"
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.
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