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
It was half a mile back to the southern side of the hill where the
bloody engagement of the morning had taken place and a like distance
to the little plot of ground in the corner of a field where some of
the American dead were buried. Clem and Private Martin easily found
the captain’s resting-place.
Some sappers were still at work, and a slightly wounded staff-officer
of the marines had been detailed to keep record of the burials. One
fellow, his identification number and all papers about his person
missing, had not been recognized nor interred. On the way back Clem
glanced down at this unfortunate.
“It’s poor Giddings!” he exclaimed.
“What? Not that joker in your company?” protested the officer.
Clem nodded; Martin confirmed this. The lads helped to lower their
comrade into his grave and stood with bowed heads during the brief
reading of the burial service. Then they went into the field near by
and made two wreaths of poppies and daisies to hang on the wooden
crosses over Giddings and the captain.
The shadows were growing long; the two “Leathernecks” had quite a
distance to travel in the return to camp. For a little way their road
lay along the foot of the hill around which a well beaten track had
been made by motor cars and artillery. Now and then they were met by
ambulances plying between the dressing station west of the hill and
of the last battle-field where the marines and regulars had repulsed
the German advance. Some of the cars detoured part way up the
hillside by a farm lane, on the slopes to seek further for wounded
that might have been overlooked.
The driver of a passing ambulance, returning from the dressing
station, offered to give the boys a lift and they accepted gladly.
They ran on for less than a fourth of a mile when something got out
of order with a spark plug which they stopped to replace, just beyond
the lane turning up the hill.
“Be only a moment,” the driver said. “I’ll get you fellows right by
your camp in ten minutes.”
“Plenty of time!” both said and, while Martin aided the driver a
little, Clem walked to an opening in the thicket and gazed up to
where, in the morning, he had seen such bloody work with rifle,
pistol and bayonet.
Another ambulance came along the road. It seemed to Clem that he had
heard the motor start somewhere back under the hill, though there
could be nothing strange in that. There was an unusually large Red
Cross in its patch of white on the side of the long, low car, and
the machine glided along as though it possessed great motive force
but was held down in speed. Two men were in the seat. When the car
reached the lane it swung in and, without apparent slowing, ascended
the grade, stopping about half way up. A few yards beyond it was an
army ambulance, its driver walking away across the slope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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