Luck on the Wing: Thirteen Stories of a Sky Spy. Elmer Haslett
as Chief Observer. “Deac” was a wonder. It was his duty to round up the wild observers and present them to the Commanding Officer, who cross-questioned them as to their experience and the like. So, “Deac” grabbed me eventually during the morning of the second day and took me over to meet His Royal Majesty, the Commanding Officer of an actual American Squadron at the front. He was quartered in a wooden hut commonly known as an “Adrian Barrack.”
Saunders gave a sharp military knock of three raps and I, of course, expected to hear a nice, soft, cultured voice say, “Won’t you come in?” What I heard, however, was considerably different. “Who in the hell’s there?” The voice was sharp and impatient, and it suddenly made me feel “less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheel.”
Captain Saunders spoke up, “Sir, I have a new observer reporting and would like to present him to you.”
“What’s his name?” gruffed the irate voice.
“Lieutenant Haslett, Sir,” replied Captain Saunders.
“Who in the devil asked for him?” came from the inside.
“Sir,” said my godfather, “he was included in the list sent down by Headquarters.”
“Well! Is he there now?” said the power within.
“Yes, sir, right with me now,” was the reply, and I began to pull down my blouse and otherwise mill around in preparation for my entrance, for this last question was encouraging.
“Well,” came the growl, after a discomforting hesitation, “I don’t want to see him. I’m writing a letter to my wife and I can’t be bothered.”
I felt about as welcome as a skunk in a public park. In all my military experience I cannot remember anything that really hurt me so much. I wanted like a starving man wants food, to be a plain buck private in the Infantry, for this was the most inconsiderate sort of a bruise; it hurt me more, of course, because I was an officer and was wearing my pride on my coat sleeve. The only thing that bolstered me up was the fact that I had finally gotten to the American front and I was willing to sacrifice practically anything to stay there, but I certainly realized that the man who put the “boiled” in “hardboiled” was no other than Major Lewis H. Brereton.
At noon I saw Brereton for the first time. Some one was kind enough to point him out to me, and I remember thinking at the time, “How can a pleasant-faced youngster like that be so hardboiled?”
That afternoon, around three o’clock, “Deac” Saunders said we would again attempt to get an audience, and just as he introduced me, for some reason, Saunders was called away, and I had no friend to sponsor my cause before a hard judge. Brereton had just finished his after-dinner nap and was in the act of dressing in flying clothes to take a little flight around the field, so being in a hurry, he began throwing out snappy questions at me, as if trying to establish a record in getting rid of me. He lost no time in continuing his dressing, and did not even ask me to sit down or to allow me to relax from my painfully rigid position of Attention.
“What’s your name?” he commanded.
“Lieutenant Haslett, Sir.”
“I’ve got eyes,” he snapped. “I can see your rank all right. How does it happen you are Infantry?”
“I volunteered, Sir, for Aviation and was detailed.”
“Volunteered or was ordered to volunteer?” he queried. This hurt for it had been strongly rumored that in the selection of aerial observers, many line commanders had gotten rid of their undesirables by sending them to aviation—as observers.
“Volunteered, Sir!” I replied, bluffed and bewildered.
His attitude showed plainly that I did not strike him at all well. I was still standing at attention, when he sharply commanded “Sit down!” Believe me, I did.
“How many hours over the lines?” he fired next.
Hours! That word removed the floodgate and the last ounce of my composure ebbed away. My time over the lines was measured in minutes and here was a man talking in terms of hours, already. This was the one thing I must avoid, so I sought to evade the question.
“I have had eight hours in the air, Sir.” But I did not lay any stress on “in the air.”
“I don’t care how many hours you’ve had in the air. I asked you how many hours you have had over the lines. That’s what counts with me,” he said emphatically.
There was no escape. If I lied he could look up the record, so, I decided to tell the truth from necessity for this was not the place or time for “period of the emergency” statements.
“Fifty-five minutes, Sir,” I confessed.
“I thought so,” and he nodded his head in proud self-approval just as does the cross-examining prosecutor when he finally forces an admission from the man at bay. “How many adjustments over the lines?”
“None, Sir.”
“None!” he said with a noticeable inflection. “How many in the air at school?”
“None, Sir,” I said meekly enough.
“None!” he exclaimed emphatically. “How many on paper?”
“One, Sir,” I said, hesitatingly, for my energy was getting low.
“Well,” he snapped, as if glad to dispose of me on my own lack of merit. “You don’t know a damn thing about observation. How in the hell did you get to the front, anyway? I might use you as a mess officer, but if you ever intend to fly over the front you’ve got to go back and learn something about your job. This is a service squadron, operating over the front. Whoever ordered you to Toul intended to send you to Tours, so I’ll call up and get orders for you to go back to the rear.”
Tours, by the way, was the great aviation primary school of the American Forces—while Toul in those early days signified the front.
My pride fell like a demonstration of Newton’s law of gravity. This hardboiled man could not be approached by man or beast; and it seemed the only thing I could do was to say “Yes, sir” and beat it. I had visions of returning to the rear for further instruction, yet here I was at the front—I had finally realized my ambition and yet was on the verge of having it strangled by this man’s inconsideration. I could not endure the thought—my attitude changed in a moment—I determined to assume hardboiledness, for after I had gotten that close to the front I certainly was not going back without putting up some sort of a fight. Besides, I had a few days before written my folks and my friends that I was actually at the front, and what kind of a legitimate reason could I give in my next letter when I would have to tell them I was no longer at the front. The only legitimate excuse a soldier has for leaving the front after being fortunate enough to get there, is an incapacitating wound, and while Brereton had dealt me several wounds which were sure enough incapacitating, yet they were not the kind that would put pretty little gold wound stripes on my arm. Sure enough—I was down and about to take the count.
There is always a way to get out of the most entangling net. Sometimes it narrows down to only one way and if the captive fails to choose that one particular hazard out of a thousand plausible ones, he is out of luck. So it was, there was only one way to extricate myself from the web that Brereton had spun so quickly around my whole ambition. Very, very fortunately I had picked the winner. It was a long chance, but I was Houdini this time. This hardboiled monster had to be met with his own style. So, with an assumed rôle of the hardboiled, man-eating cannibal, I right away cut out that “sir” stuff, took out my pipe and calmly started to fill it with “Bull Durham” tobacco, which was the only brand our little canteen had in stock, and we were really mighty happy to get even that.
Brereton plainly saw that my temper had gotten out of bounds and that I was preparing to come back at his apparently final decision either with tears or blasphemy or both. But just as the matador seeks to infuriate the bull by waving a red flag before slaughtering him, so Brereton seeing me about to fill my pipe with