Page:Air Service Boys Flying for Victory.djvu/14

4 his best troops, including the crack Guard regiments. He realized that the gravest peril of all lay in the "push" of this new army, which had already given such an excellent account of its fighting qualities.

In that vast tract of wooded country known as the Argonne the Huns had located innumerable machine-gun nests designed to check the advance of the Yankees and make them pay a fearful price for what they got.

Two men secreted in some nook could open a deadly fire on the oncoming boys in khaki and mow them down like ripe grain before they themselves were wiped out in a furious rush. It paid the German commanders to sacrifice two for a dozen or twenty; though at times they had to chain the gunners to their weapon, for fear they would slip away at the last.

Six battle-planes all in a row were now starting off in rapid succession. A whirr that sounded loud and insistent above the dull roar of the heavy guns, a sudden movement that quickly increased in velocity until the plane was bounding like a rabbit over the open ground, then an upward slant, a beautiful curve that left the ground behind, and another air pilot was off for the post of duty.

Jack Parmly's blood bounded joyously in his veins when he thus rose like a speeding swallow.