Boy's Cinema (1930-31)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

12 bread and sausage and a raincoat, as well as a hat. Lorries passed him, loaded with troops. Giant guns ground their way towards the frontier, and some gunners gave him a lift on a limber whioli followed o!ie titanic howitzer. They were full of how Austria and Germany would smash England between them. They tliemselves were bound for the raging battles in Serbia, and were full of triumph at the victories the Austrians had already gained. They told Bruce, too, of how some Englishmen rounded up in Vienna that afternoon had been mobbed by the crowds, dragged to the Danube Canal and slung in, so that most of them were drowned. None of them suspected that they were even then talking to one of the hated British! When the gunners camped at dark- ness, Bruce walked on all through the night until dawn, when he hid up in a wood and slept. He skirted the towns to which he came, travelling only by night. Everywhere people were search- ing for Englishmen, Frenchmen, Ser- bians or Russians, with all of whom Austria and Germany were at war. Such as the people found were lucky if the military ever took them over; more likely were they to be stoned until they died, or to suffer the fate of the unfortunate bunch of Britishers in V^ienna—of whom, Bruce knew, he might well have been one. He was fourteen days before he reached the Italian frontier—to find it a mass of trenches,* where men stood on guard, and where barbed wire had been slung in great festoons, because the Austrians feared that Italy might come into the war, allying herself with Britain. She did later on. Bruce lay a whole day, hidden in bushes, watching the movements of a group of Austrian sentries before him. At night, he crept forward at a point between two sentries, passed them, squirmed through the thicket of barbed wire, and an hour later he was in Italian territory, telling his stoiy to an Italian officer who immediately gave him food, then sent him south on his journey to England. It was on the day that Bruce reached safety that Pauli and Carl were married in Vienna. Carl had no best man; Bruce had gone—an enemy—and Win- kehnaim had been called up. As Pauli and Carl came arm-in-arm from the church a regiment passed, on its way to force home Austria's invasion of Russia in the north. The troops went swinging by, rifles gleaming, boots spurn- ing the cobbles. But the cheers wore not so hearty now. Weepmg women moved in sombre groups beside their men. Casualty lists had come through; many and many a brave Viennese had fallen in the fighting. Many and many a man who now marched past would not come back. Pauli and Carl clung to one another as they looked at the grim, grey-clad figures of the parsing soldiers. "Carl, shall you have to go?" Pauli breathed as she looked up at him. "Not yet. They won't call me up for a long while!" Carl said. "The war won't last long enough for them to want me." But that niglit, late, a soldier Uuunped on the door of the little flat they had taken. His fist crashed on the jianels, and when Carl opened it, the man jerked fo attention and saluted. "Mobilisation order for Lieutenant Carl Behrend, sir!" the man said. "It jrders you to reiiort at dawn at hcad- FeJ)ruary 15tb, 1930. BOY'S CINEMA quarters to-morrow, with full equipment, ready to move off at midnight!" Carl took the order and closed the door. It was a long, blue-tinted envelope, and it would tear him away from the girl he loved. He looked at the clock, it marked the hour of ten-thirty. In seven hours he must go to the war. In the Firing Line. CARL'S division was attached to the German Army, to fight with them against the British. In return, a German division was sent in excJiange to fight shoulder to shoulder with the Austrians against their common enemies. This was just a gesture to show how both Germany and Austria were together in tlie war. While Carl, commanding a company, marched from Vienna, Bruce was racing from Italy across France and back to England, eager to get into uniform. On his way, he had seen British wounded from the Battle of Mons. He had seen all Austria and France in- flamed by war, and he realised how titanic the conflict would be. As he rode across France, he saw refugees coming in from the battle front, he heard the distant thundering of guns—a sound that was with him until he crossed the Channel. Bruce arrived in London on the night that news came through that British troops and their French allies had driven the Germans back across the Marne, scoring a great victory. He heard the cheering and saw the crowds. He saw two battalions ol Guards marching to Waterloo to entrain for France, with bands playing and thousands lining the streets—just as they had done in Vienna. The taxicab that took him home was held up suddenly by a titanic mass of people which abruptly swarmed, strug- gling and shouting, across the road, chasing some fugitive who rushed away like a wild animal. "That's a German baker!" an excited man yelled to Bruce when ho asked what was the trouble. "If they catch him they'll lynch him!" And the crowd surged on. "That's the v/ay they were chasing Englishmen in Vienna," Bruce thought, and he could not help feeling sympathy with the pursued man. It was odd to think of both nations doing exactly the same thing. It was still more odd to think of his friend Carl in uniform fighting against England and her allies—but a month later Bruce him- self was in uniform, a lieutenant, train- ing for the front. The training was long and hard, and it was a year before his battalion was sent to France, and rather more than another year before Fate decreed that Bruce's battalion should enter the line in a sector just south of Arras. It was near Christmas. Snow clung to the thistle patches of barbed wire that marred the shell-torn stretch of No- Man's-Land. When Bruco had seen his company into position and had posted his sentries, ho mounted the fire-step anci looked towards the enemy lines. He was leaner, harder and altogether tougher now. A heavy Army revolver was holstored at his belt, and his uniform was mudstained and torn. For two years the ground in front of him had been fought over, and at any niomen! the ^one was liable to flare up into another fierce battle. He saw the British wire ahead, a tangle of barbed strands wrapped about leaning stakes. Beyond this was the Every Tuesday ploughed-up earth, patched with snow, then the enemy wire, from the other side of which Very lights shot up occa- sionally, shedding a green-white glow wliich came down in ghastly fashion as it illuminated the scene around. Still further off, Bruce could see the bluish flicker of German guns against the sky. Shells droned overhead. Now and again a rifle cracked, or the silence would be shattered by the quick, vicious stammer of a machine-gun. Boots thudded and grated on the frost- bitten floor of the trench, and a voice called quietly: "The colonel want-s to see you, sir, in headquarters' dug-out!" "Very good!" Bruce dropped from the fire-step and made his way along the treuch. In little funk-holes men crouched over small coke-filled braziers or slept in niches hacked from the walls. The glow of Very lights caught the sheen of bayoneted rifles, the dull, rounded shapes of steel helmets and the slender, compact masses of masked machine-guns. Bruce picked his way down a com- munication trench to the support line and found the dug-out he sought. Orderlies jerked to attention when he entered it and passed through to the battalion headquarters beyond. The colonel was sitting at a rouglj table, papers and two trench maps before him, while the adjutant leaned over his shoulder. "Ah, Lieutenant Gordon, I've a job for you 1" the colonel said, as Bruce saluted. "I want you to make a raid to-night." "A raid, sir?" repeated Bruce, and his heart kicked a little in his chest. "I want you to take half a dozen bombers, go over, bring back a couple of prisoners for identification—and start within the hour !" "Yes, sir," answered Bruce, and the colonel eyed him levelly from under his shaggy grey brows. "The unit which held these trenches before us," the colonel explained, "took a prisoner ^.'ho said that his regiment was to be relieved by battalions from some crack .Austrian division. We've heard about some Austrian troops being in this part of the front, and I want, if possible, to find out just who they are. As you were in Vienna before the war you'll know something about them, and you'll be able to question the prisoners when you bring them in. If you can't get live prisont»s over, get their papers and identification badges. Is tliat all clear?" "Quite clear, sir," said Bruce steadily. "I take six bombers over with me and make the raid immediately." "That's right. Best o' luck!" called the colonel, and acknowledged Bruce's salute mechanically. Bruce returned to the fire trench, and now he viewed No-Man's-Land with different eyes. It was going to be a hard job to get himself and six men across that snow-scattered waste without being seen by Ine enemy. And if he were seen it would be bullets from the rifles of Austrians which would come at him. The people in whose university he had studied, and amongst whom he had had so many friends. Standing there, he wondered wliat had happened to Carl, and how Pauli was getting on. For all he knew, Carl might now be lying in a soldier's grave. He went down the trench, asking for volunteers for the raid. He collected his half-dozen men swiftly enough, and they grouped with him in a short sap