''And they thought we wouldn't fight'' - Floyd Phillips Gibbons (fantasy books to read txt) 📗

battery took possession of the platform. A train of empties was shunted into position and we began loading guns and wagons on the flat cars and putting the animals into the box cars.

Considerable confusion accompanied this operation. The horses seemed to have decided scruples against entering the cars. It was dark and the rain came down miserably. The men swore. There was considerable kicking on the part of the men as well as the animals.

I noticed one group that was gathered around a plunging team of horses. The group represented an entanglement of rope, harness, horses and men. I heard a clang of metal and saw the flash of two steel-shod hoofs. A little corporal, holding his head up with both hands, backed out of the group,—backed clear across the platform and sat down on a bale of hay.

I went to his assistance. Blood was trickling through his fingers. I washed his two scalp wounds with water from a canteen and applied first aid bandages.

"Just my luck," I heard my patient mumbling as I swathed his head in white strips and imparted to him the appearance of a first-class front line casualty.

"You're lucky," I told him truthfully. "Not many men get kicked in the head by a horse and escape without a fractured skull."

"That isn't it," he said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet—that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat fell off my head."

By the time our battery had been loaded, another battery was waiting to move on to the platform. Our captain went down the length of the train examining the halter straps in the horse cars and assuring himself of the correct apportionment of men in each car. Then we moved out on what developed to be a wild night ride.

The horse has been described as man's friend and no one questions that a horse and a man, if placed out in any large open space, are capable of getting along to their mutual comfort. But when army regulations and the requirements of military transportation place eight horses and four men in the same toy French box car and then pat all twelve of them figuratively on the neck and tell them to lie down together and sleep through an indefinite night's ride, it is not only probable, but it is certain, that the legendary comradeship of the man and the horse ceases. The described condition does not encompass the best understood relation of the two as travelling companions.

On our military trains in France, the reservations of space for the human and dumb occupants of the same car were something as follows: Four horses occupied the forward half of the car. Four more horses occupied the rear half of the car. Four men occupied the remaining space. The eight four-footed animals are packed in lengthwise with their heads towards the central space between the two side doors. The central space is reserved for the four two-footed animals.

Then the train moves. If the movement is forward and sudden, as it usually is, the four horses in the forward end of the car involuntarily obey the rules of inertia and slide into the central space. If the movement of the train is backward and equally sudden, the four horses in the rear end of the car obey the same rule and plunge forward into the central space. On the whole, night life for the men in the straw on the floor of the central space is a lively existence, while "riding the rattlers with a horse outfit."

Our battery found it so. I rode a number of miles that night sitting with four artillerymen in the central space between the side doors which had been closed upon orders. From the roof of the car, immediately above our heads, an oil lantern swung and swayed with every jolt of the wheels and cast a feeble light down upon our conference in the straw. We occupied a small square area which we had attempted to particularise by roping it off.

On either side were the blank surfaces of the closed doors. To either end were the heads of four nervous animals, eight ponderous hulks of steel-shod horseflesh, high strung and fidgety, verging almost on panic under the unusual conditions they were enduring, and subject at any minute to new fits of excitement.

We sat at their feet as we rattled along. I recalled the scene of the loose cannon plunging about the crowded deck of a rolling vessel at sea and related Hugo's thrilling description to my companions.

"Yeah," observed Shoemaker, driver of the "wheelers" on No. 4 piece, "Yeah, but there ain't no mast to climb up on and get out of the way on in this here boxcar."

"I'd rather take my chances with a cannon any day," said 'Beady' Watson, gunner. "A cannon will stay put when you fix it. There's our piece out on the flat car and she's all lashed and blocked. It would take a wreck to budge her off that flat. I wish the B. C. had let me ride with the old gun out there. It would be a little colder but a lot healthier. Try to go to sleep in here and you'll wake up with a horse sitting on you."

"Where do you suppose we are going anyway?" asked Slater, fuse cutter in the same section. "I'm strong for travel, but I always like to read the program before we start to ramble. For all we know we might be on our way to Switzerland or Italy or Spain or Egypt or somewhere."

"Why don't you go up and ask the Captain?" suggested Boyle, corporal in charge of the car. "Maybe the Colonel gave him a special message to deliver to you about our dusty-nation. You needn't worry though. They ain't going to bowl us out of France for some time yet."

"Well, if we're just joy-riding around France," replied Slater, "I hope we stop over to feed the horses at Monte Carlo. I've heard a lot about that joint. They say that they run the biggest crap game in the world there, and the police lay off the place because the Governor of the State or the King or something, banks the game. They tell me he uses straight bones and I figure a man could clean up big if he hit the game on a payday."

"Listen, kid, you've got this tip wrong," said Shoemaker. "If there's anything happens to start a riot among these horses, you are going to find that you're gambling with death. And if we ever get off this train, I think we have a date with Kaiser Bill."

"I've got a cousin somewhere in the German army. He spells his 'Shoemaker' with a 'u.' My dad told me that my grandfather and this cousin's grandfather had a business disagreement over a sauerkraut factory some time before the Civil War and my grandfather left Germany. Since then, there ain't been no love lost between the branches of the family, but we did hear that Cousin Hans had left the sauerkraut business and was packing a howitzer for the Kaiser."

"Well, I hope we come across him for your sake," said Watson. "It's kinda tough luck to get cheated out of a big business like that, but then you must remember that if your cousin's grandfather hadn't pulled the dirty on your grandfather, your grandfather might never have gone to America and most likely you'd still be a German."

"I guess there's some sense in that, too," replied Shoemaker; "wouldn't that been hell if I'd been on the other side in this war? But anyhow, I do hope we run into Cousin Hans somewhere."

The horses had been comparatively quiet for some time, but now they seemed to be growing restless. They pricked their ears and we knew something was bothering them. The discussion stopped so that we could listen better.

Above the rattle of the train, there came to us the sound of firing. It seemed to come from the direction in which we were going. With surprising quickness, the explosions grew louder. We were not only speeding toward the sounds of conflict, but the conflict itself seemed to be speeding toward us.

Then came a crash unmistakably near. One of the horses in the forward end reared, and his head thumped the roof of the car. Once again on four feet, he pranced nervously and tossed his blood-wet forelock. Immediately the other horses began stamping.

Another crash!—this time almost directly overhead. In the light of the swinging lantern, I could see the terror in the eyes of the frightened brutes. We clung to their halters and tried to quiet them but they lifted us off our feet.

"Put a twitch on that one's nose and hold him down," Boyle ordered.

"Gosh," said Slater, obeying, "we must be right up on the front line. Hope they don't stop this train in No Man's Land. Hold still, you crazy b——"

"Cousin Hans must have heard you talking," Watson shouted to Shoemaker. "Maybe you're going to see him quicker than you expected."

The train was slowing down. The brakes shrieked and grated as we came to a jerky stop. Three of us braced ourselves at the heads of the four horses in the rear of the car and prevented them from sliding on top of us. Boyle and Slater were doing their best to quiet the forward four. The explosions overhead increased. Now we heard the report of field pieces so close that they seemed to be almost alongside the track.

There came a sharp bang at one of the side doors, and I thought I recognised the sound of the lead-loaded handle of the captain's riding whip. His voice, coming to us a minute later above the trampling and kicking of the panic-stricken animals, verified my belief.

"Darken that lantern," he shouted. "Keep all lights out and keep your helmets on. Stay in the cars and hang on to the horses. There is an air raid on right above us."

"Yes, sir," replied Boyle, and we heard the captain run to the next car. I blew out the light and we were in complete darkness, with eight tossing, plunging horses that kicked and reared at every crash of the guns nearby or burst of the shells overhead.

We hung on while the air battle went on above. One horse went down on his knees and in his frantic struggles to regain his feet, almost kicked the feet from under the animal beside him.

At times, thunderous detonations told us that aerial bombs were doing their work near at hand. We supposed correctly that we were near some town not far behind the lines, and that the German was paying it a night visit with some of his heaviest visiting cards.

I opened one side door just a crack and looked out. The darkness above blossomed with blinding blotches of fire that flashed on and off. It seemed as though the sky were a canopy of black velvet perforated with hundreds of holes behind which dazzling lights passed back and forth, flashing momentary gleams of brilliance through the punctures. Again, this vision would pass as a luminous dripping mass would poise itself on high and cast a steady white glare that revealed clusters of grey smoke puffs of exploded shrapnel.

We had to close the door because the flashes added to the terror of the horses, but the aerial activity passed almost as suddenly as it had come and left our train untouched. As the raiding planes went down the wind, followed always by the poppings of the anti-aircraft guns, the sound of the conflict grew distant. We got control over the horses although they still trembled with fright.

There came another rap at the door and I hurriedly accepted the captain's invitation to accompany