The Brighton Boys at Chateau-ThierryDriscoll, James R.
General
The Brighton Boys at Chateau-Thierry
Driscoll, James R.
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- France -- Juvenile fiction
“He is, Major; all of that!” continued the soldier. “For a kid, or
for a veteran, for that matter, he is some boy with a gun! And he
showed pluck, too, when we got there. You see, we seen and heard them
Hun gas shells comin’ over--that there Hun balloon give the range, I
reckon--and we heard the gongs, too, but we reckoned the kid, bein’
so excited over the fight, didn’t get on to it, so the only thing to
do was to get there right quick and you bet we did! Here was this
one dead Hun with the Red Cross on his sleeve--the feller that the
kid shot--and in the bushes was the kid bendin’ over the feller what
them Huns had knocked in the head, and the gas from two busted shells
a sneakin’ up on ’em lively. We had on our masks and we started to
grab him and get him away. He hadn’t saw us ner heard us come and he
turned round on me with a drawed pistol, so’s I thought it was all
off sure. But the kid knowed us and didn’t shoot. We yelled ‘gas’ at
him and what did he do? Run to his car off there and get his mask?
Never a bit of it! He jest sez to us: ‘help me with this feller to my
car,’ he sez. ‘I’ve got two masks there, his’n and mine’ he sez. So I
sez: ‘this way’s quicker; make tracks fer our car, young feller!’ and
I picked up the insensible feller and run with him to our car and the
kid follered, and we got away from the gas. The kid he begged us to
get here quick, or his pal might die and so that’s why we come back
with only one.”
“Well, all right; excused, of course,” said the Major.
“Now we’re off, back up there, Major, and we’ll try to make up fer--”
“It isn’t lost time, or it wouldn’t be if we could save that lad’s
life. Well, anyway--but you’d better wait a moment and I’ll get the
kid, as you call him--Richards--to go back with you and get his car.”
The chief entered the tent and wended his way quickly down the long
aisle, between the rows of brown cots, many of which held wounded
men, he stopped here and there for a word of encouragement, of
advice, or to answer a question. Reaching the farther end he stood
for a moment, looking down at a white-faced figure lying very inert
beneath the blanket and at another sitting, with his face in his
hands, beside the cot. A woman nurse, rather young, with wonderfully
gentle eyes, passed softly and whispered to the Major.
“He feels it terribly; we don’t often see such grief, though he is
not of the loud weeping kind.”
The Major nodded and, stooping forward, laid his hand on the shoulder
of the figure in the chair.
“Come, Richards. No use sitting here; there is much to do; much.
Getting away on duty will make you feel better.”
Don looked up with a face that was drawn with sorrow.
“But, Doctor, suppose he comes to and asks for me? You are sure that
he can’t get well?”
The doctor assented by a nod. “He cannot recover,” was his brief
remark, uttered more feelingly than usual with this man of long,
hard experience. Then he added with his usual attention to duty on
his mind:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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