CHAPTER XVII

BLOWN UP

Bob, who was cleaning some of the mud off his leggings, looked up and over at his Polish chum.

"Hey, you, come off that!" he exclaimed.

"Come off what?" asked Iggy in surprise. "I iss only sit on de ground, and unless I iss come off him--py jolly! where else could I go?" he asked.

"Oh, I didn't mean come off the earth!" exclaimed Bob, with a laugh. "I meant stop making such gloomy predictions."

"Who is he?" asked Iggy.

"Who's who?" countered Bob.

"Dat Mr. Dixton," responded Iggy. "Does you mean Captain Frank Dickerson?"

"Oh, no! No!" laughed Bob. "I mean you are not to be so gloomy-Gus like."

"Gus? Gus? Iss he a pasteboy--I mean a doughboy, too?"

"Say, if I've got to go back and explain everything I'll never get this mud off!" laughed Bob. "All I meant was don't look on the dark side of things. Be a little happier, and you'll make me happier. Don't think, just because Roger and Jimmy haven't showed up, that they are dead or prisoners. They may be all right."

"I have a hope so," said Iggy, but the gloomy way in which he shook his head did not indicate that he was very sincere.

However, there was nothing that could be done about it, and Bob and Iggy just had to wait. Time, however, did not hang heavily on their hands, for there was never a moment of the day and very few moments of the night when there was not something to do. If it was not standing guard, doing sentry duty, digging trenches, or helping fit up dugouts, there were barbed-wire parties to become active in, listening-post duty to go out on, and the thousand and one things that a fighting army can always find to do.

Iggy and Bob performed their full share of all these tasks, and it was perhaps well that they could be kept so occupied. For, in spite of Bob's seeming cheerfulness, dark forebodings as to the fate of Jimmy and Roger would come to him.

"And there's Franz, too," he told himself. "But he's been missing so long now that it's hardly possible he'll ever come back--at least, until after the war is over and prisoners are exchanged."

But Bob was to meet Franz Schnitzel sooner than he expected, and under strange circumstances.

"Well, I wonder what the next move will be," remarked Bob to a fellow soldier one day about a week after the big advance in which Roger and Jimmy had been lost sight of. Since that time there had been only slight engagements between patrols of the Americans and the Huns.

"Oh, there'll be more fighting," was the answer from a young soldier named Harry Blondell, with whom Bob had become friendly. "There's got to be more fighting. I guess our officers are laying pipes for another big scrap that'll carry us clear into Germany."

"That would be some advance!" laughed Bob. "But, at the same time, the Boches may be planning to come through our lines again."

"Well, we'll be ready for 'em," declared Harry. "I never felt better in all my life. This hard fighting and living in the mud and wet seems to agree with me."

"Glad you're fit!" declared Bob. "The Kaiser'll probably be worried when he hears you're ready to take the field again against his divisions."

"No doubt!" chuckled Harry.

The truth of the matter was that, aside from wounds, the health of the American soldiers was excellent in spite of adverse conditions due to the climate. They could be wet to the skin day after day, and yet few of them took colds, and many of them were delicate lads who, up to a few months before, would not have thought of going out in the rain without rubbers and an umbrella.

It was one evening when Bob and Iggy, together with many of their comrades, were preparing to go on duty for their night tricks that a rumor started somewhere in the trenches to the effect that a big battle impended on the morrow.

Just who was responsible for this no one seemed to know, but soon after the talk circulated it was noticed that there was great activity around the brigade headquarters. Messengers hurried to and fro, and several American aeroplanes were observed fluttering over the German lines.

"Well, fighting is what we're here for," said Bob to Iggy, as they started for the traverse where they were to be on duty about half the night--unless an attack should come.

"Yes, it is better to have a fight and get with it through than to be waiting all the times," said the Polish lad.

It was rather a nervous strain for many sentries that night as they stood on the firing step, gazing across No Man's Land toward the barbed-wire entanglements of the Germans. Would the Sammies get the order to charge across there, after a barrage had been laid down? Or would the gray hordes leap out and try to thrust back the soldiers of Uncle Sam who were slowly but surely smashing the Hun lines? This might be known to the staff officers in the headquarters back of the American lines, or the answer might be made by the Boche generals.

So it was nervous waiting, and Bob, in common with the others, felt it as they stood on duty through the long hours of the dark night.

It was nearing three o'clock, and it would be dawn in another hour, when platoon officers began moving along the trenches, and as they passed group after group of the Sammies the officers whispered:

"Be ready! We attack at four o'clock!"

Those who had wrist watches looked at them, the radium-illuminated dials showing the approximate time.

"An hour to wait!" mused Bob, as he answered the officer who notified him. "A lot will be happening an hour from now."

And the same thought was with all of them.

"How many would be alive at this same time to-morrow night?"

Slowly the seconds and minutes ticked themselves away. Silently the soldiers in the trenches made ready. And behind the lines preparations to support the advance, after the way was prepared for it by shells from the big guns, were going on.

Silently groups of alert men gathered behind their officers in the traverses. The sentinels stood on the firing step, ready and waiting. Short ladders were placed here and there to facilitate the fighters in getting out of the sunken protections.

Bob noted the illuminated minute hand of his watch creeping on toward the XII.

"Sixty seconds more," he murmured. He glanced over toward Iggy. In the faint dawn he could see his Polish chum standing with his rifle, ready to leap from the trench.

Then, suddenly, like a burst of thunder from a clear sky, the American barrage started, and after a sufficient time had elapsed the whistles sounded.

"Over the top!"

The old, familiar, but always thrilling call. "Over the top!"

Out of the trenches leaped Bob, Iggy and their comrades. On toward the German lines they rushed, the half-darkness of the dawn now illuminated with the flashes from the big guns.

The Germans were not long in replying. They were not taken by surprise, and soon a rain of H. E. shells, as well as shrapnel, began to deluge the American positions. But through this storm of missiles the gallant lads of the 509th Infantry leaped forward. They yelled and shouted, but they, each one, only heard his own voice, so great was the din of the guns.

"Come on! Come on!" cried Bob hoarsely.

But Iggy and his comrades needed no urging. They were rushing at the Germans like human tigers. They had heard so much and seen so much of the cruelty of the Huns that each time the Sammies went into battle it was as though they were taking personal revenge on the Kaiser's troops.

Bob felt something, it was as if a great blast of air passed him. It lifted him from the earth and hurled him back, but he managed to regain his feet. Then came a terrible noise behind him--so far back that he was not harmed. But that could not be said for half a score of his comrades. A great shell exploded in their midst, and there were more than a score of casualties from it.

"Close call!" murmured Bob as he staggered on. He lost sight of Iggy in the rush, but hoped the Polish lad was following closely. Then Bob had his hands full, for he and his immediate companions encountered some German machine-gun crews, and there was hard fighting before the Boches were killed or thrown into complete disorder.

"Forward! Forward!" was the order, and well was it obeyed.

On over the German trenches went the Sammies. Now and again they were held up by the fierce firing of hidden weapons, and then squads would volunteer to clean out these frightful nests.

Bob volunteered for this perilous work more than once, and after one assault on a party of Huns entrenched in a ruined farmhouse Bob was slightly wounded. But he kept on fighting, and at last the Boches cried "_Kamerad!_" That is, those did who were able.

A party started back with the prisoners--about a dozen of them--while the rest of Bob's companions paused a moment to rest in the farmhouse, which was pretty well battered up.

"Well, we'd better get out of here--there's work ahead for us," said the second lieutenant who had led the assault on the machine-gun position. "Come along, boys!"

Just as they were leaving the house it seemed as if the very earth was disrupted. Bob felt himself being hurled through the air and he had a vision of the building being blown apart. The next thing he realized was that he was falling. Then came oblivion.