Part 10
"You can't hear them explode or see the results unless you're flying quite a distance behind the squadron because we go so fast that by the time the fire gets under way we are miles off. Except for Lehr's machine, we maintained our formation and came out flying in the same position. If there were any Boche patrols out in our neighborhood they knew better than to tackle us.
"When we came down I found my observer unconscious. I thought he had been hit, but he had only fainted from the cold.
"You big rummy," turning to the observer and swiping one of his cigarettes from the open box on the table--"You big rummy, I told you you had better surround something hot before starting--a bowl of oatmeal or coffee.
"Gimmie a light now."
All five are awaiting their transfer to the American flying corps.
---- STARS IN A HERO'S ROLE. ---- Movie Actor Plays Sapper in a Real Rescue. ----
Among the candidates for officers' commissions at the A. E. F.'s training schools is a former movie star who has served his apprenticeship with the British Army. To see him now, few would recognize him as one of the high steppers under the bright night lights of Broadway as he was a year ago. Seized by a sudden impulse, he enlisted in the British army without waiting for America to get into the war and now in return for faithful service, has been given an opportunity by that government to fight under his own flag. Several other Americans who have also worn the British uniform, and who were sent to the school for the same purpose, tell this story of one of the former screen star's experiences:
In the darkness--locomotives, auto lights in the fighting zone--a heavily loaded truck was struck by a train. The truck was overturned down an embankment, imprisoning the two men on it, killing one almost instantly and seriously injuring the other. Spurred by the latter's groans and appeals for help an officer was directing a squad of men with crowbars and sticks in an effort to lift the truck when the former actor came up. The men were making no progress in budging the heavy wreck while there was a possibility, if they did, that it would crash down on the still living man.
"I think I can get the man out, sir if I may try," the New Yorker said saluting the officer.
"Who are you?" the officer asked surprised at the interruption.
"I'm a Yank, sir," he replied, using the popular designation for Americans in the British army.
"What's your rank?" continued the officer, determined that the man be rescued properly if at all.
"Master engineer, sir," the American answered.
Evidently that was sufficient for the officer, for he at once assented with:
"You may try. Lend him a hand men."
The "Yank" took a shovel and started tunnelling under the truck. As he wormed himself into the little hole, the shovel was abandoned for a bayonet and he pushed the dirt back with his hands to others, who threw it aside. After an hour's work, he had the dead man out. Another hour, and he had burrowed molelike, to the side of the other man, who still was conscious.
"Do you want to take a chance? It'll be torture getting out," he said to the truck driver.
"Anything to get from here to die outside," the man gasped.
A rope was shoved in and the American tied it around the man's legs. Slowly, while he guided the battered body of the now unconscious man, comrades pulled them both back through the narrow tunnel.
"I'll see that you're mentioned in regimental orders for your efforts," said the officer to the exhausted "Yank," and he did.
The truck driver had an arm broken, a shoulder crushed and a fractured skull. He was rushed to a hospital on a chance that his life might be saved after so much effort. The work was not in vain, for a few days ago a letter was received from him, well again at his home in England, saying to the former movie star:
"The latch string of this home in Leicester is always hanging out for you."
---- "WELL, I'LL BE--!" ---- THEY'RE ALL HERE. ----
"Fat Casey!"
"Well, I'll be--!"
After seven years Gabby and Fat Casey came face to face on a snow-covered country hillside in France. Gabby played right tackle on the football team out in Chicago in his sophomore year. Casey, a senior, was center and a bother to the trainer because he would surround two bits' worth of chocolate caramels every day, adding to the dimension that won him his nickname.
Somewhere in France Gabby swung his right mitt and clasped Casey's. They hung on in a kind of reminiscent grip, searching one another's face for changes.
Casey wore a smudge on his upper lip. Gabby's face was still un-hairy, but a little lined by the last few years of bucking the business line for a living. Casey has no cause for wrinkles, having a wealthy Dad. And, anyway, Fat's disposition proofed his map against the corrugations of money problems.
We find them shaking hands again.
Casey is driving a touring car over from Divisional Headquarters to call for the major of the Third Battalion. He stalls on the hill from dirty distributor points and gets out to sand-paper them. That red-headed sentry, gazing skyward through field glasses on "aeroplane watch" against the Boches, can be none other than Gabby, the ex-right tackle.
Gabby is a little puzzled by Fat's moustache, but only for a second.
"Whatever became of Charley Rose," he asks, "and Bill Lyman, and all the rest of them?"
"For the love of Mike--meeting you in this forsaken spot after all this time! Where are you stationed? Can't we stage a reunion? Can't we, Fat?"
Well, Fat is a sergeant-chauffeur, Q.M.C. Gabby is a doughboy in an infantry regiment. They can't get together. They're at the War.
For the next ten minutes a whole battlefield of Boche fliers might have sneaked past the Chicago sentry and bombed the daylights out of Division Headquarters without any hindrance from Gabby.
Charley Rose, says Fat, is an infantry lieutenant. Maury Dunne's in the heavy artillery. Dan McCarthy, the hopeless but untiring "sub" of the 1911 squad, is in France in the Q.M.C.
"Well, doggone!" says Fat, in wonderment at the littleness of the world. "Well, gee whiz!" says Gabby, thinking the same thing.
You'll meet 'em all over here--your old rivals, your staunchest pals. You may find yourself top sergeant over the very kids you stole apples or milk bottles with back in the "good old days." Perhaps you'll be saluting the fellow who cut you out of your girl back in high school when an exchange of class pins with pretty Frances Black meant that you were engaged to her for that semester.
Somewhere in France, they're all here.
---- SO THIS IS FRANCE? ----
The first shift is coming out from the tables. White-haired plump Madame scurries over to her place at the door to collect the dinner toll. Silver clinks into her country cash register, a cigar box with the lid knocked off.
The second shift edges toward the dining room where Suzanne and Angel and Joan are rushing about, clearing away the traces of the first service.
"How's the chewin'?" asks the Albany rifleman.
"Pretty good, pretty good," says the engineer boy from Los Angeles. "Good place to fill up on tan bread for a change."
Close your eyes and shut out the khaki. The buzzing voices, the scraping hob nails take you back to the Democratic convention of Pottewantamis County last Spring when the delegates came in through a sleet storm and dried their socks around the stove in the Chamber of Commerce. Or you're back in the locker room hearing the coach's final instructions for the county championship tussle with Lincoln High.
The second service is finishing. Four soldiers are rolling the old tin-throated piano into the middle of the floor. One of them used to be a rag-time "song-booster." Oh, baby, how he can torment those keys!
There they go, in a chorus of fifty roof-raising voices:
"Twice as nice as Paradise, And they called it Dixie Land!"
---- SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. ----
The American war zone recently was honored by a visit from several "lady journalists" who came out from Paris to see how "our boys" were faring.
One of these young women had been reared in luxurious surroundings in New York. Since coming to Paris she seldom went about wearing anything but slippers. These were all right because she always rode in a taxi.
A certain American captain, who thinks nothing of using a nice ten-foot snow bank for bathing purposes, was delegated to conduct the young women through the American war zone.
From the start, the horror of the New York society writer knew no bounds.
"What," she exclaimed, "no pillows for our men! And you say, Captain, they have no bathtubs, but have to bathe in the rivers and creeks? And I see, there are no table cloths or napkins? Captain, leave it to me! I'm going to tell the people of America all about the terrible living conditions of our soldiers over here. Something must be done, and something will be done by an aroused public opinion back home!"
The captain indulged an inward chuckle that racked his soul. Then his face became solemn.
"Please don't stir up any scandal in America over this," he entreated the young woman writer. "I'll tell you confidentially that feather beds are on the way from America for every soldier and there are whole boatloads of bathtubs coming, too. But what's sweetest of all in this--promise you'll keep it a secret until it happens?--our government is going to present every soldier in France with a beautiful manicure set!"
"That's more like it," said the lady, much mollified.
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