Adventure Magazine Cover — page 179: what you’re looking at

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

which had been taken over—a small hotel that had once been occupied by tourists crossing the mountains from France to Alsace. With one movement the section turned and stared with him, open-mouthed. In this hotel there need be no more than two men to a room; there were sheets on the beds; there was a bar at which could be bought beer better than any they had tasted in the rest of France, and the landlady had offered to cook for a moderate price! These were men who had slept in wheat fields to escape the bombing of towns, who had thought themselves lucky to get a meal of “goldfish” and corned willy, and who during an attack had worked for forty hours at a stretch until they dozed at the wheels of their cars, still moving. “Now for the assignments,” continued the lieutenant briskly with the air of a con- juror exhibiting all his bag of tricks. “One car goes to the Col de la Schlucte. That is only twenty minutes away, so the driver may wait here until the ériage there telephones in. I am credibly informed that they never telephone—no shell has fallen near the place November 23rd, 1926 177 for two months. Nevertheless it is a job. Norris, you take it.” From the look on Norris’s face one could believe that he hoped the job would be permanent. ‘Two cars are needed for the hospital in Gerardmer—that is the big town where we detrained last night. These cars will take the wounded to the railroad station when necessary. Grindley and O’Brien. You want to behave yourselves and be on the job,” the lieutenant warned them. “I know all about the cafés and the pretty girls there, but you lay off the cafés and forget the girls, and I'll be there myself to see that you do it. This is war.” “It’s a tough war!” somebody murmured and the whole outfit grinned in comprehen- sion. This lieutenant was a wonder, after all. He had driven them like a maniac at Kemel Hill and Soissons, but give him a chance and see what he could do! “The last post,”’ the officer concluded, “‘is far away from here. Over thirty kilometers in fact. It is at a place called Lac Noir. That means Black Lake,” he explained GOMIGDOO SS C@