d
seen the front line often before. "You will see a part of France
that won't remind you of anything you have ever seen!"

In spite of that mention of the horrors that they all knew war had
brought in its train, it was hard to imagine them while swinging
along at a good pace through countryside that looked so quiet and
peaceful. The line of lorries slowed down for a level crossing,
where the road led across a spur of railway, and then halted, the
gate-keeper having blocked the highway to allow the passing of a still
distant and very slowly moving train. The gate-keeper was a buxom
and determined-looking French woman of well past middle age, who
turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the occupants of the leading
car that the line of trucks should be allowed to scurry across
before the train passed.

As the boys sat waiting in the sudden quiet, Picky Mann said quietly:

"We are getting nearer. Listen to the guns."

Sure enough, their attention drawn to the distant growling, the dull
booming of the detonations of the high-explosive shells could be
distinctly heard. War was ahead, at last, and not so very far ahead
at that. Not long after, the squadron passed through a shattered
French village.

Every one of the boys had seen pictures in plenty of shell-smashed
ruins, but the actuality of the awful devastation made them hold
their breath for a moment. To think that such desolate piles of
brick and mortar were once rows of human habitations, peopled with
men, women and children very much like the men, women and children
in their own land, sobered the boys.

Soon Bob Haines drew the attention of the others to captive balloons
along the sky-line ahead, and finally the Brighton boys saw a black
smudge in the air far in front. It was a minute or two before they
realized that they had seen their first bursting shell.

The leading car turned sharply off the highway into a by-road at right
angles to it. A hundred yards further it dashed through a gap in a
tall hedge, and as the line of trucks followed it, they emerged upon
a great flying field.

There, ahead, were still the captive balloons, straining at their
leashes probably, but too far away to show anything but the general
outline of their odd sausage shapes. Ahead, too, was the boom of
the guns. No mistaking that. Their aeroplanes were to be the eyes
of those very guns. They knew that well. The front line was up
there, somewhere. Their own soldiers, t