Read "War the Creator" by Gelett Burgess online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Yet there was a terrible earnestness about it all that sobered them. There was something still more terribly earnest ahead! Every automobile that whizzed past them, coming in hot haste from the front, announced it. Every galloping supply wagon, every crouching motorcyclist in uniform flashing by told the same frantic story: "Hurry! Hurry! _Hurry! _ The Germans are almost here! France is in danger!"
On those first nights, when Coco's turn came to stand on sentry duty by the lonely corner of a wood, his eyes strained into the darkness, listening for every sound, the sight of a bush waving in the wind often brought his gun to his shoulder with a quick, excited "_Halte-là! _"