Tom Slade with the Flying Corps: A Campfire Tale

The reports in the American newspapers of the loss of Tom Slade, aviator, were read by his many admirers and friends with a sense of shock and with feelings of personal bereavem...

My own adventures as a correspondent on the west front would seem tame enough in comparison with the exploits which I purpose to relate, and I will not weary you with a rehearsa...

You will understand that at the time of Tom’s tragic exploit the big bulge in the straining line which the Germans had made in their drive toward the Marne, and which was known...

You are to understand that the road which we had followed from Jonchery appeared from a distance to run straight into this precipitous jungle of rock and broken earth, but a sho...

This thing which I had inadvertently stepped on had, I suppose, been a part of the cap, so-called, which the Germans had dropped behind the allied lines along with Slade’s ident...

I now approach a point in my story where it is difficult for me to write calmly, yet I wish to unfold this wretched business to you exactly as it unfolded itself to me. What I l...

It is a fact that the career of Slade from the time he became an airman and even before was one of bravery and patriotism, and his disaffection, apparently, had come only at the...

The following story of a remarkable career was told me mostly by my young friend, Archibald Archer, who was for a time an occupant of the adjoining cot to mine in the Epemay Hos...

Out of the clouds he came, sweeping, veering, dodging, scattering the ghoulish night birds in his flight, the whir of his propeller heard amid the havoc of wind and storm as he...

Indeed, to close this important matter now, Archer got considerably more than the three tacks from the leather seat. He got a lock-nut from that “inferrnal combustion engine,” (...

As you know, the observation balloon was finally drawn down on account of the weather, and this happened before there was time for an enemy flier to attack it. A very short whil...

“It was just like you; I knew you’d get stuck,” were the consoling words which Slade uttered to Archer. “You should have gone by the Ridge road and you’d have been all right.”

The plane was running like a dream at an altitude of 1,800 feet and due west when they became aware of two tiny lights far below them. Not a glimmer was there anywhere near them...

I have told you of the last part of this astonishing flight in Archer’s own words, as well as I could transcribe them from my shorthand notes, because I think it gives a very go...

I am writing this in Paris where I came to rest after seeing the boys straighten out the last wrinkle in the old Marne salient. It’s almost like a tight-rope now—a bee line from...

It lacked a half-hour of midnight when old Grigou hobbled out of his doorway and looked up into the clear, star-studded night. There was no other house in sight, only the shell-...

If Slade had any suspicion that “Monsieur le Capitaine” was directly interested in the great gun which was concealed thereabout, he did not say so to old Grigou and his daughter...

Slade made his report of this business while lying in the Epemay Hospital. This I have not seen, but Captain Whitloss has told me of it. By reason of the character of Slade’s mi...

And so, like Archibald Archer, that murderous old brute of the wooded hills passes out of the story. A gun crew in Santois turned their handle until they got the muzzle of their...

The foregoing chapters which embody the story of Slade’s career, were, as I have said before, intended for the perusal of Roy Blakeley alone. They form, as you will have seen, a...