Trooper Tales — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Two Women and a Soldier. 89 voices of men, great and deep and vibrant with soul, were raised in the hymn which soldiers love—“God Be With You Till We Meet Again!” And that night, in his cot, Venning smoked many cigarettes, and hoped that his troop would encounter fierce action, bloody action, and much of it! x * * x x * x The pitiless Cuban sunshine was beating down from the sky; and from the block-house on top of the hill death flashed and screeched out of hot, dusty Mauser barrels. A wavering line of blue gasped in the heat and choked in the dust, but pushed upward toward the block-house— falling, cursing, crawling, but always upward! Squares of army blue cloth hung upon the barbed entanglements on the hillside; and dark little men with haggard faces and a strange language were prone in the trenches with the soldiers of a Northern land. And to those men who laid side by side in the trenches, international war had lost its consequence. When the afternoon was dimmed by the deepening twilight, the block-house on the top of the hill had changed hands. And the soldiers from the Northern land who held it now were still panting from the greatness of the deed. And when the twilight was darkened by the tropical evening, the Red Cross men lighted their lan- terns and crept about the trenches, peering everywhere for warmth and life. Among those whom they found who were not cold was Trooper Venning. EComichooks (GC)