Aces Up. Covington Clarke
over to a distressed and despairing squadron commander.
Some swivel-chair expert must have been dozing when the order went through sending them to France. In wash-out records they were the grand champions. They had left behind them a long train of cracked props, broken wings, stripped landing gears–and a few wrecks so complete that the drivers thereof had been sent home in six foot boxes draped with flags. But whatever may be said against them, one thing was certain in their minds and in the minds of all who knew them: They could fly! To them, any old crate that could be influenced to leave the ground was 18a ship, and they were willing to take it up at any time, at any place, and regardless of air conditions. Perhaps their record had been less black had they been given better ships.
A student, seeking a perfect cross-section of American youth, would have found this squadron an interesting specimen. War drums, beating throughout the land, had summoned them from the four points of the compass. How they had ever been assembled at one field is a problem known only to the white-collared dignitaries who sat in swivel chairs and shuffled their service cards. The result of the shuffle caused many a commander to tear his hair and declare that the cards had been stacked against him.
No two members of the squadron came from the same town or city; no two of them had the same outlook on life; no two members thoroughly understood one another. A Texan, such as Yancey, from the wind-swept Panhandle, may bunk with a world-travelled, well educated linguist, such as Siddons, and may even learn to call him Wart, but he never thoroughly understands him. A tide-water Virginian, such as Randolph Hampden, of the bluest of blue blood, may sit at mess by the side of a Californian, such as Hank Porter, but he will show no real interest in California climate and will never be able to make the westerner understand that Virginia is American history and not just a state. A nasal-voiced Vermonter, 19such as Nathan Rodd, brought up among stern hills and by sterner parents, will never fully understand a soft-voiced Louisianian, such as Edouard Fouche, who has found the world a very pleasant place with but few restrictions.
Leaving out the question of patriotism, the members had but three common attributes: They had scornful disregard for any officer in the air service who knew less of flying than they had learned through the medium of hard knocks; they were determined from the very beginning to get to France; and they were the most care-free, reckless, adventurous, devil-may-care bunch of stem-winders that had ever plagued and embarrassed the service by the simple procedure of being gathered into one group.
It may be that the War Department, in despair, at last thought to be rid of them by sending them overseas where their ability and proclivity for stirring up trouble could be turned to good account against the enemy. In any case, they were at last in France and from the moment of their landing had been exceedingly voluble in their demands for planes. They wanted action, not delay. And now that Yancey had brought word of this last crushing indignity, they opened wide the spigots of wrath, all talked at once, and the sum total of their comments contained no single word that could be considered as complimentary to management of the war. More instruction in 20flying! It was unthinkable. But then, perhaps this grim joker, Yancey, was spoofing a bit.
“Come on, Wart,” Hampden called to Siddons from the doorway. “Tex has just been listening to old General Rumor. I’d like right much to see this instructor before I get excited about it. Come on, let’s go into town. The night’s young–and so am I.”
“You’ll get excited when you see him,” Tex responded, sagely.
“Who is he?” Nathan Rodd asked, which was about as long a sentence as Rodd ever spoke. He saved words as though they were so much gold.
“He’s an English lieutenant,” Tex answered. “Red-headed, freckle-faced, and so runty that he’d have to set on a stepladder to see out of a cockpit.”
“A Limey!” chorused half a dozen incredulous, angry voices. “Whatdya know about that!”
Tex nodded solemnly. He was enjoying the situation. Inwardly, he was as furious as any of the others, but he had the happy faculty of being able to enjoy mob distress. “Yeah, a Limey! Some gink in town told me he was a famous ace. I forget his name. Never could remember names. But you boys’ll love him. Like as not he’ll let some of us solo after a month or so. Ain’t the air service wonderful?”
More growls, and a half dozen muttered threats.
21“Now boys, you-all be good, or Uncle Samuel’ll send you back home and let you work in the shipyards at twenty per day. I’m surprised and hurt that you take this good news in this fashion. I should think you’d be delighted to have a Limey show you how he shot down a few of–”
“Attention!” Hampden called from the doorway, a warning quality in his voice.
The men looked up. There in the doorway stood Major Cowan, and by his side was a neatly uniformed, diminutive member of the Royal Flying Corps. The men scrambled hastily to their feet. Yancey upset his chair with a clatter as he unwound his long, thin legs from around the rungs.
Major Cowan, always maddeningly correct in military courtesies, turned upon Hampden with a withering look.
“Lieutenant,” his voice had the edge of a razor but its cut was not so smooth, “do you not know that attention is not called when at mess?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You do, or you do not?”
“Double negatives bother me right much,” Hampden replied, his eyes on the English pilot and caring not a whit for court-martial now that he saw in the flesh the proof of Yancey’s report, “but I do know the rule.”
“Then observe it,” Major Cowan responded, testily. 22“Gentlemen, this is Lieutenant McGee, of the British Royal Flying Corps, who has been assigned to us as flying instructor.”
Lieutenant McGee felt that the room was surcharged with hostility, and he found himself in the position of one who is ashamed of the acts of another. Major Cowan, altogether too brusque, failed utterly to impress McGee, whose service in the Royal Flying Corps had been with a class of men who thought more of deeds than of rank and who could enjoy a care-free camaraderie without becoming careless of discipline. Discipline, after all, is never deeper than love and respect, and McGee felt somehow that Cowan was not a man to command either. McGee felt his face coloring, and tried to dispel it with a smile.
“I am glad to meet you, gentlemen,” he said, “and I want to correct the Major’s statement. I am not here as a flying instructor, in the strict sense of the word, but to give you, first hand, some of our experiences in formation flying, combat, and patrol work. I dare say you are all well trained. In fact, I have heard some rather flattering reports concerning you.”
Yancey cast a sidelong glance at his neighbor; Siddons nudged Hank Porter. Porter pressed his foot against Fouche’s boot. Not a bad fellow, this. Something like, eh?
Major Cowan was not one who could permit others 23to roll the sweets of flattery under their tongues. He must qualify it with a touch of vinegar.
“Lieutenant McGee is modest concerning his duties,” he said. “In fact, you will find all English officers becomingly modest.”
“But I am not English!” McGee corrected. “I am an American–born in America, and that’s why I have been so happy about this assignment.”
Several members of the squadron began edging nearer. Perhaps things were not going to be so dreadful after all.
“Indeed?” Major Cowan lifted his eyebrows in surprise. The points of his nicely trimmed moustache twitched nervously as he began to wonder just how he should treat an American who happened to be wearing the uniform and insignia of a lieutenant in the R.F.C.
“My parents were English,” McGee decided to explain, “but I was born in the States. When the war broke out, my brother, who was older by a few years, came over and joined the balloon corps. I was too young to enlist, but my parents were both dead and I came along with my brother, remaining in London until–” he hesitated and cleared his voice of a sudden huskiness, “until word