemy trenches. The tanks had already crossed these and were rearing and waddling along, irresistible yet ridiculous, like so many heroic mud turtles going forth to glory. Here and there Tom could see the gray-clad form of a German clambering out of the trenches and rushing pell-mell to the rear.

But it was no time to stand and look. Hurriedly they disentangled a couple of the supporting poles, laying them so that the telephone wire pa.s.sed over them free of the barbed meshes and Tom, mounting his machine, started at top speed along the road across No Man's Land, dragging the wire after him. Scarcely had he started when he heard that wasplike whizzing close to him--once, twice, and then a sharp metallic sound as a bullet hit some part of his machine. He looked back to see if the wire carriers were following, but there was not a sign of any of them except his companion who carried the apparatus, and just as Tom looked this man twirled around like a top, staggered, and fell.

The last of the Americans were picking their way across the tangle of fallen wire before the German fire trench. He could see them now and again amid dense clouds of smoke as they scrambled over the enemy sandbags and disappeared.