Aces Up. Covington Clarke
Top hole, isn’t it?” His smile was so genuine and compelling that none could doubt the sincerity of his pleasure. All barriers of restraint were broken down. This chap actually courted conversation.
“Why don’t you get repatriated, Lieutenant?” Yancey asked.
“The tactless fool!” Hampden thought, but dared not say. Of course the Texas clown would rush in where angels feared to tread. Didn’t the fathead have any conception of pride of uniform and pride in a nation’s accomplishments? Hampden felt that he would like to hit Yancey with one of the water carafes.
“What’s that? Repatriated?” McGee repeated. “How can that be done?”
“Haven’t you seen the General Order providing for it?” Tex continued, despite Major Cowan’s silencing frown.
“I’m afraid not,” McGee replied. “I’ve been pretty busy–and I don’t get a great thrill out of G.O.’s. Tell me about it.”
“Well–” Yancey began slowly, enjoying to the fullest the opportunity to provide information uninterrupted, “as you know, a lot of Americans joined the English and French air forces before we came in. Some of ’em, just like you, maybe, had a sort of 25score to settle. But I reckon most of ’em went in because it offered something unusual and a lot of thrills. Huh! You tell ’em! Then when Uncle Sam got warm under the saddle and came hornin’ in, a lot of the boys who’d come over and joined up began castin’ homesick glances back in a westerly direction. Natural-like, Uncle Samuel is willin’ to welcome home all his prodigal sons, if he can get ’em back, and he’s specially forgivin’ considerin’ that his army at the beginnin’ of hostilities is just about one day’s bait on a real war-like front. As for flyers, he hasn’t got enough of ’em, trained, to do observation work for an energetic battery of heavies. So he makes medicine talk with Johnny Bull and with France, and for once he comes out with all the buttons on his trousers. They agree to release all the Americans servin’ under their colors who express a desire to get into O.D. under the Stars and Stripes. ‘Repatriation’ was the flossy name they gave it, but I call it homesickness. A lot of the wayward sons jumped at it quick, and we’re ’way ahead on the game, any way you look at it. Now take some of those boys in the Lafayette Escadrille. Why, if they–”
Yancey’s voice droned on, but McGee no longer heard what he was saying, though to all appearances he was paying courteous attention. But as a matter of fact his eyes were resting upon Lieutenant Siddons, and he was cudgelling his brain in an effort to 26remember where he had seen him before. The blond, curly hair; the rather square face and brow; the thin lips, the calm, cold grey eyes; and the air of self-satisfied assurance, all were part of a memory which was vivid enough but which refused to come out of the back of the mind and associate itself with identifying surroundings. Where had he seen that face? New York? No, not there. He knew very few people in New York. Well, after all, perhaps it was only a strong resemblance. But resembling whom? Surely no one of his acquaintances looked like Siddons, at least none that he could remember.
McGee’s gaze must have been a little too steady, at least enough to prove discomfiting, for Siddons half turned away and began speaking in whispers to Hampden. He talked out of the corner of his mouth, as one who is ashamed of the words he utters, and McGee felt the stirrings of a faint dislike for him.
Yancey reached the end of his monologue. The moment of silence that followed brought McGee sharply back to the present. He smiled graciously at the Texan.
“That’s quite interesting,” he said. “Strange I missed that order, and stranger still that no one mentioned it to me. But we’ve been pretty busy up in the Ypres salient–too busy to think much about what flag we were fighting under. I’ve enjoyed being with the English, but of course ‘there’s no place like 27home’. I’m very happy to be assigned here, and I am glad Major Cowan gave me this chance to meet you. The Major tells me that you are to get several new Spads in the next two or three days. Until that time, I won’t disturb you. I’m driving back into town. Anyone want a lift?”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Hampden spoke up, “Siddons and I are going in. Have you room?”
“Certainly. Glad to have you along. Major Cowan, how about you?”
“Sorry,” the Major replied, dourly, “but I have to pay the price of command by poring over a lot of detail work which would be spared me if I had a more efficient staff.”
Mullins, the peppery little Operations Officer, felt the full force of the sting but he passed it off by winking wisely at Yancey. Why worry? Cowan was always looking for work and for trouble. He was never so happy as when bawling someone out.
McGee felt sorry for Mullins and sorrier still for Cowan. One with half an eye could see that Cowan was about as popular with his command as would be a case of smallpox. McGee had been trained in an atmosphere where discipline was a matter of example rather than a matter of fear, and as a result had always known a sort of good-fellowship which he felt instinctively would be impossible with such a commander as Cowan.
28“I’m sorry you can’t come with us, Major,” McGee said in a voice that carried no conviction. “However, I must toddle along.” He turned to Siddons and Hampden. “Ready? Right-O!”
During the short motor trip into Is Sur Tille, McGee’s curiosity finally got the better of his natural dislike for admitting that his memory had failed him. “I think I have met you somewhere before, Lieutenant,” he said to Siddons.
“Yes? I do not remember it,” Siddons replied, with the air of one who is making no great draft upon his own memory. He himself evidently sensed the lack of courtesy, for he added, “New York, perhaps. Have you been around New York much?”
“No, I haven’t. Somewhere else–”
Lieutenant Hampden’s mellow laugh interrupted.
“Siddons has the idea that one never meets anyone outside of New York,” he said. “He’s terribly provincial, Lieutenant. He thinks there are only two places in the world–New York and everywhere else.”
Siddons displayed no resentment at the taunt; he seemed quite well satisfied with the opinion expressed. In fact, he appeared quite satisfied with everything–especially with himself.
McGee wondered how a likeable chap, such as Hampden, could choose as companion one so utterly different in manner, in ideas, and in speech. But 29then, war brings together strange bedfellows and establishes new standards. McGee dismissed the matter from his mind as the car swung into the narrow streets of the darkened town.
“Where can I drop you?” he asked.
“Going by the café down on the main drag?” Hampden asked.
“Right.”
“That will be fine. I hope to see you again soon, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks. The Spads are due to arrive on Monday. That’s three days. See you then. Well, here we are,” as the car swung in to the curb in front of the café. The shutters were closed, no light came from any of the stores or houses along the street, but from behind the closed door of the café came the sound of voices and laughter mixed with the metallic banging of a very old piano beating out tuneless accompaniment to a bull-voiced singer roaring through the many verses of “Hinkey Dinkey Parlez Vous”.
“The Yank Marine went over the top,
Parlez Vous, The Yank Marine went over the top, Parlez Vous, The Yank Marine went over the top And gave old Fritz a whale of a pop, Hinkey Dinkey, Parlez Vous.”
McGee smiled as he sat for a moment listening to 30the words. All his service had been with the English, who of course had composed many songs highly complimentary to themselves, and only in the last few days had he come in contact with the forerunners of the mighty American army now pouring into French harbors from every arriving boat.
“Quite a fellow–this Yank Marine,” he said to Siddons.
Siddons