ung onto a road when the
landscape on all four sides suddenly blossomed up with spouting geysers
of brilliant red flame and towering columns of oily black smoke.
Thunderous sound rushed at them and seemed to lift the small scouting
car straight up into the air.

"Shrapnel barrage!" the Sergeant screamed and slammed on the brakes.
"Take cover under the car at once!"

CHAPTER TWELVE

_In the Nick of Time_

Huddled together like sardines under the car, the Belgian Sergeant and
the two boys pressed fingers to their ears while all about them a whole
world went mad with shot and shell. Never in all his life had Dave heard
such a bellowing roar of crashing sound. For the first few seconds his
entire body had been paralyzed with fear, but when he didn't die at once
his brain grew kind of numb, and the roaring thunder didn't seem to have
so much effect upon him. It wasn't because of a greater courage coming
to his rescue. And it wasn't a lack of fear, either. It was simply that
in the midst of a furious bombardment the minds of human beings are too
stunned by the sound to register any kind of emotion.

And so the three of them just lay there under the car while the German
gunners far back expended their wrath in the form of screaming steel,
and mountains of flame and rolling thunder. In ten minutes it was all
over. The range of the guns was changed and the barrage moved onward to
some other objective. Yet neither of the three moved a muscle. It was as
though each was waiting for the other to make the first move.

Eventually Dave could stand the suspense no longer. He jerked up his
head without thinking and cracked it hard on the underside of the car.
He let out a yelp of pain, and the sound of his voice seemed to release
whatever was holding Freddy Farmer and the Belgian Sergeant. All three
of them crawled out from under the car and got to their feet and looked
around. Dave and Freddy gasped aloud. The Belgian Sergeant shrugged
indifferently and muttered through his teeth. There just wasn't any road
any more. It was completely lost in a vast area of smoking shell holes
that seemed to stretch out in all directions as far as the eye could
see. Blackened jagged stumps marked what had once been trees. Fields
where spring grass had been growing up were now brown acres of piled up
dirt and stones. And a spot where Dave had last seen a farm house was as
bare as the palm of his hand.

"By the Saints, you two are a lucky