by Thomas Burtis
Author of “Groody Among the Gushers,” “The Lone Raider,” etc.
Life on the border had hit a dry spell for some unknown reason. Not a
---- thing had happened, was happening or seemed about to happen. For
approximately four months the border patrolmen, of which, at times, I
had the honor to be one, were slowly dying of dry-rot. We galloped up
and down the frisky Rio Grande from Brownsville to San Diego, including
waystations, with our customary eagerness to spot something of interest
in connection with smuggling, rustling and other diversions of the
Spigs and American renegades, but we were like a bunch of mosquitoes
sucking on a piece of marble.
The McMullen flight, which I decorated with my lanky presence, was
composed of youths like “Sleepy” Spears, “Tex” MacDowell and other
flyers whose ideas of life do not include monotony as an ingredient of
Paradise, and we were beginning to discuss the fact that the border was
becoming really disgustingly effete. As Sleepy Spears put it in his
slow drawl:
“The ---- of it is that there’s getting to be so ---- much law down
here they’ll be sending delegations from Connecticut, Michigan and the
Oneida Community to study Sheriff Bill Trowbridge’s methods, and we
might lose our jobs!”
All of which just goes to show that it is darkest just before you
switch on the electric lights, and that it’s a long worm which has no
turning.
When the big news struck us we needed it, and I needed it most of all.
It was the day after St. Patrick’s day, and when I awakened to greet
the morning after in Laredo I was sleeping in an alley, and alongside
me was Lieutenant George Groody, at that time one of the leading lights
of the American Air Service.
Groody had invited me, two days before, to participate in his annual
celebration of St. Patrick’s birthday.
“As an enemy of snakes,” stated Groody, “Old Pat deserves the
consideration of every true Irishman.”
After the day was done I agreed, because I was on the verge of seeing a
private collection of nice pink and blue ones myself. How was I to know
that Groody invariably started St. Patrick’s day in Mexico by ordering
six gin fizzes set up in a row, and, starting with this little
eye-opener, proceeding on to drinks adjacent? At midnight of the
holiday we were drinking to Clemenceau, Lafayette and Garibaldi, having
long before run out of dead flyers, movie stars and famous Irishmen.
Anyway, as I sent my De Haviland staggering on its way back to McMullen
I was, temporarily, a prohibitionist, with particular reference to
_tequila_ and _mescal_ and _aguadiente_, which are Mexican beverages
guaranteed to grow hair on the top of Mt. Everest. Any one of the three
will make a rabbit spit in a bulldog’s face.
The airdome at McMullen is small, flat and hard to land on without
over-running. I made it by a miracle, and as I stalked into
headquarters I was greeted by a very perspicacious and inquiring look
from the good eye of Cap Kennard, our genial flight commander.
“And did you enjoy yourself, ‘Slim’?” he inquired, while “Pop” Cravath,
our superannuated adjutant, laughed raucously.
“Temporarily,” I admitted.
“Think you’re going to bed now, put icebags on your head and tomatoes
in your stomach, and convalesce?” pursued Kennard, his scarred face
holding a peculiar expression.
He’s been in twenty-three airplane wrecks, and what he did to the ships
was as nothing to what he had done to his face.
Judging from photos of our stocky, chipper little C. O., he had joined
the Air Service as a handsome young man with a face which could pass in
a crowd on a dark night without sending any damsel into hysterics.
After a couple of years in France and more time on the border, however,
he looked as if he were breaking in a new pan for somebody else.
“What’s up, Cap?” I demanded, being able to see through a ladder if
some one lends me his glasses.
“The chief’s got his bill through Congress, the bombing tests on those
German battleships are going to take place this summer, and you, Slim,
are ordered immediately to Langham Field, Virginia. You’re going in
advance of the picked flyers who’ll drop the said bombs upon the bodies
and persons of the Ostfriesland and other boats, and you’ve got to be
out of here on the four o’clock train to San Antonio. Get under a cold
shower, take some salts, drink a lot of icewater, pack the extra sock
of yours, and may ---- have mercy on your soul!”