"Good Heaven, old boy!" said Malcolm. "Of what use is a rear guard when there is nowhere to retreat? Oh, yes, I know. I'm steady. But every time I see one of you field officers preparing a defense or attack, I get a headache. You aren't according to the book, you know, not at all. I say, how fine it would be to have some artillery ourselves."

"Worthless stuff."

"Eh?"

"If I had an anti-tank rifle and a trench mortar, what would be the result? Lord, didn't they prove that years ago? One side cancels out the damage of the other by inflicting just as much. Chap called Napoleon brought artillery into style, or so these French tell me. Absolutely useless stuff except for pounding down a wall. As useless as airplanes. Too many casualties and grief for too little fun."

"Fun?"

"Why not? Herrero, give Bulger a hand with his kettles."

The camp was boiling with efficient activity. Carstone's crews were hard at work upon the pneumatic machine guns. Once they had been run by gasoline with the hand compressors as auxiliary. But now there was only the auxiliary. Four men were priming them to full load while Carstone checked their battered gauges. Born out of the problem that a machine gun is always located by its noise, the pneumatics had stayed to solve the problem of scanty ammunition, for they fired slugs salvaged from British issue in which the powder had decayed. And there were plenty of such dumps. They were mismatched weapons at best, for their carriages had been designed for ambitious supersonic weapons which had been designed to kill at five hundred yards. But these, when their condensers had failed and their batteries could not be replaced had long since become part of the European terrain, only the wheels and mounts surviving.

The lieutenant paced about the clearing, checking up, watching for the last posts to come in and the first Russian to appear.

And then the Weasel popped up, yelling, "Shell!"

An instant later everyone heard it and then saw it. It was a trench mortar, tumbling down the sky. Somebody, having pity for a man who had never seen one, bore Malcolm backward into cover of the caisson. The bomb struck and exploded, directly in the center of the clearing. Shrapnel screamed wickedly as it tore through the already-maimed trees.

CHAPTER II

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