The Khaki Boys Over the Top | Page 4

Dalton and Franz
Schnitzel stumbling toward him and Jimmy. Then came a sharp
command:
"Down! Down on your faces! Everyone! They're turning loose the
machine-guns!"
The four remaining Khaki Boys fell flat, and only just in time. Over
them swept a veritable hail of machine gun bullets.

"Dig in! Dig in!" commanded the lieutenant.
Frantically with their picks and shovels the Sammies began to make
shallow ditches in which to lie. The upraised earth would offer some
protection against the forward sweeping lead, though not very much
against shrapnel which explodes in the air above and is driven
downward.
And as the four Brothers were making shallow trenches they wondered,
with sorrow in their hearts, if there was a chance that Iggy had been left
alive.
"If we stay here long enough, I'll see if I can't get permission to go back
and find out," mused Jimmy, as he frantically scraped the earth into a
sort of long mound in front of his head. They were under a hot fire now.
The American advance had been momentarily checked.
And while there is this period in the fighting may I not take advantage
of it to make my new readers acquainted with the main characters of
this story, and also tell something of the previous books in this series?
The initial volume is called "The Khaki Boys at Camp Sterling," and in
the pages of that you meet, for the first time, Jimmy, Roger, Bob and
Iggy. To introduce them more formally I will say that Jimmy's correct
name was James Sumner Blaise, and that he was the son of wealthy
parents. He was about nineteen years old, and this was the average age
of his comrades.
Roger Barlow was an orphan, and had been working in a munition
factory when he decided to enlist. Robert Dalton had been a "cub"
reporter on a newspaper, and, like Roger, was an orphan. Though
Ignace was no orphan, possessing both father and mother and a number
of sisters and brothers, his home life was not happy, and he was really
glad to join the army.
These four lads soon became "bunkies" at Camp Sterling, where they
had their training. Later they took into their friendship one Franz
Schnitzel, who, though possessed of a German name, was, nevertheless,

a loyal "United Stateser," as Iggy called it. Franz had a hard time, at
first, convincing people of his loyalty, and once he was accused of a
black crime, but later he was proved innocent.
After having been trained at the camp, and cementing their friendship
in many ways, the "five Brothers" as they called themselves, were sent
across. In the second book of the series, "The Khaki Boys On the
Way," we find our youthful heroes sailing for France after a series of
adventures, one a startling one, at Camp Marvin. This adventure had to
do with the blowing up of a bridge, and Jimmy Blaise had a fight with a
spy--a fight that came near being Jimmy's last.
In this second book will also be found an account of the trip of the
Khaki Boys to the coast, where they boarded a transport for France. If
they expected to get across safely, as many thousands did, they were
disappointed, for they were attacked by a U-Boat. Many on board the
transport Columbia perished, but the five Brothers were saved, and,
after a time spent in a rest camp in England, they crossed the channel to
France.
The third volume, called "The Khaki Boys at the Front," tells in detail
some of their exciting experiences. The quintette were given leave to
go from their camp to Paris, and in that beautiful city they met some
other friends, the Twinkle Twins, otherwise John and Gerald
Twinkleton, who had joined the aviation branch of the service. This
was natural, since their cousin, Emile Voissard, was one of the most
daring of the airmen, meriting the name "Flying Terror of France."
In that book, too, you may read of how Franz Schnitzel, by his
knowledge of the German tongue, was able to give advance notice of a
raid he overheard the Huns planning. The raid was a failure from the
German standpoint, but during it some of our Khaki Boys were
wounded.
Adventure followed adventure, but in one "grand" one, as a Frenchman
would call it, Jimmy, on guard when Voissard's aëroplane was on the
ground, temporarily disabled, stood off an attack of Germans and
among others he killed Adolph von Kreitzen, known as the "tiger man."

On his head the French government had set a price of five thousand
francs, or about a thousand dollars, and of course Jimmy won this.
So now, in the opening of this present story, we find our five Khaki
Boys still together after many