Belle was as used to war as the most weather-beaten French _poilu_. The tremble of the ground did not disturb her and the whining whir of the shells overhead only made her twitch and wrinkle her nose in her sleep. She was trench-broken. You could have put a plate of savory pork chops on the _parapet_ and nothing would have induced her to go after them.
She weathered many a gas attack. Her master contrived a protection for her by cutting down and twisting a French gas mask. At first this sack over her nose irritated her tremendously; but once, when she was trying to claw it off with her forepaws, she got a whiff of the poisoned air. Then a great light dawned on Belle; and after that, at the first alarm, she would race for her mask. You could not have taken it from her until her master's pat on her back told her everything was all right.
In the middle of May, Belle presented a proud but not particularly astonished regiment with nine confused and wriggling puppies, black-and-white, or, like the mother, brown-and-white, and possessed of immense appetites. Seven of these were alive and kicking when the order came for the regiment to pull up stakes and speed across France to help stem the German tide north of the troubled Marne.
In the rush and hubbub of marching orders Belle and her brood were forgotten by every one but the young marine. It never once entered his head to leave her or her pups behind. Somewhere he found a market basket and tumbled the litter into that. He could carry the pups, he explained, and the mother dog would trot at his heels.
Now the amount of hardware a marine is expected to carry on the march is carefully calculated to the maximum strength of the average soldier, yet this leatherneck found extra muscle somewhere for his precious basket. If it came to the worst, he thought, he could _jettison_ his pack. It was not very clear in his mind what he would do with his charges during a battle, but he trusted to luck and Verdun Belle.
For twenty-five miles he carried his burden along the parched French highway. No one wanted to jeer him out of it, nor could have if they would. When there followed a long advance by _camion_, he yielded his place to the basket of wriggling pups, while he himself hung on the tail-board.