Don Hale Over There (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III ON DUTY Early on the following morning, while the light of the coming day was slowly spreading throughout the heavens and by degrees bringing into view the landscape which for long hours the deep shades of night had gathered to themselves, Don Hale and Dunstan Farring- ton clambered into ambulance number eight and took their places on the driver's seat. " Another forty-eight hours of duty at the outpost ahead of us I " exclaimed Don. " Yes; and I hope there won't be too much excitement I" said Dunstan. " I reckon Chase Manning would agree to that sentiment." " There's a chap whose acquaintance I am certainly going to cultivate," laughed the aviator's son. The boy waved his hand to a couple of mechanicians tinkering over an ambulance near by, threw in the clutch, and number eight, the center of a very strong smell ofgasoline, slowly trundled over the cobbled paving, passed beneath the arching gateway and entered the street. Even at that early hour soldiers billeted in the village were to be seen on every hand, and as the Red Cross car swung along in an easterly direction over the wide highway an occasional " Vive 1'Amerique 1" rose clearly above the hum of smoothly-working pistons and rumble of wheels. Traveling at a rapid rate of speed, the ambulance soon reached a bend, and just beyond the road passed under the arch of an ancient porte, or gateway, which marked the limits of the town. Very picturesque and typical of other centuries it looked, looming up against the slowly-lightening sky. Beyond the porte the ambulance passed a succession of hills and meadows. Everywhere the earth had been pitted, scarred and plowed up by high-explosive shells, and at frequent intervals there were huge yawning craters, meters in depth and width, some showing ...