several
seconds he remained perfectly still, not moving a muscle. What had
happened? Where was he? Why was he out here under some trees in the
dark?

Those and countless other questions crowded through his brain. Then, as
though somebody had pulled a curtain aside, memory came back to him and
he knew all the answers. Of course! A Stuka bomb. It had dropped close.
He had been trying to shelter that old woman. Yet, that had been on the
road by a cart, and here he was under some trees. How come? Had the
exploding bomb blown him under the trees? Was he wounded but still too
dazed to feel any pain? Good gosh, it was night now, so he must have
been here for hours!

Thought and action became one. He put out his hands and pushed himself
up to a sitting position. Almost instantly he regretted the effort. A
hundred trip-hammers started going to work on the inside of his head.
The night and the stars began to whirl madly about him. He closed his
eyes tight, and clenched his teeth until things stopped spinning so
fast. That helped the pounding in his head, too. It simmered down to a
dull throbbing ache that he could stand without flinching.

For a few moments he sat there on the grass feeling over his body and
searching for broken bones or any wounds he might have received. There
was nothing broken, however, and his only wound was a nice big goose egg
on the left side of his head. Thankful for the miracle wrought, he got
slowly to his feet, braved a hand against a tree trunk and peered about
him in the darkness.

It was then one more little surprise came to him. He was in a field and
as far as he could tell there wasn't a road any place. No unending
stream of refugees, no wagons, no carts, and no road. It was as though
he had dropped down into the very middle of nowhere. Completely puzzled
by the strangeness of his surroundings, he glanced at the sky, found the
North Star and started walking northward. Way off in the distance there
was a faint rumbling, like thunder far far away, but he knew at once it
was the roar of heavy guns. If he needed any proof he had only to stare
toward the northeast. There the faint glow of flames made a horizon line
between the night sky and the earth.

"But where _am_ I?" he asked himself aloud. "I couldn't have just been
blown away. I haven't even got a sprained ankle. Gosh! I wonder where
the Lieutenant is? And those poor refugees. I sure hope French planes
caught those Germans and gave them so