The Khaki Boys at the Front; or, Shoulder to Shoulder in the TrenchesChase, Josephine
General
The Khaki Boys at the Front; or, Shoulder to Shoulder in the Trenches
Chase, Josephine
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- France -- Juvenile fiction
Looking through the periscope at the wreck across the way, Jimmy
Blaise again marveled that he was alive and unhurt. Compared to the
bombardment of last night his first experience of being under fire
seemed mild. He wondered that so many of his comrades were still left
in the fire trench, practically uninjured.
The American fire trench itself was a sickening sight. It was sticky
with mud and blood and littered with the shattered bodies of dead
Sammies, each in itself a ghastly horror.
Here and there detached arms and legs added to the gruesome spectacle.
Not far from where Jimmy stood at the periscope lay the head and trunk
of a Khaki Boy cut fairly in two by an exploding shell.
As yet the stretcher-bearers were too busy to remove these dreadful
evidences of the night of carnage through which Jimmy had somehow
passed unscathed.
Since the cessation of firing on both sides he had been picking his
way through the trench, seeking his bunkies. His search, thus far,
fruitless, Jimmy had paused briefly to look through the periscope.
He was savagely glad at the slaughtered Boches it revealed, yet his
real object in viewing bloody No Man's Land was to see if, among that
gray-green assemblage of motionless, distorted shapes, he could catch
a flash of olive drab uniform that had once held a living, breathing
bunkie, Franz Schnitzel.
Unable to discover that which his straining eyes eagerly sought, he
turned away from the periscope and stumbled on down the trench,
blinded by the swift blur of tears. Where was Schnitz, and would he
presently come upon Iggy, Bob and Roger, or what had once been his
three Brothers?
He had hoped to find Dalton easily, as their stations were so close
together, but he had seen no trace of cheery old Bob. His spirits
dropped to zero, Jimmy poked a disconsolate head into a dugout. It was
filled with wan-faced, disheveled men, nearly all of whom had sustained
minor injuries, which they were attending to themselves with the help
of first-aid packets.
Uttering a loud cry, Jimmy suddenly bolted into the dugout and straight
to a corner where a man was engaged in binding up the injured wrist of
another.
"Oh, you two!" he choked.
Dropping down at the feet of the busy pair he buried his face in his
hands, sobbing out of sheer nervous relief.
"My ver' bes' Brothar!"
His wounded wrist forgotten, Ignace Pulinski jerked away from Roger
Barlow and plumped down beside Jimmy, hugging the latter with his well
arm.
"Blazes!" was all Roger could say as he bent and laid a hand on Jimmy's
shoulder.
"Gee, but I'm a big baby!" Jimmy raised his head and beamed at his
bunkies with wet eyes. "I guess I'm all in. I've seen so many dead
ones in the last few minutes that I could hardly believe my own eyes
when I lamped you two.
"Let go of me, you old Polish bear!" This affectionately to Ignace,
whose good arm still encircled his neck. "Up on your feet and get that
wrist fixed. You've pulled the bandage almost off of it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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