“The big ship squadron will be the 114th to which you’ll be assigned
immediately. Captain Lawton in command. It’s just a skeleton squadron
until the other flyers arrive, of course. Report to him immediately.
Just one thing more, Evans.”
I knew something was coming. Major Lamb was always full of good advice
and uplifting thoughts.
“I have never served in the same outfit with you. However, your
reputation is that of a flyer who gets where he’s going by hook or
crook, but that as an officer you are somewhat lax and careless. We are
face to face with the biggest opportunity the service has ever had.
Every man must put his shoulder to the wheel and live, think and
breathe nothing but these tests, working twenty-four hours a day if
necessary and----”
He went on with his discourse for some five minutes for the good of my
soul and the glory of ----. At the end I expected that he’d lead in
prayer for my unregenerate soul or something. Finally I got out after
agreeing piously with everything he’d said and resolving to lead a
better life.
Then I hied me up to the ten big hangars which were to house the 114th,
and found old Cap Lawton, who’s three inches over six feet and hence
only a couple of inches shorter than I. In lankiness we are about
alike, but whereas his feet are bigger than mine, my nose makes his
seem like merely a microscopic growth in the middle of his thin face.
I knew him well, and he greeted me with a broad smile as he shook
hands. After fanning a while I found out that my teammate in trips from
Cleveland to Langham would be Les Fernald. We’d ferry two ships at a
time.
“You’ll be in command of Flight Three of the squadron, Slim, after the
ships get here and the boys come in. At present that flight’s got one
sergeant first class in charge, and two mechanics. Later it’ll have
four sergeants, meaning one crew chief apiece for the ships, and eight
mechanics. Your flight sergeant is Marston, a good man, although
peculiar. Better stroll down and get acquainted with him, eh? You’ll
probably use him as mechanic on these trips of yours.”
I strolled down to hangar fourteen which, it seemed, was to house the
ships of Flight Three for the summer, and heard voices from the little
tool room partitioned off in one corner of said iron structure. There
wasn’t a ship in the flight, of course, so the mechanics were about as
busy as so many Congressmen.
As I approached the door there cut through the murmur of talk a loud,
vulgar voice, heavy as lead, deep as the guile of the heathen Chinee
and rough as a Texas boulevard. Unless I was badly mistaken, those
vocal cords belonged to nobody but Major George William Marston, and
Georgy stood about as high in my estimation as a rattlesnake, and
that’s right on the ground.
I wondered what in ---- he was doing at Langham Field. I hadn’t heard
his name mentioned. It made the summer prospect look very dark, not to
say drear. Add George William to a field which Lamb Johnson was already
cluttering up with his presence, and you’ve got a madhouse made to
order for any godly young flyer.
George William had been only a first lieutenant when I was one of the
scared, diffident young cadets whose lives were made miserable because
they stood in constant threat of discharge, and discharge meant that
the dream of a lifetime, to fly, was shattered as completely as a glass
dropped off the top floor of the Woolworth building.
George William had been in charge of the cross-country stage, and he
did his ---- to get me kicked out because I was an hour late on making
Seguin, the town I was bound for on my first cross-country trip. I got
lost--sure. But I found my course again and I got there.
He disliked me primarily because I am physically, mentally and
spiritually unable to feel as if any man who ranks me is automatically
first assistant to ----, and one day when he called me a fighting name
I took the opportunity to interview him alone and notify him sincerely
that the next time he got personal with me I’d endeavor earnestly to
hang his nose approximately under his left ear and do a quick job of
rough and ready plastic surgery on his entire face.
He had been an old army sergeant, and he was a twenty-minute egg with a
yolk made of gall and wormwood and an idea that saluting and saying
“sir” were the ends and objects of a cadet’s existence.
In a group of kiwis--the kiwi is a mythical Australian bird which has
wings but can’t fly--who were jealous of flyers and made their lives
miserable, he was the _non plus ultra_, the _sine qua non_ and likewise
anything else which you can think of abutting closely on a total loss.
Well, I had become a full-fledged officer since then, so I ambled in
that little tool room. There were two privates sitting there, and a
sergeant. And the sarge was none other than my old friend, George
William Marston!
I shouldn’t be surprized if I swayed lightly on my feet--a mere
suggestion of being knocked slightly off my pins. There he was, same as
before--fleshy, dark face, pop eyes of light blue, three creases
between his brows and deep-cut lines through the fat around his mouth.
He looked more sullen than ever, and his black hair was much thinner.
If I was knocked for a row of Abyssinian applejack barrels, he was at
least three laps ahead of me. Just as an ungodly feeling of joy and
well-being went frolicking through my hardening arteries, his mouth was
working spasmodically in an endeavor to say something. He had leaped to
his feet like a shot, the other two being a split-second behind him,
and he stood there as stiff as I was at my first Fireman’s Grand Supper
Entertainment and Ball back in Utah, where I originated.
“Rest!” I grinned, as the two soldiers relaxed.
But not Marston. He was unable to do anything momentarily.
In a flash I grasped the explanation. Marston had been made an officer
from a sergeant during the war, and undoubtedly, when the regular army
was formed from the temporary troops, he had been unable to pass the
exams on such military matters as Latin, English literature and the
biennial theorem. Consequently he, like many others, went back to his
former grade.
“So you’re a sergeant now, and you’re to be my flight sergeant all
summer!” I observed pleasantly.
* * * * *
How I was going to pay him back for days of mental agony was making a
new man of me as I stood and looked at him. You may, brethren, give
vent to several loud, uncultivated snorts at the idea of me being in
mental agony about anything. To tell the truth, I figured when I was a
cadet that the country might struggle along without me in the flying
corps, and I didn’t give three whoops in hallelujah whether or not I
was an officer.
But I did want to fly, and I wanted to get to France, and I didn’t care
whether or not I was carrying gold bars on my shoulders or a corporal’s
stripes on my sleeve. Any man who wanted to be an officer could go to a
training camp and get the commission in three months. It took a lucky
flyer six months and a few broken bones to get his.
Any man who became a flying cadet had his mind set on flying, and
George William Marston was the nastiest, meanest obstacle in the way I
had ever come across. He gave an order in a way that made it sound like
an insult. And he seemed to take delight in rubbing our noses,
particularly mine, in the dirt and then trying to discharge us if we
objected to the smell. Of course, my nose was unduly prominent. Gents,
he sure rode me into the ground.
“I’ll be your flight commander all summer,” I told the congregation.
“You can go now--you two. I want to converse in private with Sergeant
Marston.”
The two privates filed out silently. Marston was still standing as if
concrete had set in his backbone.
“Sit down, Major,” I told him, and I’ll swear the “Major” just slipped
out naturally.
He relaxed, but did not subside on the tool chest next to him. His
eyes, which popped out so far they could have been knocked off with a
stick, met mine steadily. We had instinctively hated each other, I
think, from the first time we met.
“Well, this is a rather peculiar situation, Marston,” I told him as I
ignited a cheroot. “The man that tried to break me is now under me.”
“And about to be broken himself,” Marston interrupted me.
His face seemed to me to have changed since the time I had seen him
before. He looked as if he’d gone through ---- and had become a sullen
enemy of life in general. His light blue eyes, staring into mine, were
glowing dully. He seemed to be daring me to do my worst as he looked at
me.
And all of a sudden I hated myself because I had even considered using
my strategic position to get back at him for what he had done to me.
“No, you’re not going to be broken, Marston,” I told him as he stood
there like a lion at bay.
He simply looked at me, without saying a word. My particular and
peculiar type of beauty did not appeal to him at all, and as for him, I
didn’t like anything about him and never had. In a personal sense, I
mean.
“You can make my life a ---- on earth, of course,” he said after a
lengthy silence. His voice had a deep husk in it.
“Sure,” I agreed. “Listen, Marston. You always were a good soldier, as
far as I know; leaned over backward to live up to regulations, and a
hound on discipline. But you were without exception the rottenest
officer I ever saw, and the nastiest and most unfair man a poor cadet
ever had over him. You were enough all by yourself to ruin the morale
of every cadet at Donovan Field. You’ll make a ---- sight better
sergeant than you did an officer.”
“And you were about the funniest sample of a soldier that any army,
including the Mexican, ever had,” he told me doggedly, and in his
brooding light eyes that glow burned brighter. “You came lounging in as
though you didn’t give a ---- for any orders or discipline whatever,
and tried to do just what you ---- pleased. And you’re no more an army
man right now than you were before.
“Oh, I’ve heard plenty about you. You’ve pulled off a few good flying
stunts, but you’re not a soldier and never will be. And by ---- if you
think I’m going to lick your boots because you, a young squirt who
never had any responsibility about him, is an officer and I’m only a
sergeant----”
“Pull in your neck, Marston; you’re stretching it,” I advised him.
“You’d better thank your lucky stars that I’m not going to try to get
even with you for what you put me through. I’m a flyer now, but I can
still look back at the months when I was bound up in the effort to get
to be a flyer, and the stuff you put me through.
“But Marston, I’m going to relieve the spleen that’s gathered in my
system. As long as you’re under me you soldier as you never did before.
I’ll show you no favors, but I’ll not pick on you until you slip. Then
you’re going to get it right in the neck. Meanwhile, Marston, do you
remember the day just before inspection when you dressed me down in
front of the troops, and called me a nice, pretty name which cast
certain aspersions on my ancestry?”
He stood there and said nothing, but the ferocious gleam in his eyes
said plenty. No doubt he had brooded for years after slipping back from
the grade of major to that of sergeant. Some drop, I’ll say.
“We’re quiet and alone, Marston. Temporarily I’m taking off these
pretty little collar ornaments, and forgetting that I’m a looey in this
man’s army. And I’m going to beat you half to death, ---- willing, as
between man and man. And whoever wins, we’ll walk out of here and the
past’ll be forgotten as long as you’re a soldier.”
He hesitated briefly.
“If I beat you up, Evans, I’ll pay through the nose for it. You’ve got
all summer to pay me up for a fight, and you’ll do it. I can’t win.”
“You button up your mouth, Marston,” I told him grimly. “Don’t judge me
or any other man by your own standards. I don’t even want to kid myself
by pretending that I could ride you all summer for personal reasons and
then excuse myself by saying that you need discipline. I wouldn’t be
that low, but that’s what you did. Get that shirt off, if you want to,
and put up your hands. The personal representative of several thousand
cadets whose lives you made miserable, including several dozen that you
got kicked out entirely, is standing right in front of you.”
“And is going to get the beating of his life!” bellowed Marston
suddenly.
* * * * *
He tore off his O. D. shirt as if possessed. All the accumulated
bitterness of the last couple of years, I imagine, added to the natural
meanness in him, broke through the dam and turned him into a fighting
fool.
He weighed as much as I did, but I was a foot taller and my reach was
many inches greater than his. As he came toward me joyfully he sent his
powerful, stocky body at me like a cannon ball. I sidestepped, and got
in a peach right to the button.
It is not my intention to give a round-by-round story of the battle. I
couldn’t. It was too fast and much too furious. We were fighting,
remember, in a little tool-room, impeded by toolchests, and with rows
of shelves around the walls filled with wrenches, cotter pins and all
sorts of spare parts. I didn’t have room enough to dance around and
keep him out of reach, and he took blow after blow in order to get into
very close quarters.
I floored him in the first ten seconds, but he was back on his feet as
if he’d bounced off the floor. Once again he came hurtling in, and
again I dropped him. His nose was bleeding profusely, not to say
fluently by that time, but he was strong as a bull. The next time in he
ducked a hurried right swing which I started from the floor, and the
next instant we went crashing against the shelves. With a powerful
heave he threw me to the floor, and for about a half minute we fought
like wildcats all over the place. He used his feet, too, but luckily I
got out of his gorilla-like grip in time and up to my feet.
The next minute or so is just a crimson-tinted haze as far as I’m
concerned. We stood toe to toe and swapped blows. Twice he got me to
the floor again, and in a brief interval when I kept him away from me,
I floored him once more.
He came up more slowly, and I leaped in with a one-two punch that I
traded for a trip-hammer swing that caught me just under the ear. I
went spinning against a tool chest, and fell over it with a crash just
as he dropped himself. I was dazed, dizzy, and somewhat, if not
entirely, _non compos mentis_ for a moment.
As I tried to clear my head and get to my feet I saw him getting up
groggily. Before I could get further than my knees he hurled himself
across that tool chest and on top of me, his huge fingers clutching
blindly for my throat.
I felt as if I were fighting in a dream, and for my life or something.
What brought me to, paradoxically enough, was a glancing blow from a
light wrench. In a second my mind snapped to attention, and for a
moment I was a strong man as I saw myself knocked out with a piece of
iron. He had evidently grabbed the wrench from one of the shelves as I
fell over the chest.
With feet and fists flying so fast they must have looked like a
spinning pinwheel, I threw him off, and staggered to my feet. I gave
him no quarter. He had trouble getting up for a minute. I had one of
his eyes closed and his head was none too clear. He hadn’t got across
the tool chest before I socked him a beauty, and he went crashing
against the shelves.
Staggering and dizzy as I was, I had enough left. His hands dropped
helplessly, and I lifted him about two inches off the floor and
deposited him four feet away and flat on his back with a roundhouse
swing. Between measuring, getting my arm back and smacking him he had
time enough to light a cigaret and smoke it, but he was too weak and
blind and dazed and whatever else a man is when he’s out on his feet,
even to block it. Maybe he didn’t see it. Anyway, he saw stars a minute
later.
He lay on the floor, unable to move but not mentally out. I parked
myself on a tool chest, and devoted my exclusive attention to inhaling
large gobs of air into my laboring lungs. No use of talking, I was
getting soft at that period. A little scrap got me gasping like Paul
Revere’s horse.
Finally I was able to light a cigaret, and as its soothing flavor was
beginning to permeate the stuffy air of the tool room my dear friend
Marston rose on his hind legs and peered at me through one good eye
which, it appeared to me, needed the ministrations of some good raw
steak to save him from becoming temporarily blind.
“Now that I’ve relieved myself, I feel better,” I informed him.
“Didn’t think you had it in you,” he barked, his ordinarily husky voice
deeper than usual. “I thought you lacked a punch--in anything.”
“Your opinion of me was low in all particulars,” I grinned. “As for me,
I thought that when your bars were gone you had nothing left.”
“Well, you licked me,” he stated, hate peering forth from the one slit
in his face which remained of two eyes. “And I s’pose this is just the
start of what I’ll go through. You----”
“Shut up,----you!” I snapped. “That’s about the last time you’ll
insinuate that I’m as low as you were when you had a commission, or
I’ll put you out of your misery _pronto_ and all you’ll have to worry
about is whether you fry in ---- or merely stew.”
He said nothing, but applied a dirty handkerchief tenderly to his nose.
The wrinkles between his black, bushy brows were deeper than ever, and
his face was so sullen it was black.
“One thing more I desire to converse with you about, Marston,” I went
on after my temper was in control. “Captain Lawton implied to me that
you were a good mechanic.”
“You’re ---- right, I’m a good mechanic.”
“My job is to ferry Martin Bombers from Cleveland to Langham for the
next month. Want to be my mechanic? I’m not asking you for the pleasure
of your company, you may be sure, but you’re supposed to be the best
motor man in the squadron.”
“And being under you or with you isn’t no pleasant prospect for me,” he
told me, stubborn and unafraid. “But I go where I’m ordered.”
“You’ll make some extra dough out of your travel allowance, you may
enjoy the trip, and there are about two hundred mechanics on the field
would give their shirts to go,” I told him. “Likewise, I hate to take
you worse than poison. But you’re the best man, and you can just paste
it in your hat that you’re having the first illustration of the fact
that you’ll get a square deal around here when I say that you’ll be
ordered to go along.”
He grunted, squinting up at me balefully.
“Another thing, Marston,” I told him as I got up to go. “We’ve laid
aside rank and that stuff for a while. But remember, now that our
personal affairs are adjusted, that I’m wearing a commission and you’re
a sergeant. Say ‘sir’ to me, Marston, and don’t ever presume to forget
that you’re a soldier and I’m an officer.”
He laughed--a raucous series of cachinnations which had often impinged
against my eardrums unpleasantly.
“You talkin’ to me about bein’ a soldier. Very well, sir!”
“Our travel orders should be out in a day or two. Be ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go over to the hospital, get those shiners fixed up, report back and
we’ll go over the tools and other junk of the flight.”
“Yes, sir.”
And that was that. I told Lawton I’d take Marston for mechanic, and
next day travel orders for Lieutenants Evans and Fernald, and Sergeants
Marston and Bailey arrived in our respective boxes. The evening of the
second day following Fernald and I met our non-coms at the Martin
factory in Cleveland for a look-see at the ships.