CHAPTER XXVII
A NEW VENTURE
It was three days later and Hal and Chester sat in their own quartersin the shelter of the American lines. The flight from the German lineshad been made safely. The aeroplanes had been found where ColonelAnderson and Major Derevaux had left them.
These had ascended without knowledge of the Germans, and had started ontheir homeward flight before being discovered. Then there had beenpursuit, but they had landed without being so much as scratched.
"Well," said Hal, rising and picking up a pile of papers, "I've studiedthese maps until I know them by heart. Now if someone can tell me whatit's all about, I'll be obliged."
"Same here," Chester agreed. "Funny, when you stop to think about it.Here they give us these maps and tell us to stuff our heads full ofthem. Well, my head is full, all right."
"And mine--Hello, here comes someone."
"It's Captain O'Neill. Maybe he'll, be ready to explain now," saidChester.
A moment later the American captain entered the tent. The boyssaluted. The captain came to the point at once.
"You are both familiar with airplanes?" he asked.
The lads nodded.
"So I understand," said the captain. "Also I hear that several timesyou have landed upon unfamiliar ground, and in the dark. I aminformed, too, that you are always willing to take desperate risks. AmI right?"
"We are glad to do what we can," returned Chester quietly.
"Understand," said the captain, "you will be asked to land not only inthe dark but behind the enemy lines, not knowing who or what is below."
"We understand," said Hal quietly.
"I have come to offer you this opportunity," said Captain O'Neillquietly. "Tonight--the exact time is 10 o'clock--we attack inforce. In comparison, the assaults before this have been as nothing.I say we, but I mean chiefly, of course, the French. There will besome American troops in the advance, however. The mission I am nowoffering you was turned over to us by the French general staff."
"We shall be glad of the opportunity to aid, sir," said Hal.
"Good!" said Captain O'Neill, and continued: "One element alone isuncertain; one only is to be ascertained. The force and dispositionof the defending troops in shell holes, in their concrete 'pill-boxes,'in their flanking trenches all have been ascertained. They will beblasted out by our artillery. But they have additional forces belowthe ground, in great caverns too far down to be reached by our shells;they are tremendous underground works concealing whole battalions, manythousands of men, whose presence is known; but the entrances and themeans of egress from those great caverns have so far eluded us.
"We have discovered some of these entrances," he continued, "butimmediately they have changed. At present we do not know them. But at10 o'clock tonight the points from which the German reserves willemerge must be instantly and accurately marked. When our infantry goesover the top and the Germans order their shock troops out from the safeunderground refuges to meet our men, we must know the points where theenemy battalions are coming up. Some of these points will be cared forby French already in position to inform us. I offer to you theopportunity of marking others of those points."
"We shall be glad," said Hal simply.
"Very well. You understand, of course, that you will be killed ifdiscovered. Both of you come with me."
He arose, and Hal and Chester followed the captain to his motor-car,which they entered and drove to the main road, over which Germanprisoners captured early in the day were still streaming to the rear.Overhead a few aeroplanes still buzzed--combat and fire control andstaff "observation" machines seeking out their aerodromes in thedark. It grew dark so quickly now that Hal, looking up, saw thecolored flash of the signal lights from a pilot's pistol; they burnedan instant red and blue and red again as they dropped through the air;and, in response to the signal, greenish white flares gleamed from theground to the right, outlining the aviation field; then the flyingmachine, which had signaled, began to come down.
From far beyond the drum fire of artillery rumbled and rattled.
The car ran up a side road and halted before a little hut. CaptainO'Neill alighted.
"We bad the misfortune, in the attack this morning," he said, "to loseone of our most useful people. The enemy had employed him, recently,in excavating certain of their great underground stations, which I havementioned; but last night they had him in a front-line trench, which wetook this morning. He has volunteered to return to his post, if we canplace him behind the lines, but, I regret, he is in no condition forfurther service. Therefore, we must send a substitute."
Captain O'Neill led the way into a candle lighted room, where a man waslying in bed. Civilian clothes--the rags of a French refugee fromthe other side of the lines--hung on the wall beside him. The manwas very weak, with hands which drooped from the wrist as he half satup as the captain entered. The man's name, the captain informed thelads, was Jean Brosseau.
Captain O'Neill produced a map, a duplicate of the ones which the ladshad been given several days before. The man in bed now detailed tothem the exact nature and purpose of the markings and spots. It wasall lined off into little squares and oblongs, each described with aletter and number. These were for the guiding of the guns--because,for each tiny square on the German side of the lines, there was abattery or a couple of batteries behind the French front, whosebusiness was solely to sweep that square with high explosive shells,gas shells and shrapnel, when the battle was on.
To escape those shells, the Germans again were burrowing, Brosseaupointed out. Some places they had burrowed far too deep to beendangered by shells; but their ways of egress were not known. Thesewere covered with camouflage.
Hal took down the shirt from the wall; vermin crawled in it. CaptainO'Neill had not made the mistake of having it steamed or washed ordisinfected; vermin and filth of underground communications soiled therags of Jean Brosseau's jacket, his trousers, his cap. Hal, withoutceremony, stripped off his uniform and underclothes. His body wasclean and without calluses; the cleanliness was soon remedied. Then hedressed, to give him all the time possible to become accustomed to thegarments of a French citizen in the hands of the enemy.
The reverberations of the guns outside had increased mightily; theyseemed to double again to topmost intensity. Captain O'Neill frowned alittle as he heard them and glanced at his watch. A motorcycleclattered up and stopped outside; a man knocked at the door, delivereda message to Captain O'Neill, and departed. Captain O'Neill read themessage and tore it to bits. Hal and Chester waited without question;but the sick man had to ask:
"We have lost ground, sir?"
"No, no! All goes well--very well, except for us here," CaptainO'Neill replied. "The time is moved forward; that is all."
He bent again over the map.
"There will not be time now if you are taken far back of the Germanlines where an aeroplane may come down unobserved. There will not betime," he repeated to Hal, "for you to work forward to the positionwhere you must be."
"What's the matter with coming down near the position where we'rewanted?" asked Hal.
"Near their lines?" Captain O'Neill questioned. "There will be men allabout, of course; you will be observed."
"What's the matter with coming down observed sir?" said Chester.
"Observed," repeated the captain. "How do you mean?"
"It is something we have talked of before," said Hal. "We have oftenconsidered this method of getting a man down inside the German lines,even in a section where discovery is certain. A machine goes upcarrying bombs, perhaps; it drops them and attracts anti-aircraftfire. It appears to fall, sir, and comes down in that way."
Captain O'Neill's brows drew together, puzzled, but he was patient.
"But I do not see the advantage," he said.
"It falls in flames, sir," said Hal. "The pilot ignites it when itbegins to drop."
"Proceed," Captain O'Neill bade.
"Th
e men found in it are killed," continued Hal "'killed by theshrapnel fire--also, of course, they burn with the aeroplane. It is,to all observers, a bombing biplane shot down in flames."
"And you think such a plan will succeed?" asked the captain.
"I feel sure of it, sir."
"Well," said Captain O'Neill, "you are the two who must take thechances. You have my permission to adopt your own plans."
Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders; Or, the Fighting Canadians of Vimy Ridge Page 27
