The same order had been given to the enlisted men in the next enclosure.  For a few minutes there was some bustle over getting petty belongings together and marshaling them into a pack that could be slung over the back.

“Officers ready!” ordered the under-officer, returning.  “Fall in by twos and march after me to the office.”

He marched the little detachment through the larger enclosure, and in through the rear of the office building.  Here there was a roll-call.  Then the officers, again in twos, were marched outside, where a corporal and four soldiers fell in with them as guard.

Down the road the captured officers were marched for something like a quarter of a mile.

“Halt, but keep your places in the ranks,” ordered the corporal.  “Any prisoner disobeying will be shot.”

“There is something that promises!” cried Captain Lescault, pointing to the sky.

Southward, over the lines, appeared a squadron of swift French airplanes, coming over the German lines.  Almost instantly German aircraft began to rise from the ground, going to meet the invaders of the air.

Over the purring of the engines sounded the sharp, continuous rapping of machine guns as the opposing craft fought each other.

Two German planes came crashing down to earth.  More appeared in the air, until the French flyers, outnumbered, turned and flew back over the French lines.

“I believe our flyers got what they wanted,” whispered the same French officer to Prescott.

Five minutes later the Frenchman whispered exultingly: 

“Ah, I was sure of it!  Our airmen were spying for the artillery.  Now you shall see things happen.”

In the air sounded a screech.  Then, less than three hundred yards further down the road a French shell exploded, overturning a motor truck and killing both Germans on its seat.  The truck itself was a wreck.

Crash!  Another shell landed in the road, bowling over two officers at the head of a body of oncoming soldiers.  The next shell landed in a mass of marching German infantry, killing and wounding several.  Then, for five minutes a hurricane of shells descended on that road, wrecking trucks, killing and wounding more than a hundred men in German marching detachments, and chasing all troops from the road.

“That does not win the war!” growled the German corporal in charge of the officer-prisoners.  “It is only French mischief!”

Hardly had the shell hurricane ceased when some hundred men, under guard, came marching down from the prison camp.  These were halted, at the edge of the field, just behind the officers.

An hour passed before another detachment of prisoners was marched down the road and halted.  Later more came.  Noon had passed before the final detachment arrived.

It was wearisome, but Dick Prescott did not feel that he had wasted his time.  Full of the hope of escaping, some day, he had watched covertly everything that he could see of German army life and movements behind the fighting line.  Also, from several incidents that he witnessed, he gained a new idea of German military brutality.