“Oh, I’ll lead you to it, all right, Buddy!” cried Private Drew.  “We’ll just eat up some pictures if we can get ’em!  Come along!  This way for the main show!” and he laughed like a boy.

Among the outfits sent with the troops quartered in this particular sector was a moving picture machine and many reels of film.  But, as Sam Drew had said, the machine was broken.

After Blake and his chums had reported to the officer to whom they had letters of introduction and had been formally given their official designation as takers of army war films, they went to the old barn which had been turned into a moving picture theater.

There was a white cloth screen and a little gallery, made in what had been the hay mow, for the projector machine.  Joe Duncan, as the expert mechanician of the trio, at once examined this, and said it could soon be put in readiness for service.

“Whoop!” yelled Private Drew, who seemed to have constituted himself the particular guide and friend of the moving picture boys.  “Whoop! that’s as good as getting a letter from home!  Go to it, Buddy!”

And that first night of the boys’ stay at that particular part of France was the occasion of a moving picture show.  All who could crowded into the barn, and the reels were run over and over again as different relays of officers and men attended.  For the officers were as eager as the privates, and the moving picture boys were welcomed with open arms.

“You sure did make a hit!” laughed Private Drew.  “Yes, a sure-fire hit!  Now let Fritz bang away.  We should worry!”

But all was not moving pictures for Blake, Joe and their assistant, nor for the soldier boys, either.  There was hard and grim work to do in order to be prepared for the harder and grimmer work to come.  The United States troops were going through a period of intensive trench training to be ready to take their share of the fighting with the French and British forces.

The village where Blake and his chums were quartered was a few miles from the front, but so few that day and night, save when there was a lull, the booming of guns could be heard.

“There hasn’t been much real fighting, of late,” Private Drew informed the boys the day after their arrival.  “It’s mostly artillery stuff, and our boys are in that.  Now and then a party of us goes over the top or on night listening-patrol.  Fritz does the same, but, as yet, we haven’t had what you could call a good fight.  And we’re just aching for it, too.”

“That’s what we want to get pictures of,” said Blake.  “Real fighting at the front trenches!”

“Oh, you’ll get it,” prophesied the private.  “There’s a rumor that we’ll have some hot stuff soon.  Some of our aircraft that have been strafing Fritz report that there’s something doing back of the lines.  Shouldn’t wonder but they’ll try to rush us some morning.  That is, if we don’t go over the top at ’em first.”