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Show vlheW-ir al Qlose Rancje y Described In a Remarkal.le"- Jer, By an Officer of tte3 Capi.JoWW ffggfi-Thon.a.son,Jn ffggfi-Thon.a.son,Jn --fek A Cillu.s-frabed by the 4ufJior from '.- S' Sketchoj NacU on the- PatHeficldj C.-"--"!'V--7aJrAc. Uy6 J,v.c S3? "Didn't you save mo my monkey-incut? monkey-incut? Wo went on ruld, diiuin it. I " "ltald? Raid? What rnl ?" "Oh, we wont over to Torry. Gimme my monkoy-meitt." "Well, you ee, Jim the fact In well, w(i (jot moved up liorc right uftcr you left, nnd tliey nttnrked from In here, nn' we mine on In after them. Jnsl gut to sleep " "I hiiven't had any sleep or any chow or anything two sardines, by the bright fuee of (Joil " The scout olieer pounced upon a frowsy musette bag which the other had used for n pillow and Jerked out n tlro-hliiokened moss-kit. He wrenched the lid oPf and snarled horribly. "Fmpty, by Ciod!" Ills hands fell lax ncross bis knees. He looked sadly over the blunted fields of Torcy, anil he said, with the CHAPTER IX Continued 13 F.rlgade artillery officer chap the colonel knew out on the Asiatic stationhappened sta-tionhappened in. How about ll just about half as much stuff ns you fellows wasted on the Tartar wall j, that time eh? Sure: It could be ar ranged. Ten minutes' Intensive; say one battery; where you want it? Host Jump-off is from Terry's battalion about here he has two eompnnles here. Six hundred yards to go; keep the Hois well away well starboard, as you Leathernecks say; come back the same route. tvhent. Little gully here. Craters just, beyond. Main line at least n hundred meters back. Good! v Let's call up Terry and see if he'll the you the men. . . . Terry would give him twenty-five men and two chaut-chauts and not a marine more. Who wanted a raid, anyway? Sending two support companies up to the Bois as soon ns It's dark. Ixoks Interestin' on the right. . . . flood ! All set. Start your covering tire at 23 hours 15. You jump off at 23 hours 19. Take you six minutes to get over, huh? "All right, colonel, bonne chance !" Just before' dark the colonel and Captain de Stegur were at battalion headquarters. "Whitehead will give you your men, aud I'm sending my scout officer along. Needs that sort of thing. Be sure you come back where you went out. Crabbe's to the right of there. You know Crabbe. Shoots quick." "But, My Colonel,'' represented Captain de Stegur, "one should arrange, ar-range, one should explain, one should Instruct in effect one should rehearse re-hearse " "Tf p))-n rc(f htll ctr I I'm Him In those being details the complete scout officer must attend to. More explosions, explo-sions, and voices bleating "Kiunnra-den "Kiunnra-den 1" terribly anxious voices in his tar. The disillusioned sergeant, n practical prac-tical man, had ducked into the crater right: behind the scout officer. The raiding party In his rear had immediately imme-diately fired their weapons In all directions. di-rections. A great many rifles on forward for-ward stabbed the dark- with sharp flame, and some of these were very near. The sergeant tossed a grenade at the nearest; he had toted that. Frog citron grenade around for quite a while, somewhat against his- Judgment; Judg-ment; he now reflected that It was good business "grenades I hope to spit In yo' mess-kit they are ask the man that used one " It was good business, for It fell fair in the other crater, thirty feet away, where the rest of that front-post squad were beginning to react like the. brave German Ger-man men they were. Two of these survived, much shaken, and scuttled Into the clever little tunnel that connected con-nected them with the Feldrltter's crater, emerging with pacific cries at the sergeant's very feet. F.eing a man not given to excitement, he accepted them alive, the while he dragged the scout officer standing. "We got our pTTsoners, sir. Let's beat It," he suggested. sug-gested. "Their lines is wakln' up, sir. It's gonna be bad here " The colonel, as gallant a man as ever lived, but not fast, barked into them. "Prisoners? Hey? How many? Two? Excellent, by God! Give 'em here, young man !" and he seized the unhappy Boches by their collars and shook them violently. "Thought -you'd start something, hey? Thought you'd start something, hey?" The scout officer now blew his com nmernoss or a man wtio lias tried It all and come to a final conclusion: "War sure -Is hell." There were places like this down in the Touralne country, around the town Americans called St. Onion. Canals with poplars mirrored In them, where it was plenmint to loaf at the end of the day. The women were kindly and disposed to make friends; It Is a pity that there were not enough to go around. They hud, also, an eye for corporals and sergeants; the bored privates on the bank, sentimental souls, are singing "Sweet Ad-e-llnc. ..." or It may be something very different. The sergeant, a sensitive sensi-tive spirit, will presently see Unit they get some extra police duty. CHAPTER X Tho Rhine. The bugles went while It was still as dark as the Inside of a dog. There was swearing and sickly yellow candle-light In the billets, mean houses In a mean little Khlne-I'rovlnco town, and the chow lines fornjed on the company galleys In an Icy December rain. The rain pattered on helmets and mess-kits, and fell In slanting lines through the smoky circles of light where the cooking-fires burned feebly. The faces of the marines, as they filed out of the dark for food, were gray and . frowsy. The cooks Issued corn-bill hash, and dared any man to growl on the coffee. How the hell could It be blled enough, with wet wood and very Utile of that been up all night, as It is you sports Just pull In, your necks ! The companies gulped their ration In sullen silence, rolled damp blankets blan-kets Into the prescribed pack, and I'aris tomorrow night. Where those marines, major? I'll tell 'em what I want " So it was that a wedge of men debouched de-bouched into the wheat at 23 hours 10 minutes, it being sufficiently dark. That battalion scout officer and a disillusioned sergeant, with hash-marks hash-marks on his sleeve, were the point. The men were echeloned back, right, and left with an automatic rifle on ench flank. In the center marched the colonel, smoking, to the horror of all, o cigar. Smoking was not done up there, after dark. With him was the elegant French captain, who appeared to he very gallantly resigned to It. The story would, he reflected, amaze ;iul delight his mess if he ever got baclt with it ! These droll Americans ! He must remember just what tills colonel said: a type, Nom de Dieu 1 ? only he had not worn tys new uniform uni-form the cloth chosen by his wife, you conceive. whistle, the sergeant shouted In a voice of brass, and the' colonel made the kind of remarks a colonel makes. It is related by-truthful marines there present that every German In Von Boehn's army fired on them as they went back but no two agree' as to the manner of their return. It is, however, how-ever, established that the colonel, bringing up the rear, halted about half-way over, drew his hitherto virgin vir-gin pistol, and wheeled around for a parting shot something iu the nature of un beau geste. Seeing this, the tall French captain, to his rear and left, drew his pistol and wheeled also, Imagining Im-agining pursuit. The colonel and to this attest the scout officer and his sergeant then shot the Frenchman through the as sea-going marines say stern-sheets. The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language. By the time they stumbled through the nervous outposts to their own when the bugles squawked assembly, they fell In without confusion or enthusiasm. en-thusiasm. Platoon sergeants, with flash lights or lanterns, called the rolls ; somewhere' out In front, first sergeants received the reports; officers offi-cers clumped .along the lines to their units, grumbling. "All here, first sergeant?" "Beg the capt'n's pardon couldn't see you In the dark, sir all present-counted-for, sir!" "NIek day for a hike. Major' says, goln' to the Rhine today. Eighteen or twenty kilomets don't know exactly. Dam' snch a war! I'd like the old kind, where' you went Into. winter quarters Brrr " The captain pulled his collar col-lar around his ears. Presently a bad-tempered drawling voice brcyed "Squads right march ! " There was a shuffle of hobnails in the mud, and the rattle of rifle-slings The First battalion of the Fifth marines ma-rines took the road. (TO BE CONTINUED.) me scout omcer, leading, naa out bis canteen and wet his dry mouth. ' - He was acutely conscious of his empty stomach. Ills mind dwelt yearningly on the mess-kit, freighted nobly with numkey-meat and tomatoes, awaiting him In the dependable Tommy's musette. mu-sette. A hundred meters forward the last shells hurst, and he saw new dirt. Ahead, a spot darker than the dark; be went up to It. Away on the right n flare soared. and somethlhg gleamed dull In the black hole at his feet a round, deep helmet with the pale blur of a face under It; a click, and the shadow of a movement there, and a little dicker; a matter of split seconds; the scout ofiicer had a bay-' onet In his stomach, almost. Feld-ritter Feld-ritter Kurt Iden, Company Six of the Murgrave of Brandenburg regiment (this established later by brigade intelligence, in-telligence, on examination of the pay-book pay-book of (lie deceased), being on front post with his squad, heard a noise bard on the cessation of the shelling, i; n :1 put out his neck. Dear God, shoot ! Shoot ! quickly ! The scout o llicer was conscious of n monsa-ous - surge of temper. lie gathered bis feet under him, and bis bands 'crooked like claws, and he hurled himself. In the same breath there was H long, bright Hash right under his arm, and the mad crack of n Springfield. The disillusioned sergeant ser-geant hud estimated the situation, loosed off from the hip at perhaps seven feet, and shot the German place, the, French captain had lapsed Into English. "As a wound, you perceive, per-ceive, It is good for a permission. But It Is not a wound. It Is on indignity! And, besides, my new breeches! Ah, Diou de . Dieu I Ce sale colonel-ci ! What will my wife say! That one', she chose the cloth herself ! Tun-nerre Tun-nerre de canon'!' and he sank Into strlckeu silence. The raiding party shook down In their several holes, praising God, and went to sleep. The colonel, with his prisoners, received the compliments of the battalion headquarters and departed depart-ed for Brigade. The scout officer observed, ob-served, to his amazement, that they had been out of their lines less than twenty minutes. "Where's the Forty-ninth?" Forty-ninth?" he wanted to know first. "Hell, Jim, they went up to the Bois right after the mn.lor sent for you. An' the Seventeenth. We're moving battalion headquarters up there now. Get your people and come along. Attack At-tack or something." After a very full night, the scout officer crawled nnd scuttled along the last tip of the Bols de Belleau, looking look-ing for a hole that a battalion runner told him about. "Seen the lootenant dlggin' In just past that last Maxim gun, sir. Bight nt the. nose of the woods whore the big rocks Is. There's about a dozen dead Heinios layln' by a big tree, nil together. Can't miss It. sir." The scout officer had no desire to be moving In the cool of the morning, morn-ing, when all well-regulated people are asleep If possible, and if you through the throat. Too late to stop himself, the scout oflh'or went head first into the crater, his bands locking on something wtt and hairy, Just the size to fill them; nnd presently he was at the bottom of the cralor, dirt In his mouth and a buv.:'.lng in h'.s head, strangling something that flopped and gurgled and made remarkable noises under his hands. There wen- explosions and people stepped .hard on bis hack and legs, lie became sane again and realized rea-lized that whatever It was It was dead. Me groped In his puttees for his diilft. and cut olT Its shoulder-straps .old a but ion or two. and looted its bosom of such papers ns there were moved here the old Boohe bad a way of sniping nt yon with S,Ss that wicked, flat-trajectory Austrian gun but be followed aa urge that only Tomnile could supply. So he cume at last to h miserable shelter scooped In the h-e of a rock. Here two long legs protruded from under a brown German blanket, and here he prodded and shook' until the deplorable countenance of tils brother officer emerged yawning. "Say," demanded the scout officer, "you save my slum? Gimme my slum." "Why, hello. Jim! Why didn't you come back. like yon said you was? ! Where you been? You said you was comln' right back." |