at was when I got nearest to the big noise. Off across the hills
the Turks were pounding away with their heavy guns, and I was anxious
for a look. I kept going and going; but couldn't find any of our
people. Night was shutting in too, and the first thing I knew I wasn't
anywhere in particular, with nothing in sight but an old sheep pen. I
tried bunking there; but it wasn't restful, and before daylight I went
wandering on again. I wanted to locate our advance and get a cup of
coffee.

"I must have gone a couple of miles farther, and it was getting light,
when a most infernal racket broke loose not one hundred yards ahead.
Really, you know, I thought I'd blundered into the midst of a battle.
Then in a minute the noise let up, and the smoke blew away, and there,
squatting behind a machine gun up on the side of a hill, was one lone
Greek soldier. Not another soul in sight, mind you; just this absurd,
dirty, smoke-stained person, calmly feeding another belt of cartridges
into his gun!

"'Hello!' says I. 'What the deuce are you doing here?'--'Holding the
hill, Sir,' says he, in good United States. 'Not all alone?' says I.
He shrugs his shoulders at that. 'The others were killed or hurt,'
says he. 'The Red Cross people took them all away last
night,--Lieutenant, Sergeant, everyone. But our battery must keep the
hill.' 'Where's the rest of the advance, though?' says I. 'I don't
know,' says he. 'And you mean to say,' says I, 'you've been here all
night with the Turkish artillery hammering away at you?' 'They are bad
shots, those Turks, very bad,' says he. 'Also they send infantry to
drive me away, many times. See! There come some more. Down there!
Ah-r-r-r! You will, will you?' And with that he turns loose his big
pepperbox on a squad that had just started to dash out of a ravine and
rush him. They were coming our way on the jump. Scared? Say, if
there'd been anything to have crawled into, I'd have been in it! As
there wasn't, I just flattened myself on the ground and waited until it
was all over.

"Oh, he crumpled 'em up, all right! He hadn't ground out one belt of
cartridges before he had 'em on the run. But I want to tell you I
didn't linger around to see how the next affair would turn out. I
legged it back where I'd come from, and by nine o'clock I was behind
our own lines, trying to find out what sort of campaign this was that
left one machine gun to stave off the whole Turkish army. Of cours