“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.