head under water. I could see the water slowly redden.

Bullets began to smash the tiles above us. "This is no place for two
innocent little American boys," remarked Thompson, shouldering his
camera. I agreed with him. By the time we reached the ground the
Belgian infantry was half a mile in our rear, and to reach the car we
had to cross nearly a mile of open field. Bullets were singing across
it and kicking up little spurts of brown earth where they struck. We
had not gone a hundred yards when the German artillery, which the
Belgians so confidently asserted had been silenced, opened with
shrapnel. Have you ever heard a winter gale howling and shrieking
through the tree-tops? Of course. Then you know what shrapnel
sounds like, only it is louder. You have no idea though how
extremely annoying shrapnel is, when it bursts in your immediate
vicinity. You feel as though you would like nothing in the world so
much as to be suddenly transformed into a woodchuck and have a
convenient hole. I remembered that an artillery officer had told me
that a burst of shrapnel from a battery two miles away will spread
itself over an eight-acre field, and every time I heard the moan of an
approaching shell I wondered if it would decide to explode in the
particular eight-acre field in which I happened to be.

As though the German shell-storm was not making things
sufficiently uncomfortable for us, when we were half-way across the
field two Belgian soldiers suddenly rose from a trench and covered
us with their rifles. "Halt! Hands up!" they shouted. There was
nothing for it but to obey them. We advanced with our hands in the
air but with our heads twisted upward on the look-out for shrapnel.
As we approached they recognized us. "Oh, you're the Americans,"
said one of them, lowering his rifle. "We couldn't see your faces and
we took you for Germans. You'd better come with us. It's getting too
hot to stay here." The four of us started on a run for a little cluster of
houses a few hundred yards away. By this time the shells were
coming across at the rate of twenty a minute.

"Suppose we go into a cellar until the storm blows over," suggested
Roos, who had joined us. "I'm all for that," said I, making a dive for
the nearest doorway. "Keep away from that house!" shouted a
Belgian soldier who suddenly appeared from around a corner. "The
man who owns it has gone insane from fright. He's upstairs with a
rifle and he's shooting at every one who pa