CHAPTER II To the Front

THAT swift ride through France in the new Red Cross ambulance was quite devoid of any startling incidents. There were the usual bits of well traveled and rutty roads and long stretches of fine highway, the occasional detours by reason of road mending; here old men and boys labored to keep up the important lanes of traffic for the oncoming hosts of Americans and the transportation of overseas supplies. The lads overtook heavily laden lorries, or camions as the French call them; they passed columns of marching men and those billeted in villages or encamped in the wayside fields. They noted the slow moving forward of heavy field pieces and here and there they came to drill grounds where lately arrived Americans were going through mock trench fighting or were bayonet stabbing straw-stuffed bags supposed to be Huns.

Everywhere the boys observed also that there were more people in the towns and villages than the sizes of these places seemed to warrant, and in the fields and woods, in uncultivated or otherwise barren spots little settlements of tents and rude shelters had been established as evidence of the wide exodus from the battle-scarred areas far to the east and north. Hundreds of thousands of people, driven from their ruined or threatened homes, had thus overrun the none too sparsely inhabited sections beyond the war-torn region.

“Non, non, non, non!” That was the common refrain directed by Herbert and Donald to the solicitations of the French, for the purchase of sundry articles, mostly of edible character, whenever the car was forced to stop.

“If you want to get rid of your money very quickly,” Herbert explained to the three Red Cross nurses riding with them in the rear of the ambulance, “you can sure do it if you patronize these sharpers. Their goods are all right generally, but the prices—phew! They must think every American is a millionaire.”

“And yet one must pity many of them; they have suffered and are suffering so much,” said the eldest nurse, a sweet-faced woman whose gray hairs denoted that she was past middle age.

“They seem to be very patient and really very cheerful,” remarked the somewhat younger woman whose slightly affected drawl and rather superior bearing indicated that she belonged to the higher social circles somewhere back in the U. S. And then up spoke the third, a mere slip of a girl, who had been quite silent until now.

“I have wondered and wondered what it would all be like, what the people would be like; and now I’m glad I’ve come. Perhaps when the war is over we can do something for these——”

“We will every one of us be glad to get home again,” said the gray-haired lady. “You, my dear, will prove no exception, however noble your reconstructive impulses are. But these people, no matter what they have gone through, will be well able to take care of themselves.”

And as the car presently dashed on again, Donald remarked to Herbert, so that their passengers could not hear:

“Don’t you think, old man, it is very true when they say that patriotism over in the dear old United States has had a remarkable awakening?”

“Yes, you can call it that, perhaps, if we were ever really asleep. You refer, I know, to these nurses, evidently ladies of refinement and culture, coming over here for duties that they must know can’t be any cinch. The women, if anything, have led the men at home in their zeal for helping toward making our part in this scrap a good one.”

“Very good and all honor to the women,” Don said, “but I guess, from what you and I have both seen and will soon see again, that which is making America’s part in this war a good one is mostly the scrapping ability of the lads with blood in their eyes. The humane part of it comes afterward.”

“And a little before at times also,” asserted the lieutenant. “There is the morale to keep up—the general good fellowship and well-being. If the boys know they’re going to be treated right if they get winged, then they’re heartened up a whole lot; you know that.”

“I do,” Don eagerly admitted. “Don’t think I’m throwing any rocks at the splendid efficiency of the Red Cross; if anyone knows about them I ought to, from every angle of the service. But I have also seen the kind of work that threw a scare into the Huns, and believe me that was not a humane, not a nursing proposition, as you know.”

“Yes, I know that, too. And it may be funny, but I’ve had a sort of homesick feeling to get back and see more of it, and the nearer I get the more impatient I am.”

“Same here. But this boat is doing her darndest for a long run and we can hardly improve the time even if you get out and walk.”

“From watching your speedometer register something over thirty miles in less than sixty minutes I am convinced that only a motorcycle or an airplane would help us better to get on.”

The ambulance did get on in a very satisfactory manner. Here and there along the road and at all turns and forks splotches of white paint on stones, posts, buildings, bridges or stakes and by which the transport and freight camions were guided, made the way across the three hundred miles quite plain. The lads paid no attention to the French sign posts, here and there, which announced the distance in kilometers to some larger town or city and then to Paris farther inland, for the route avoided these places wherever possible and ran into no narrow and congested streets or masses of people.

At the next stop, for a bite to eat in a small village, the middle-aged nurse expressed some disappointment at not going into Paris.

“I have been there many times in former years when my dear husband was living; we stopped there once for several months. But they say now that the city is not like it used to be—I mean the people, of course, in manners and gayety; the mourning for the dead and the fear of invasion or bombardment——”

“There is no longer fear of invasion,” Herbert declared. “That time has gone past. The business in hand now is whipping the Huns clear across the Rhine and into Berlin, if necessary, and we are going to do that in short order!”

“It’s terrible. So much death and suffering,” said the young girl. “And the Germans, too; who cares for them when wounded?”

“They have a Red Cross and very excellent ambulance and hospital service,” Don explained. “We pick up a good many of their wounded and treat them just as well as our own.”

“You have seen this yourself?” asked the gray-haired woman.

“My friend was in the thick of it, around Château-Thierry,” Herbert announced eagerly. “He was wounded, invalided, but he is going back for more work.”

The women all gazed at blushing Donald, who hastened to get even.

“He needn’t heap it on to me!” he exclaimed. “He’s going back, too, after having been gassed and sent across the pond to get well. And, you see, he got to be a lieutenant for bravery.”

“You both seem to be very young, too,” remarked the eldest nurse. “Hardly through school yet; are you?”

“No, ma’am; we are both students, junior year, at Brighton Acad——”

“Brighton? Well, I declare! Why, my brother is a teacher there; Professor Carpenter.”

“Oh, hurrah! He’s a dandy! The fellows all like him immensely!” Don shouted.

“It’s fine to meet his sister over here, Miss Carpenter,” Herbert said.

“It is indeed a pleasure to know you both,” said the lady, and proceeded to formally introduce the other two nurses.

Then they were on the road once more and two hours later had safely landed the women at a Red Cross headquarters on the way, a few miles north of Paris. The boys parted from their gentle passengers with real regret; then sped on again, headed for the Army General Headquarters.