CHAPTER XII Tim

Don Richards’ new helper on the Red Cross ambulance was an under-sized, red-headed Irishman by the name of Tim Casey. He was a month or two short of nineteen winters and, as he expressed it, an undetermined number of summers, but judging by the bleached-out color of his hair, which he assured Don was originally as black as a nigger’s pocket, there must have been a long siege of sunny months. County Kerry was his birthplace and his native village was noted for its big men, his own father being almost a walking church steeple and his numerous brothers all six-footers. Tim was the only short one—“the runt in the litter,” he called himself.

“But if yez are proper anxious to know an’ ye look loike ye couldn’t survive the day out wid not knowin’ all o’ me fam’ly histhry, Oi’ll tell yez this: Phw’at was left out o’ me body was put in me head, do yez moind? for by the holy Saint Macherel, Oi’m the smartest o’ the bunch. Me faither’s poorer than whin he was born, an’ me brithers couldn’t foind pennies if they growed on the grass. But me? Faith, if wan o’ these here boche zizzers don’t have me name wrote on it, thin whin the war’s over Oi’m goin’ to America an’ make a million pounds, loike me friend Mike McCarty did!”

“Good for you! That’s nearly five million dollars. Hope you get it,” said Don.

“Thanks. Could yez lend me phw’at they call two francs, now, to git us both some sweet, brown, mushy things, loike candy, but diff’runt? It’s me own treat, now.”

“Chocolate? Sure. Here you are. You can get them at the Y. M. C. A. hut in an abri back of the woods and near our dressing station,” Don informed him, and a little later the two lads were enjoying mouthfuls of very satisfying sweetness, as they waited for more wounded to be brought out to them. And as they waited Don turned to a sentry to ask some questions. The sentry was glad to impart:

“The P. C. came over a little while ago and I heard him tell the medical sergeant, here in the doorway, that they had a message from the evacuation hospital about a Hun in a Red Cross ambulance getting away around the woods here. The man I relieved said he saw the fellow go past, and he went a whizzing, but he didn’t question him; nobody does anything with the Red Cross on it. The P. C. said that they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man, nor the ambulance, since and they think he must have been heading for another sector. He can rip off his red crosses there and let on he’s something else important. They do those stunts. But if he’s caught, it’s good-night for him!”

Don was keenly disappointed. He had sent some very well directed bullets straight after the escaping car, but they must have hit the sides at an angle and glanced off. However cold-blooded and murderous it appeared thus to shoot down a man, even a declared and vicious enemy, the boy had done this deed against one who had murdered his dear pal, Billy Mearns. Moreover, Don had wanted to write to his father and to Mr. Stapley, at home, that the escaped man who had helped to blow up the mills had been discovered and accounted for. Don felt sure that this fake Red Cross driver and spy was the same man—the narrow-eyed, tall individual that he and Clem Stapley had spotted and listened to on the train coming from Brighton, more than three months ago.

Now that the German spy had escaped again, he would surely turn up somewhere else and do more harm. Like his bearded confederate at Lofton, he could probably speak English and American English perfectly, and no doubt he knew French also, for these spies were of that sort—sharp-witted, brainy, learned scoundrels!

“He will try, yes, no doubt, but it will amount to very little. What can he do?” replied the sentinel to whom Don made his pessimistic remark.

“Are yez on to this?” said Tim Casey. “The Limburgers are a very smart bunch, yis; in many ways, yiz; but, me b’y, they’re awful stupid, do yez see? These here Huns are loike parrots. They’re windy imitators, ye see, but bad ’cess to thim, they got no real sense. They don’t know just phw’at they want. A parrot, me b’y, is always hollerin’ fer a cracker, but did yez iver see it eat wan? Ye did not.”

“By which you mean to say—” began Don.

“Thot the dumb Dutch will do somethin’ crazy sooner er later an’ hang hisself. They jist natchally go round with a rope ready. An look phw’at they’re doin’ in this war. Preparin’ the thickest koind of a rope an’ makin’ it good an’ tight around their fool necks be desthroyin’ iv’rything they come acrost so that whin they have t’ pay they can’t do it!”

It might seem to one not familiar with the risks of battle that the work of an army or Red Cross ambulance driver must have been intolerably monotonous. But such an idea is very far from the truth. No two journeys afield were alike and so varied was the work and so soul-stirring the sights and sounds of two great armies facing each other, with bared fangs, that the part of any kind of an actor in the war become a terribly real experience.

There was no monotony in this thing for Don Richards, nor doubtless, for any other ambulance driver in France during the great war, and our hero could affirm this, especially when a shell, making a direct hit, carried away all the latter part of his ambulance and burst on the ground beyond, not forty feet away. Tim and Don were dragged one way by the impact, a hundredth of a second later tossed, in a heap in the other direction clear of motor and front wheels, upon a friendly bit of mud and left to wonder whether the world had come to an end completely, or was only just beginning to. And yet the boys came through without a scratch worth mentioning.

Tim Casey worried Don not a little in always being slow with his gas mask. The boy told his helper that it would serve him right some time if he got a sore throat from the gas. But the Irishman laughed; he was really not afraid of anything normal, and abnormal things he treated with a sort of lenient bluff, cursing them soundly in his soft Irish brogue and dodging them because it was the habit to do so.

“The sthinkin’ stuff is as vile as the dirthy Huns thot sind it over, an’ if Oi had the villain thot invinted it Oi’d maul the face off him, I wud!”

“But suppose he were a big fellow, like some of these Huns are?” Don asked in jest, to tease his companion.

“Big er little, it don’t matter,” replied Tim. “It ain’t the soize of a mon thot counts; it’s the spirit of him,” which Don was glad to admit. And he sized up the little Irishman as one having a large spirit when it came to a scrap.

And there was the movement of men, of guns big and little, of airplanes; there were aerial battles, bombings, raids and counter-attacks, which were seen but little by the ambulance drivers, but the immediate results were realistic enough. Tim Casey found a remark or two that fitted every occasion and he declared one fight even bloodier than an Irish holiday.

“Ah, me b’y, if the bloody gobs in this here scrap had only had clubs—shillalahs—phw’at wud they done to each ither? If Oi was the ginral of this outfit, b’gorry, Oi’d sthart out a raidin’ party of all Irish from County Kerry, give ’em shillalahs an’ the war’d be over the next day! The kaiser wud call it inhuman, of coorse, an’ right he’d be, but we’d win jist the same.”

“Now, what could clubs do against guns?” Don laughed. “They’d have you all shot dead before you got near enough to soak them.”

“An wud they? Thin, me b’y, how come they to use bayonets? Tell me thot.”

“Its a thing I can’t understand and I guess I never will; unless it’s after the ammunition on both sides gives out that they use them. Maybe if they’d do away with ammunition in wars shillalahs would be handier than guns and worse than bayonets.”

“Oi’ll write the C. and C. about thot same,” said Tim.

But whatever frightful atrocities and science had done to make this war a horror beyond the conception of those who could not witness it, the most terrible of all was the Hun bombing of hospitals. There was, as with many other things indulged in by the Germans, nothing gained by these acts—nothing but deeper exasperation and determination on the part of those who were forced to fight the Hun. He saw others through his own shade of yellow and imagined that he could frighten his foes and lessen their morale that way—but it produced exactly the opposite effect.

The cross-roads evacuation hospital tents back of the Montdidier front suffered from German airmen, not many days after the great German push for Amiens had been stopped. Plainly an act of hatred, this bombing gained nothing for the Huns. They had lost thousands of men in killed, wounded and prisoners and wanted the Allies to suffer still more.

Don and Tim had received but one wounded man from the dressing station back of the woods on the hill. Looking for additional wounded, who might be struggling in, they had run around the northern edge of the woods and a half-mile farther on, near the front line trenches, when a military policeman rode out from an old orchard and stopped them.

“Too much noise from that motor of yours and the Heinies are very wide awake,” he said. “They’ll spot you and be pretty likely to get you.”

“We hadn’t seen any Hun fliers and we thought they might be generally keeping quiet,” Don said.

“They are quiet just now, but I reckon it’s just before a storm,” said the M. P. “That’s the way it usually is. If they suddenly start to put down a barrage before a drive or a raid you’ll be in for it. You know a good many of the bullets fly high and pretty nearly half of them ricochet. You fellows can’t get back of a tree as I and my horse can. Better go back.”

Tim, who was driving the car, having now become rather proficient at it, had a word to say, as usual.

“R-right you are, me b’y! We was jist calculatin’ if they sint some whizzers over to ketch ’em in these here dish pans; do ye see?” And Tim tapped his helmet. “We’re lookin’ fer sowineers, we are.”

“Oh, yes, you’d stop ’em! If a 122-shell would be coming right for that topknot of yours it would veer off and go on, hoping to draw blood where none was already flowing.”

“Faith, an’ how did yez iver git in the sarvice? Ye’re color blind; me mither dyed me hair blue; can’t ye see it? to offset me too cheerful disposition.”

“If you told me it was green I might believe you. But on the top of the green it’s all rufus, Mike, all rufus.”

“Well, misther bobby, it’s all right fer yez. But it’s a fightin’ color; ain’t it?”

“I believe that! But come now, lads; you’d better beat it while your skins are whole.”

Tim began turning the car. “Sure an’ ye loike t’ give orders. An’ Oi’ll be tellin’ yez this; if a shell comes your way an’ mixes wid yer anatomy, er yez git overcome wid hard wor-r-rk sett in’ on thot plug all day ye’ll be hopeful glad t’ see us comin’. So long!”

Not many minutes later the boys reached the hospital and out came the Major in his long, white blouse. When the brancardiers had carried the wounded man into the X-ray tent, the chief had a word to say to the ambulanciers gathered by the roadside.

“Hold yourselves in readiness, boys; we have orders to evacuate at once; get every man that we can let go out of here and be ready to pull up stakes at a moment’s notice. That’ll be if the Germans succeed in advancing. It is believed they are getting ready to make another push. So, as soon as we list our cases fully as to condition and treatment, in half an hour’s time, we shall ask you to go get busy. You had better line up along the road. Those cases in the first three cars you will report and they’ll go on through to the convalescent bases, as ordered by the Red Cross commission assistant; the others will go to the nearest Red Cross base. Now, then, stand ready boys, and tune up your motors till we call on you for the stretcher work. We haven’t enough brancardiers to do it quickly.” The Major re-entered the tent.

Don turned to a fellow-driver and was making a remark when Tim pulled his sleeve.

“Do yez hear thot coffee grinder comin’?”

From a distance there was the hum of a motor high in air. As it grew louder, it was easily recognized as a double motor—the unmistakable sound, never in tune, that giant twin propellers make.

“Sounds like a bombing plane. Ours or the Huns’?” queried a driver, gazing aloft. The bunch were all doing that now, as a matter of habit. One chap was squinting through a field glass.

“There she comes out of that cloud! Pretty high up. Say, it’s a Heinie! What’s he up to? Guns can’t reach him at that elevation, but his bombs can reach the earth.”

“Going to worry them reserves, I reckon. Where’s the Frog-eaters? They’ll chase him home if they go up.”

There seemed to be no French birdmen around and the German was evidently taking advantage of this. He was coming on straight over the hospital and lessening his height every second. In thirty seconds he had come down to half the distance from the earth and began to sweep about in a circle, or like a gigantic figure eight, much as a great, bloodthirsty hawk does when scanning the earth below for its prey.

Suddenly, from beneath the airplane the watchers saw something long and gray which seemed to poise a moment under the airplane, then drop and gain momentum every fraction of a second, and fall like a plummet straight for the hospital tent. The watchers, all experienced, knew well what it was, but any cry of warning was lost in the explosion that followed not a hundred feet beyond the tent.

“The dirty spalpeen!” Don heard Tim shout. “Come down here wanst an’ thin do it! Gin’ral,”—Tim insisted upon calling Don that—“he’ll make surer the next time! Come, there’s wor-rk inside!”

There was. Don caught a glimpse of two ambulanciers diving under their cars, of another running somewhere else, evidently for shelter. The boy’s ears welcomed the sharp crack, crack of field pieces and he knew the anti-aircraft were demonstrating their readiness. He got one more glimpse of the Hun plane over the roof of the tent and saw another gray thing descending. Then he was inside.

When Don had looked in not two hours before he noted that at least three-fourths of the cots were occupied, the convalescents walking slowly about, or seated in little groups, talking; the nurses were busily engaged. The sad sounds pervading the place were horribly depressing to him. He could not long endure the labored breathing of those who were passing over the Great Divide, the persistent coughing of the severely gassed, the sight of shell-shocked men, who, without a scratch, cowered and stared about like crazy people, the moaning of those who suffered and the smell of anesthetics.

But now all was changed. The scene was beyond description. Don was awake to his duty and eager for it. There must be strong wills and hands to aid and reassure these helpless fellows. The doctors and nurses, frightened but heroic, could not do it all.

With a sound like the rending of a thousand taut cords a hole was torn in the tent roof, the interior was filled with streaks of flame and smoke and flying objects, a choking odor filled the air with stinging fumes and through it all came groans, screams and curses in a hideous melody. Wounded men some with limbs in splints, some half covered with bandages, leaped or tumbled out of their cots, and sought imagined shelter anywhere. Some limped or crawled outside. Some lay still and prayed aloud. Another bomb fell that was a second clean miss of the main tent, though it struck the corner of the medical supplies tent and scattered the Major’s personal effects beyond recovery. Two other bombs came down in quick succession, one in the road beyond, cutting a hind tire, lifting the top off of the last ambulance in the line and knocking down two sentries. The fifth bomb went wild and did no harm. Those who still had their eyes on the murderous thing aloft saw it turn eastward and rise beyond the reach of the guns.

There was much work of a very serious nature during the next few hours and then a night of running back and forth. The first streaks of a murky dawn witnessed the evacuation hospital nearly empty and ready for new cases. Two lads in a rain-soaked and mud-bespattered ambulance, carrying a cheerful soldier whose only need was a week of rest, stopped by the roadside on the way to Paris—and, with their passenger’s consent, rolled up in blankets on floor and seat to sleep the sleep of the just fagged.