Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

38 their guns were not the ones that were doing the killing. “You boob!” cried Nell to himself. the culvert, of course!’”’ There was a gun there, sure enough, with menin QO. D.aroundit. Nell fled. He was outside the ditch and so just safe from the machine-gun’s fire. He ran with all his might, the one thought in his mind that trench mortars were death on machine-guns and that in the lower end of the ditch were trench mortars. As Nell approached the lower edge of the ditch he saw that there was some confusion there. The one-pounder squads were hur- riedly getting out, several wounded men were on the crest of the ditch, and officers and non-coms were exercising their lungs. The first casualties from the machine- gun in the culvert had not been noticed, but when three guns went out of action, the ces- sation of sound was easily noticeable. It was also possible for the men in the re- maining sections to make themselves heard, nor did it take very long for them to discover the direction the firing was coming from. Some went out on the iront edge, others to the rear. No attempt was made to reply to the fire, the main idea was to get out of the way of it. At this stage of affairs Nell arrived and seizing a sergeant by the arm, imparted the news that there were Boche in Yank uni- forms setting up guns and that the gun that was shooting down the ditch was in the culvert. The sergeant dragged Nell to an officer. “Tn the culvert, huh?” cried the officer. “Up the ditch? Well, we'll know where to go then. Let’s change position and quick or we won’t have a man left.” He blew his whistle and waved his arm wildly. Then he sent a runner to the trench mortar men, who were on the other side of the ditch, preparing to go forward to the infantry. The effective range of a trench mortar is only seven hundred yards and they had been left in the ditch until the infantry had got to that distance from the town, and a favorable position for the employment of the mortars had been found. ‘““Meanwhile,”’ said the officer, “‘let’s have a look at the Boche-Yanks. Wedon’t want to go shooting up our own men. Mustn’t trespass on the artillery’s privileges. Show us *em.” “Tn Adventure It was rather difficult to see because of the smoke, but the officer, wrigghng lke a snake, moved around until he got his glasses on the gun crews by the embankment and Nell saw his jaw muscles tighten. Then ensued some directions in pantomime, and the gun crew began to leap from shell hole to shell hole. The officer stayed where he was to adjust fire. Ping! went the one-pounder. The officer signaled some correction and the gun fired again, very rapidly, for fifteen or twenty seconds. “That’s a bunch of dead Yanks or a bunch of dead Boche now, one or the other,”’ said the officer, slipping down into Nell’s shell hole, ‘‘but I think they’re Boche. As you say, they don’t iook as if they came across the river and I’jl bet the reason there was no fire on this ditch was because the Boche artillery was told to lay off any Yanks they saw in it. “Anyway, Yanks have no business being out there on the flank that way. The wise eggs even had Hotchkiss guns to shoot with. Now about these birds in the cul- vert. They’re still firing down the diteh. They got the runner [ sent to the mortar outfit. Let’s see if we can’t dig ’em out There’s no crossing the ditch with them in there.” | The gun advanced and Nell went with the officer, telling him how the culvert had an elbow in it and how deep it was, and the officer cursed because half of his platoon had gone with the trench mortars just at the time when he needed them most. “Say!’’ cried the officer suddenly. ‘You better skip over to whoever’s in command of the advance now and tell him his ma- chine-gun support on this flank is no more. T’ll drop a couple of shelis at the entrance. to that hole, and you run before the smoke clears. We may be all day getting that bunch out of there.” NELL wondered why the officer didn’t send one of his own run- ners, but the officer wanted to conserve his own personnel, for he might have need of them later in the day. So Nell gathered himself together and when the little gun had dropped three shells, one after the other, at the mouth of the culvert he galloped across the ditch and dived intoa shell hole on the far side. There he fell himself over to be sure he had not been hit. comiclbool CO