There were no more shells after that one, and we continued our march till nightfall, when we camped in an abandoned village. Next morning there were 100 big auto trucks ready to take us to a point about forty miles along the lines, and we clambered aboard them and set off at a good speed--all but twenty unlucky lads, who were left to pad the hoof as a guard for our mules and baggage. My pal, William Thaw, was among the number; he marched for thirteen hours practically without a stop, and when he reached our camp he lay right down in the mud by the roadside and went straight off to sleep, though it was raining like sixty and he was drenched to the skin. But he was all right again in the morning, though it was a man's job to wake him up.
Next day we set off before dawn, having received orders to take our place in the trenches about eight miles away. It soon got light, and after marching about half an hour we were unlucky enough to be seen by a German aeroplane which signaled us to their batteries. The first shell burst near, the second nearer, the third right among us, killing nearly a dozen old-timers; and we were forced to break ranks and take cover until nightfall, as they'd got the range and it would have been suicide to try and go on. Pretty good shooting that at five or six miles' distance!
The French talk a lot about their artillery, but, believe me, the Dutchies are mighty fine gunners, especially with their cannon--even the very biggest.
Why, one day when my company was having its usual weekly rest from the trenches, there were a couple of hundred of us bunking in a big barn fully eight miles behind our lines. About three in the afternoon along came a German aeroplane, and half an hour later they dropped a couple of shells between the barn and a church some thirty yards farther back, just by way of showing what they could do. We thought that was all, and settled down comfortably for the night; but not a bit of it! At ten o'clock sharp a shell dropped plump onto the barn itself and killed five or six and wounded a dozen more, none of them Americans. We got out on the jump, though of course it was raining; and we were wise, for in the next half hour they hit the barn eleven times without a single miss, and at ten-thirty there weren't any big enough bits of it left to make matches of. The barn was perhaps thirty yards long by fifteen wide, but remember they were firing at a range of ten miles or so and in pitch darkness. Of course, they had got their guns trained right in the afternoon and just waited till night to give us a pleasant surprise. I did hear those were Austrian mortars, not German; anyway, they were good enough for us, I can tell you.