Shortly afterwards the two boys said good-bye to their host and his wife, and started out to find headquarters in Ypres. They quickly discovered that the badly battered town was full of marching soldiers, and all the other things that go hand in hand with modern war, even to a number of armored cars which sped past them on the road, exciting the wonder of Amos greatly. “Why, just see how they’ve managed to build up that metal shield around the men aboard, Jack! They seem to be safe from ordinary bullets fired by a machine gun. There were two Maxims aboard that last car, I noticed.”
“Yes,” added the other, deeply interested, “fighting today begins to take on some of the old-time ways. You’d almost think of Roman chariots to see those cars flying along the road,[244] only the galloping horses have been displaced by a power a hundred times more powerful. But there must have been some pretty warm engagements around this town, if the battered walls can tell the story.”
“Huh! it doesn’t look to me worth the powder that’s been wasted,” remarked Amos. “Why should both Germans and the Allies want to get and hold possession of Ypres, I’d like to know? Thousands must have fallen here, because everywhere you look you see those mounds where the dead have been buried.”
“They consider it a place of strategic importance, which is the only explanation I can give you,” Jack observed. “Perhaps it’s what we’d call a railway center over in the States. Then the only good road leading to Dunkirk and the Channel runs out from Ypres; and you know the Kaiser is dead set on getting his army where he can throw those shells over on to the shore of England. That mania with him has cost pretty much all this terrible slaughter.”
Amos shook his head as though his feelings[245] overpowered him. He must have been thinking that human life was held pretty cheaply when it could be thus thrown away for a freak idea, a pet object of revenge that in the end could not amount to much so far as ending the war was concerned.
Of course, the two boys aroused considerable curiosity. It was only natural that this should be so. Dozens of the soldiers, humming Tipperary as they strode past in ranks, usually heading toward the fighting zone, waved a hand toward them in friendly greeting; and the chums invariably gave an answering salute.
“I guess they think we’re English boys,” suggested Amos, when this had happened a number of times. “They know from our looks, and the fact of our being here, we can never be German anyhow.”
“Now, I’m of the opinion they glimpse that little flag in your buttonhole,” ventured Jack, quickly. “It tells them who and what we are. While the United States is trying hard to be neutral in this big war, and treat both sides alike,[246] still, as Germany can’t get any war supplies and the Allies do, on account of their controlling the Seven Seas, these British must look on us as near-allies. Besides, if they ever read the papers printed on our side of the water they’d know that the biggest part of the American nation believes in their cause, and prays that in the end militarism will be knocked out, with a new Germany to rise on the ruins of the old.”
That might sound like pretty strong talk coming from a boy; but then Jack was wise beyond his years. Besides, he had looked upon strange sights since coming abroad. Education develops rapidly under such conditions.
“I should say Headquarters might lie over in that direction, Jack?” suggested Amos, pointing as he spoke. “I notice that in most cases the troops come from that way, which would tell the story, you know.”
“Good idea, Amos, and one that does your Boy Scout training credit. According to my mind it’s just as you say, and we’ll see if we can get an interview with the general commanding this[247] district. He must be a mighty busy man, and only for that magical letter of introduction we’re carrying around with us I’m afraid our chances of seeing him and getting a little confab would be next to nothing. But when he looks on that signature K. of K. there’s little he can refuse us.”
“Yes,” added Amos, grinning happily, “that was a master stroke on your part, asking dad to give us a letter to his old friend and comrade, General Kitchener, after you learned how close they had once been in South Africa or Egypt long ago. When I see their eyebrows go up, and that look come on their faces, it makes me think of a talisman such as they used of old. I can imagine Ali Baba saying the magical words ‘open sesame’ before the rock wall that always swung open to the signal. We’ve got the same wonderful magnet in our well-worn letter signed by the Minister of War over in London.”
Moving steadily along they quickly found themselves getting among crowds of civilians and soldiers who filled the streets of the little old Belgian town, now a ruined place.
[248]
“What are they all staring up at, I wonder?” remarked Amos. “It must be some of those rash pilots driving German Taubes are circling around again, trying to locate hidden batteries of the Allies. Oh! Jack, look there, that’s a Zeppelin I do believe.”
Jack had already decided this for himself. Away up among the fleecy clouds of the early morning they could see what looked like a bulky cigar-shaped object that was speeding along its course. It was too high for any anti-air craft gun to hope to reach it. Possibly Allied birdmen would presently be sent aloft to try and engage the enemy, or failing that chase him off.
All at once there arose a shout that was taken up by a thousand excited voices. The entire crowd started to sway and break. Men dashed for any sort of shelter that came most convenient. Others threw themselves flat upon their faces, believing in their sudden panic they would be in far less danger if they hugged the ground closely.
Jack had himself detected some object falling[249] from aloft. It might have been a cast-off sandbag, but in these perilous war times one must expect something more destructive than this. H............