"There are more than a hundred thousand American horses here,"
observed the Lieutenant. "They are very good horses."
Later on I stopped to stroke the soft nose of a black horse as it
stood trembling near a battery of heavy guns that was firing steadily.
It was American too. On its flank there was a Western brand. I gave it
an additional caress, and talked a little American into one of its
nervous, silky ears. We were both far from home, a trifle bewildered,
a bit uneasy and frightened.
And now it was the battlefield--the flat, muddy plain of Ypres. On the
right bodies of men, sheltered by intervening groves and hedges, moved
about. Dispatch riders on motor cycles flew along the roads, and over
the roof of a deserted farmhouse an observation balloon swung in the
wind. Beyond the hedges and the grove lay the trenches, and beyond
them again German batteries were growling. Their shells, however, were
not bursting anywhere near us.
The balloon was descending. I asked permission to go up in it, but
when I saw it near at hand I withdrew the request. It had no basket,
like the ones I had seen before, but instead the observers, two of
them, sat astride a horizontal bar.
The English balloons have a basket beneath, I am told. One English
airship man told me that to be sent up in a stationary balloon was the
greatest penalty a man could be asked to pay.
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