“He’s a French kid—just seventeen. He was one of a small party sent out to locate some enemy machine-guns that were giving a good deal of trouble. They found ’em, all right; but when they were wriggling their way back a shell came along and wiped out the entire crowd—all except this Goujon kid. He was untouched, and he hid for hours in the crater made by the explosion of the shell. When it got dark he crept out: but by that time he was pretty mad, and instead of getting home, he wanted to get a bit of his own back, and what must he do but crawl to those machine-guns and lob bombs on them!”
“Yes, he was, rather. He destroyed two of the three guns, and then was overpowered—_that_ wouldn’t have taken long!—and made prisoner: pretty roughly handled, too. But before he could be sent to the rear, some of our chaps made a little night-attack on that bit of German trench, and in the excitement Goujon got away. So he trotted home—but on the way he stopped, and gathered up the remaining machine-gun. Staggered into his own lines with it. They’ve given him the Military Medal.”
“And he’s seventeen!” said some one. “He ought to get pretty high up before the war is over.”
“I know a man who’s a major at nineteen,” Anstruther said, “Went out as a second lieutenant and was promoted for gallantry at Mons; got his captaincy and was wounded at the Aisne; recovered, and at Neuve Chapelle was the sole officer left, except two very junior subalterns, in all his battalion. He handled it in action, brought them out brilliantly—awful corner it was, too,—and was in command for a fortnight after, before they could find a senior man; there weren’t any to spare. He was gazetted major last week.”
“Well, I suppose he is. They say he’s a genius at soldiering, anyhow; and, of course, he got his chance. There must be hundreds of men who would do as well if they ever got it; only opportunity doesn’t come their way.”
“They say this will be a war for young men,” Garrett said. “We’re going back to old days; I believe Wellington and Napoleon were colonels at twenty. And that’s more than you will be, young Meadows, if you don’t mend your ways.”
“I never expected to be,” said Wally, thus attacked.
“But why won’t I, anyhow, apart from obvious reasons?”