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TOM SLADE WITH THE FLYING CORPS
[Illustration: TOM DOWNED THE ENEMY FLYER.]
TOM SLADE WITH THE FLYING CORPS
A Campfire Tale
by
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT, TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE
CAMP, TOM SLADE ON THE RIVER, TOM
SLADE WITH THE COLORS, ETC.
Illustrated by R. Emmett Owen
Published with the approval of
The Boy Scouts of America
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers : : New York
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1919, by
Grosset & Dunlap
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO THE
T.S.O.T.Z.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART ONE—THE SECRET OF THE SCUPPERS
CHAPTER I
Tells briefly of the extraordinary episode which ended
his service in the Flying Corps, and gives also a
glimpse of his adventurous career.
The reports in the American newspapers of the loss of Tom Slade,
aviator, were read by his many admirers and friends with a sense of
shock and with feelings of personal bereavement.
Notwithstanding that his former comrades on this side of the water had
not seen him for more than two years and knew that the character of his
service, as well as his temperament, would be sure to take him where
danger was greatest, the accounts of his dramatic end, set forth in cold
type, seemed hardly believable.
It is the one familiar name in the casualty lists which brings the war
home to one more forcibly than does the loss of a whole division.
But for all that, we received the news pretty calmly and made little
fuss until after the great metropolitan dailies had mentioned poor Tom
as a national hero. Then we sat up and took notice. When the _Tribune_
phoned to our local Scout Council for a photograph of Tom (“any photo
would do,” they said) our own _Bulletin_ published an editorial which
would have made poor Tom ashamed to walk down Main Street. And when the
_Times_ blazoned forth the heading,
JERSEY FLIER DIES A HERO
our _Bulletin_ got another photo from Tom’s scout patrol and printed it
on the front page. Then the Girls’ Patriotic League got hold of this
picture and had it enlarged, and it was displayed for a week or more in
the window of Blanchard’s Drug Store.
All we needed was a little nudge from New York and then we paid our
tribute proudly and handsomely.
But there was one quarter where pride was lost in a sense of personal
sorrow and bereavement, and that was in the local scout troop, of which
Tom had been a member and a moving spirit.
I remember very well meeting Roy Blakeley as I stepped off the train
that afternoon and, knowing him for the light-hearted youngster that he
was, his condition seemed pitiable.
“Have you got a New York paper?” he asked me. “Is it true?”
He had evidently been waiting for the evening papers which came down on
the train that I usually take, and as he stood there, trim and spruce in
his scout regalia, his hat on the back of his head as usual, and craning
his neck for a glimpse of the paper even before I unfolded it, his
evident grief went to my heart.
“Yes, it’s true, I’m afraid,” I said.
“You remember about Quentin Roosevelt,” he almost pleaded. “They thought
for a while _he_ was saved—taken prisoner——”
“Yes, that hope was justified, Roy,” I told him, “because all that was
known for a few days was that he had been in combat with a Hun plane and
had not returned. This is different. You’ve got to face the fact and not
flinch, just the same as Tom faced the enemy—without flinching.”
I opened the paper and we stood there together in a little recess of the
Bridgeboro Station, and while I read the article aloud Roy’s eyes were
riveted upon it, as if he almost doubted the truth of my words. In the
Temple Camp office in the big bank building across the street hung a
service flag with a single star upon it. It was there that Tom Slade had
been employed. I noticed how Roy’s eyes wandered over to it every few
seconds as if that, since it still hung there, somehow proved the
falsity of the published reports.
JERSEY BOY’S DRAMATIC END
THOMAS SLADE OF THE FLYING CORPS
PLUNGED THREE THOUSAND FEET TO DEATH
WHILE PURSUING BOCHE PLANE
HEROIC TRIUMPH PRECEDES HIS TRAGIC END
Wreaks Vengeance in the Clouds Before He Falls.
Vow to Kill Hun Who Bombed American Hospital
Kept in Thrilling Victory in the Skies
The War Department confirmed today the Associated Press
report of the loss of Thomas Slade, aviator, in the fighting
west of Rheims, while in pursuit of an enemy plane.
Slade, who was known among his comrades as “Thatchy,” was
exceptionally popular and his tragic fate has cast a feeling
of gloom throughout the section where he had been lately
stationed. His superiors in the Rheims section had no
hesitancy in describing his last exploit as unquestionably
showing skill and daring of the first order, and his loss
will be keenly felt in the service.
Further details of Slade’s end are awaited, but it is feared
that little more than the bare facts of this sensational
climax of his career will be forthcoming. A strong touch of
human interest characterizes his final part in the war by
reason of an announcement the youthful flier is said to have
made to some of his comrades. When the Germans crossed the
Marne in their recent advance a Boche machine dropped bombs
upon a Red Cross hospital near Epernay, killing two women
nurses. Slade himself was a patient in the hospital at the
time, recovering from a slight wound he had received near La
Chapelle. He was on the veranda of the little hospital at
about dawn, following his restless habit of wandering
about within the prescribed limits, and chafing under a
convalescence which he believed was needlessly keeping him
from service. He saw the Boche plane drop the bombs in the
first light of dawn and watched it escape while two French
fliers pursued it. One of the nurses, a French girl, had
cared for the young American, and his comrades in the
hospital are said to have recalled that his sorrow and anger
were so great that he expressed the resolve to find and kill
this Hun messenger of frightfulness if he lost his own life
in doing so.
This resolve was kept in the dramatic combat which ended
Slade’s career.
By what means he identified the enemy machine is not known,
but he is known to have pursued it till both machines
disappeared in the clouds over the enemy lines. The
character of the tragic conflict which took place in the
concealment of that dizzy height can only be conjectured,
but the enemy plane was seen to fall, and the strong wind
which had blown up in the west brought it into the little
village of La Toi, just within the Allied lines. The machine
was a total wreck and though its pilot was quite dead and
frightfully mangled from his tremendous fall, it was evident
from a wound on his forehead that he had paid the penalty of
his cowardly and despicable act before he fell less than
five minutes after his fall Slade’s machine was seen to
descend, first coasting, then fluttering as if without
control, and when still more than a thousand feet in the air
it plunged headlong to the ground. Its occupant was seen
falling separately and both are known to have struck upon
the rocky hillside where the Germans made such stubborn
resistance in the fighting of last Tuesday. It is a matter
of deep regret that the body of the gallant young American,
crushed and mangled as it must have been, did not fall
within the American lines.
“He might have——” Roy began in a kind of daze.
“No, my boy,” I told him, “we may as well face the fact. No man in the
history of this world ever fell a thousand feet without having his life
crushed out. Even if he landed on a haystack instead of a jumble of
rocks, it would have killed him. Look here——”
I felt as if I were myself guilty of some form of brutal frightfulness
as I pointed to the little supplementary notice upon the substance of
which I supposed that the government had based its official confirmation
of Tom’s death.
An official report to Washington states that a German
aviator, flying over the American lines, dropped the cap
which Slade had worn into an American camp. It contained the
metal identification disk which the young flier had worn on
a cord around his neck, and a small badge linked with it
which is thought to signify some honor greatly prized in the
ranks of the Boy Scouts of America. With these trinkets was
a note in German saying that young Slade had been buried in
the village of Pevy and that a cross with his name upon it
had been placed over his grave.
I think neither of us spoke for fully a minute. I am sure that Roy could
not have trusted himself to speak.
“So you see,” I finally said, “that even the Huns recognized his
gallantry and his heroism.”
“They _had_ to,” said Roy with a kind of pitiful defiance.
We strolled up the hill, neither of us speaking.
“You know what badge it was, don’t you?” he asked.
His earnest question and the evident struggle he was having with himself
gave me a momentary pang of regret, almost of shame, that I had never
taken a very lively interest in the Scouts and especially in this one
who had died a hero.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t, Roy,” I confessed.
“It was the Scouts’ Gold Cross,” he said. “It means he risked his life
to save a fellow when he was a scout. . . It was a little sick fellow
that he saved.”
“His wearing it shows how he always remembered the Scouts, doesn’t it?”
I observed weakly, for I hardly knew what to say.
“None of the people here really knew him,” he said, ignoring this
remark.
“He was probably of a more retiring nature than you, Roy,” I said. But
the pleasantry was lost upon him.
We strolled on up the hill in silence and stood for a moment chatting in
front of his home, which is one of our show places here in Bridgeboro.
“Mr. Ellsworth found him down in Barrel Alley,” Roy said; “he was a
hoodlum. After he got to be a scout he went ahead of us all. Even Mr.
Temple had to admit it—and you know how kind of grouchy—as you might
say—Mr. Temple is sometimes.”
I nodded, smiling.
In a general way, I did know the story of how John Temple had become
interested in the Scouts through the reclamation by them of this hapless
orphan, and before I left for France myself (which was on the following
Friday), I learned more of the young hero’s history. I have since had
reason to regret that I did not look more carefully at the several
pictures of the boy which were displayed in Bridgeboro after the news of
his death reached us. They were pictures of a Boy Scout, to be sure, and
two years makes such a difference in a boy’s appearance that I dare say
I would not have recognized the aviator from the stolid-faced,
khaki-clad youngster whose photo our local paper reproduced with such
vaunting pride.
It was Mr. Ellsworth, that untiring scoutmaster, who told me the story
of Tom as far as he knew it. He said that as Tom had been the best
all-around hoodlum in town, so he had become the best all-around scout;
that it was attributable directly to Tom’s wonderful reformation that
Mr. Temple had been drawn, neck and shoulders, as he said, into the
scouting movement and had founded and endowed Temple Camp in the
Catskills, which I believe has come to be regarded as one of the finest
scout camps in the country.
He told me how Tom had left the Scouts to work on a transport; how his
ship had been torpedoed and he had been taken aboard a German submarine
and incarcerated in a German prison camp. From that point information
about him was scanty and contradictory. He had escaped (so Mr. Ellsworth
had heard) from the prison camp and somehow had made his way to France
where he was next heard from as a motorcycle dispatch rider.
How and when he had got into the Flying Corps Mr. Ellsworth did not
know, for he had been heard of as an aviator only a month or two prior
to the shocking news of his heroic end.
For a week or two after the news came, the name of this heroic young
scout was on every lip, but I must confess that when I went away the
thought which lingered with me most persistently was not so much that of
the young fellow whose career had been so varied and remarkable but of
that comrade of his scouting days who took the young aviator’s loss home
to himself with such a sense of personal bereavement. Stouthearted
champion as he was of his friend’s prowess, I verily believe that the
heart which beat under that trim scout regalia was still buoyed up with
a forlorn hope that some belated report might yet prove the government’s
authenticated announcement to be false. There was a kind of heroism in
this challenge to careful and methodical old Uncle Sam which I am afraid
appealed to me more even than did Tom’s exploits and noble sacrifice,
and I felt that if I could only do the impossible and assure Roy that
his friend still lived and would come home, it would afford me a keener
joy than I had ever known.
I cannot for the life of me say what the reason was for Roy’s making a
particular confidante and companion of me during the few days that I
remained in Bridgeboro. Perhaps his memory of our stroll up the hill
together the day the sad news reached town, and the fellowship of
sympathy which then sprang up between us, made him regard me as in some
special way his friend.
However it was, on the morning that I left home for the long journey
which was to mean so much to us both, I found Roy swinging his legs from
the railing of my porch waiting, so he explained, to help carry my
luggage down to the station. In the stressful days to follow I always
remembered him as he looked then—a roguish smile upon his face which had
been so clouded with his brave grief, his scout hat on the back of his
curly head and the scarf he always wore hanging loosely around his neck.
I was quite taken aback by this undeserved attention.
“You said you didn’t know much about the Scouts,” he reminded me. “One
thing about them is that a scout has to do a good turn every day, and I
just happened to think this would be a good one.
“I hope I may be able to return it some day,” I said, quite overwhelmed.
“Then I’d only have to do another one,” he answered briskly. “You’d only
make matters worse.”
“I see,” I laughed, letting him take one of my grips.
So we went down the hill together and I was glad to see that his
accustomed buoyancy was gaining the upper hand at last. We did not speak
of Tom until the train had actually come to a stop and he handed me my
grip.
“As long as you’re going over there,” he said, rather hesitatingly,
“maybe you’ll hear more about Tom—how he died, I mean.”
“France is a big place, Roy,” I warned him, “but if I can get any
details be sure I’ll remember them to tell you; I’ll remember that I owe
you a good turn,” I added.
Thus we parted. And I am afraid, as I said before, that I thought more
about Roy on the way over than I did about his dead hero pal. As the
great ship made her perilous way in silence and darkness through the
danger zone, I thought of the trim figure which had waited for the
evening papers at the station on that sorrowful day, of the service flag
with its single star hanging in the window across the street, and of
this same trim figure, with its brown face and clear eyes and curly
hair, swinging its legs from the railing of my porch, waiting to do me a
good turn.
I am afraid that I did not think so much about that lonely, rough-made
grave in the little village of Pevy in devastated, bleeding France.
CHAPTER II
Tells how I chanced to learn something of Slade’s
career and of the circumstance which was destined to
send me out of France.
My own adventures as a correspondent on the west front would seem tame
enough in comparison with the exploits which I purpose to relate, and I
will not weary you with a rehearsal of my experiences and observations,
especially since the account of these has appeared from day to day in
two of our American newspapers.
I am afraid that amid the roar of battle and with the continual sight of
death and bloodshed all about me I gave little thought to the young
fellow from my home town in far-off America who had given his life for
the great cause. What had seemed glorious and heroic in Bridgeboro was
divested of much of its dramatic and noble quality by the sights which I
beheld each day. I was present when Arliss, that daring young ace, fell
to his death, and I knew, or at least I thought at the time, that no
career could have been more adventurous than his and no death so
splendid.
I did not, however, forget to make inquiries in responsible quarters
about the death of Tom Slade and being for a time in the neighborhood of
his final exploit, I was able to gather a few details which amplified
and unquestionably confirmed the accounts of his career and death as
published in America.
It was not until long afterward that I learned from a very responsible
source how Slade had got into the Flying Corps, a matter which
interested me greatly, since the last his friends in America had heard
of him before the news of his death came, he had been in the Motorcycle
Service. This and much other astonishing information I received during
my journey in the Alps of which you shall hear the true account. I say
_true account_ because it has been published in connection with that
frightful journey that I assisted a deserter, a report which has not one
word of truth in it.
I purpose, as well as I may, to recount this whole extraordinary
business exactly as it unfolded itself to me, rather than to attempt a
consecutively ordered narrative; and whatever it may lose in the way of
skilfull story-writing, it will at least have the solid advantage of
being the plain truth, plainly told. I am quite certain that no one
except myself is in a position to tell of this journey and I am equally
certain that I would rather die tomorrow than go through again the
unspeakable horrors which I experienced.
So much for myself, and I will pick out of all this jumble of amazing
happenings with their tragic climax, the episode of my stay in the
hospital near Epernay as being a convenient and appropriate
starting-point for my tale.
This hospital, as it turned out, was the one where Tom had spent upwards
of a month recovering (according to the American newspapers) from a
“slight wound.” The “slight wound,” as I learned, had all but killed
him. A cruel wound in the head it was, received in an exploit which was
only less extraordinary than the one which shortly afterward put an end
to his career.
I mean to tell you of this incident as I learned it from the surgeons
and nurses, and also of one or two still earlier adventures of the young
flyer which I heard of while I was under treatment.
But first I must tell you of an experience of my own which put me in the
way of learning these things and laid the foundation, as I might say,
for my learning other things.
I was gassed. I have read various accounts of how people act and feel
when they are gassed and I have seen an actor in the movies demonstrate
these agonies by many graceful contortions, but the only thing that I
can remember about the actual occurrence was that my head felt just as
one’s foot feels when it is “asleep.” I remember trying to shake my
head, just as one shakes his foot.
I suppose I was not gassed very badly or I would not be here now. In the
days of my suffering I was told that I had only myself to blame which,
of course, was a great consolation to me. I do not know what became of
my mask, but I still have my fountain pen and I should like to show it
to you. The silver filigree work which covers it is changed to a rich
green color, making the whole thing very beautiful and altogether
unique. Fritzie did this with his abominable gas. I do not know what
kind of gas it was, but I treasure my pen as being a sample of clever
artcraft work, made by the Germans—though not made in Germany.
CHAPTER III
Tells how I looked at the Scuppers through a field
glass, and of how I resolved on a very hazardous
enterprise.
I must tell you in some detail of this experience of my own since, as I
said, the whole story hangs upon it.
You will understand that at the time of Tom’s tragic exploit the big
bulge in the straining line which the Germans had made in their drive
toward the Marne, and which was known as the Marne salient, had been
entirely wiped out by the allied forces. The line ran almost straight
between Soissons and Rheims with the little village of Pevy, where the
Germans had erected the cross, lying a short distance within the enemy
lines. So the line remained for some time while Marshal Foch was
pressing forward elsewhere.
My first experience of actual warfare was when I joined the boys near
Jonchery, prepared to accompany them northward toward the Aisne River.
There was not much fighting in that advance. The Germans picked up like
a lot of squatters and retreated so fast that twice we lost touch with
them altogether, but we had the heroic satisfaction of capturing no end
of deserted baggage. I think I never saw so many musical instruments and
parrots as they left behind, and, indeed, the love of pets and music
which those wretches showed has always been a matter of marvel to me.
One of these squawking birds, I remember, was flapping its wings, all
bewildered, upon the top of a post, to which (I was told) several
British Tommies had been tied and tortured, and shrieking, “Cut their
throats, cut their throats!” at the top of its expressionless voice.
They are strange people who are so gentle and patient that they can
teach these birds as no others can and then can play a tune on the
mandolin and then torture a man to death.
After several days of this inglorious marathon race, the Germans made a
stand upon the summit of a hill. I understood that our immediate
objective was Pevy, which I remembered as the village where Tom’s grave
was, and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction to know that this place
must presently fall to our troops and that the grave would be at least
on friendly soil.
But Pevy was not to be so easily taken. The hill which confronted us
descended in an almost sheer precipice upon the near side and I think I
never saw such a rocky chaos as it presented.
My friend, Lieutenant Wells, let me view it through his field glass, and
a more depressing, bleak and desolate place I never beheld—a jungle of
gray boulders it was, and naked earth, as if the hill had been split
open like an apple and one-half taken away.
“That’s where Fritzie mowed us down a while ago, when he was headed for
the Marne,” said the lieutenant.
“You mean from the summit?” I asked.
“Yes, our boys tried to scale that stone-yard and stop the advance. We
outnumbered them three to one just there, but they held out. Some of us
got on top, but it was no use.”
I don’t know what put it into my head unless it was the knowledge that
this place was near upon Pevy and west of Rheims, but it occurred to me
that perhaps this was the very “rocky hillside” which the American
newspaper had mentioned as the place where Tom fell. I remembered the
phrase “in the fighting west of Rheims,” and also “the rocky hillside
where the Germans put up such a stubborn resistance.”
“Do you suppose that is where Slade, the aviator, fell?” I asked.
“Thatchy?” he queried. “Yes, it is. Just a little to the left,” he
added, moving the glass for me. “Do you see two big rocks with points?
One a little higher than the others?”
Our detachment had gone on along the road which flanked the hill, for,
of course, there was no intention of surmounting the forbidding place,
and it was important that we pass out of range of it before the enemy
gain the vantage point of the summit.
For half a minute I looked upon the very spot where Slade had fallen—two
big, gray rocks somewhat more than midway up that cheerless cliff and I
thought of that traveller described in a poem of Scott’s, who died in
some remote, forlorn spot—unfriended and alone. The two rocks formed a
sort of gutter on the precipitous hill, and a quantity of descending
debris had fallen against them, forming a chaotic mass there.
“I suppose he rolled down against those and caught there,” I said, still
looking at the place through the glass.
“Guess so,” said the lieutenant, half interested. “They call them the
Scuppers. I heard a couple of Signal Corps men saying that the Huns must
have found Slade in the Scuppers—God-forsaken looking place, huh?”
I could not speak just then. Of all the lonesome places to die, that
gray, cold, forsaken waste seemed the most terrible—a spot more barren
and heartless than the sea, and ugly with a kind of brutal ugliness. And
that, I reflected, was where Tom Slade of my own home town in far-off
America fell to his heroic death. I wondered how long he had lain there
and suffered beyond the help of surgeons and nurses.
“He’s buried in Pevy,” I said; “they had the decency to take him there
and give him a Christian grave.”
The lieutenant had already taken his glass from me and was moving away.
He was not greatly interested in Tom Slade.
“Do you think,” I said, “that if I climbed up there and looked at the
place, I could manage to get the rest of the way to the summit and join
the detachment before they reach Pevy? I want to be in at the finish.”
“You might do it in a newspaper or in the movies,” he said, for he would
never let me forget that I was a fountain-pen warrior.
“Please remember,” said I (for I was getting a little weary of such
talk), “that the correspondents have done great work in this war. As for
the movies, I’ll show you that I am as good as Douglas Fairbanks
himself, for I am going to climb——”
“Scale that dizzy height, you mean,” he taunted; “that’ll sound good in
a special article.”
“Indeed!” said I. “Well, then, I am going to ‘scale that dizzy height’
and see where Tom Slade fell, for he came from the little town in Jersey
where I belong.”
“You’ll be killed by the Germans,” said he.
“You forget I have my trusty fountain pen with me,” I replied,
scathingly.
He tried to dissuade me, saying that when I reached the summit I was
just as likely to fall in with the enemy as with our own men and that
unless I expected to defeat them single-handed I had better follow the
route prescribed by the officers. But I was a free agent in such
matters; no charge of desertion or disobedience could be laid against
me, and I was resolved that come what might I would take some memento
from that lonely spot back to my young friend in America.
Little I thought at the time what that memento would be.
CHAPTER IV
Tells of how I visited the Scuppers, and of the first
of two discoveries which I made there.
You are to understand that the road which we had followed from Jonchery
appeared from a distance to run straight into this precipitous jungle of
rock and broken earth, but a short way from the base it verged to the
westward, running through a dense wood and, as our officers were well
aware, led up the easy west slope of the hill.
It was thought unlikely that the slight advantage which their precedence
up this hill might give them would tempt the Germans to pause and give
battle there, for they were running as suburbanites run to catch their
trains. But if they should emerge upon the top of this towering cliff
before our boys had verged out of range of it into the woods there might
be an unhappy story to tell. I did not realize it while I was tramping
along rather faster than is my wont, but I knew afterward that this
peril had been averted by a pretty narrow calculation on the part of our
officers and some pretty good sprinting of the men.
As it turned out, our detachment was well out of range of the height and
pushing rapidly westward through the protecting woods when I found
myself standing alone in the shadow of the rock-ribbed ascent. A better
target one could scarcely imagine, and I reflected on the danger in
which I was placing myself for no better reason than a sentimental,
perhaps a sort of morbid, desire to see the spot where Tom Slade had
fallen.
One advantage I had, and that was the declining sun which flickered the
rocks with glints of changing light, and I consoled myself with the
thought that it would soon be dusk.
Between myself and the cliff lay an expanse of marshland a quarter of a
mile or so in width, I should say, and into this I plunged, wallowing
through the mushy undergrowth and stumbling the more because I must keep
my eyes fixed upon the summit of the hill.
No sign of life was there upon that frowning cliff, only the little
crimson glints, coming and going as the light failed.
Once and again I fancied these to be soldiers, and a particularly steady
glare in what seemed to be a clump of foliage troubled me with
misgivings lest the light might be reflected from the steel of a
machine-gun.
I had thought of carrying a large bunch of swamp growth by way of
camouflaging myself, but it was quite difficult enough to move through
the swamp without that handicap. Once I got a footing upon something
hard and the pressure of my weight sent the other end of it bobbing up
out of the mushy scum, and I was startled to see a skeleton leg with a
few shreds upon it sticking up and hanging over at the knee in a
gruesome manner. A German helmet lay near the skull, which I had trodden
upon. As I plodded on the ghastly thing settled itself again into the
marsh as if it had been prematurely awakened out of a peaceful slumber.
I was pretty thoroughly drenched when I reached the foot of the hill and
it occurred to me that by rolling in the dry earth there I might acquire
an appearance conforming to the hue and character of my surroundings.
That done, I began my climb.
The ascent was not quite as precipitous as it had looked from a
distance, but it was all up and down, the loose earth sliding so in
places that I kept slipping back and seemed to make no more progress
than a horse on a treadmill. Moreover, there was great danger from
descending stones in these places, for the whole land above seemed in
process of erosion and one big rock, in the shelter of which I paused to
rest, went tumbling away below me leaving me sprawling.
At last, after fifteen or twenty minutes of this strenuous,
lose-and-gain progress, I reached the little area of vegetation where
the Scuppers, so-called, were located. Here I had a splendid birds-eye
view of the road over which we had come and the swamp and the adjacent
woods around the west slope of the hill. The ascent, I saw, must be very
gradual there, and I realized what I had not realized before, that if
our boys were so fortunate as to catch the enemy between themselves and
this cliff there would be something else besides stones rolling down.
Perhaps that was part of the plan of our officers. They never confided
anything to me.
What I was immediately concerned with was the Scuppers themselves. The
little oasis of a few square yards in which I stood consisted of a
jumble of rock with sparse vegetation poking out between, and a
miscellaneous collection of nature’s odds and ends which had struck up a
sort of fraternity here like outcasts in some unmolested haunt. Trees
which had broken away from above grew at crazy angles, their roots
having taken precarious hold upon the soil, and the whole conglomerate
mass was held by the two great jagged rocks known as the Scuppers. These
rocks, as I could see now, must have been very deeply imbedded and the
comparatively small portion of them which protruded from the earth
formed a continuous ledge or gutter for some yards, against which all of
this distorted natural furniture rested. Perhaps some sailor had first
called them the Scuppers, and although on close view they bore no
resemblance to the scuppers of a ship, the name was not inappropriate.
In my picnicking and summer rambles I have visited many places with
darkly suggestive names—Hell’s Kitchens, Devil’s Punch-bowls, and the
like—cosy nooks, as a rule, with nothing more appalling about them than
seductive shade and quiet, but here indeed was a spot after Satan’s own
heart. In one place a great half-exposed root formed a sort of cave, its
drooping tentacles hanging like a bead curtain at the entrance. And the
almost horizontal posture of the tree-trunks and the deformed branches
of foliage made dim recesses and deathlike nooks. Yet the place was
picturesque, too, affording a certain feeling of cosiness and dubious
security, perched as it was midway of that torn, naked ascent.
I had scarcely begun my exploration of this curious island, as it might
be called, when something crunched beneath my foot. It proved to be a
glass disk which I recognized as one of the sort forming the goggles
worn by aviators. Part of the metal frame and some heavy material like
khaki were attached to it, so I concluded that the goggles had formed a
part of the cap (as the newspapers had called it) or, more properly, the
mask, used by the fallen airman.
This small find confirmed my own surmise and the lieutenant’s statement
that this lonesome, uncanny place was indeed the scene of Slade’s tragic
death, and, as I stood there with the fragment in my hand, I thanked
Heaven that our boys were even now on their way to take the village of
Pevy where the poor remains of the dead American lay. I wondered why the
Germans—barbarians that they were—had gone to the trouble and
encountered the perils of recovering his maimed body. There is no
question that Germans have little spasms of humanity, just as the Anglo
Saxons may have spasms of cruelty. And that, I thought, must be the
explanation. They did it without thinking!
But what a thing to do. It must have involved risk and no little
ingenuity to get Slade’s body up that frightful precipice. It puzzled me
to know why they had done it and pretty soon, when I discovered an
explanation, it staggered and amazed me. They had done it because—— Oh,
I would not let myself think of it—it was incredible....
And I thought of Roy Blakeley, Tom’s friend, who had believed in him,
trusted him, worshipped him. How could I go back and tell Roy what I had
found?
But I am running a little ahead of my narrative. It is hard to set this
matter down in orderly fashion. Even now I feel the cold chill of
speechless horror which came over me, in that little dank cave formed by
the tree root as I sat there almost stupefied ten or fifteen minutes
after my second discovery, of which I must now tell you.
Even now, whenever I smell fresh earth, it takes me back to that dim,
ghastly spot and renews the feeling of unutterable dismay and sickening
disgust which I felt then.
CHAPTER V
Tells of my second discovery and brings me to the
point of startling revelations.
This thing which I had inadvertently stepped on had, I suppose, been a
part of the cap, so-called, which the Germans had dropped behind the
allied lines along with Slade’s identification disk and the “small badge
linked with it which was supposed to signify some honor greatly prized
in the ranks of the Boy Scouts of America.” It did not occur to me as
strange that the newspaper had called it a cap when in point of fact it
was one of those goggle masks sometimes worn by airmen.
The discovery of this broken trifle spurred me to further scrutiny of
the place and I groped about in the gathering dusk but without result.
There was no sign to show where the aviator had fallen and had it not
been for the merest chance I should never have made the discovery which,
alas, bore a darker significance than did the innocent little piece of
glass which I had crushed under foot.
I was just about to continue my climb up the hill when I noticed one of
those great birds which are a common and ghoulish sight in the theatre
of war, circling overhead. These sinister creatures will follow a
retreating army for miles, intent and undiscouraged, and apparently
knowing if it is the purpose of that army to make a stand and fight I
have seen them veer away and disappear when some advantageous ground for
fighting has been reached and passed. Near Blanzy, where no one dreamed
that the retreating foe would give battle, a big flock of them hovered
all day waiting for the routed Germans to reach that place and rally on
the high ground. And they did not wait in vain. No military plans or
probabilities escape them.
Well, I was watching this ungainly harbinger of death as it flopped
about, its thin, naked, ugly neck extended in its horrid quest, and
wondering if its presence boded ill for our boys or for the foe, when my
gaze was drawn to a spot among the upper branches of the tree over which
the bird was circling.
This tree, the only one to hold its head up in that desert of
deformities, had probably acted as a check and prop for falling
material. A mass of tangled brush had sprung up about it and many rocks
found a precarious lodgment among its half-exposed roots.
What I noticed in this tree appeared in the dusk to be an area of brown
fungus upon the trunk some twenty feet or more from the ground. I
probably would not have thought twice about it had I not noticed a loose
end of it moving slightly with the breeze, which gave the whole thing an
appearance of not belonging there.
Still, I dare say I should have gone my way without further
investigation except that this loose end, fluttering like a beckoning
signal in that dismal spot, haunted me. I started away and turned back
again. The great bird had gone and not a thing was there moving
overhead—nothing save this little loose, stirring object, whatever it
was, its outline growing dim in the dusk.
Doubtless the mere fact that it moved would have attracted me as I stood
in the deathlike gloom of that chaotic jungle, but even as I watched my
imagination conjured it into a kind of beckoning finger and I
experienced a strange chill, as of apprehension, as it fluttered up
there among the branches.
An impulse came upon me to climb the tree and dispel my vague fancies by
a closer look at this object. It was not without difficulty that I
managed to “shinny” up the trunk, but the lower branches once reached, I
was able to pass easily from one to another until I was on a level with
the brown object.
I had but to touch it to find that it was no fungus growth at all, but
the remnant of a khaki jacket wound so tightly about the trunk that even
on this closer inspection it seemed a very part of the tree. It must
have been wetted and dried again by much rain and sun, for it was stiff
and hard and clung to the bark when I tried to remove it. The part which
blew loose was one of the sleeves and as I pulled this in my effort to
detach the whole, the brittle, rotted fabric tore and came away like
bark. It must have been there for a long time.
At one place, as I passed my hand over it, I encountered a hubble, very
hard, and upon working the jacket loose I found this to be a watch in
the flap pocket.
You are to suppose that this singular find greatly excited and
interested me and it was in a trembling suspense that I carefully
detached and dropped the thing to the ground.
How came it there? How long had it been there? I think no relic of a
human presence in that cheerless, melancholy spot could have affected me
more and started such a train of thoughts as did this rag which a living
person had once worn. As to who had worn it, there seemed but one
answer—it was the jacket of Tom Slade.
And this supposition I was presently to confirm.
But even before I had reached the ground there appeared to my mind’s eye
a picture of the last scene in the venturesome life of the young airman,
here in this cheerless jungle, and I shuddered as I thought of it, and
of the heroic triumph which preceded his hideous end. I made no doubt
that in his frightful fall the jacket had caught upon some sharp branch
of the tree and held him, who shall say for how long, suffering—more
likely dead. And when the inert, mangled form had become extricated and
gone down, this tattered remnant had remained blowing in the wind and
rain, marking the spot where he had fallen, until the beating storms had
plastered it against the trunk, save for the little moving shred which I
had seen. And so the khaki jacket, like everything else which came into
that crazy, derelict community, had become a part of it, seeming, as I
have said, like a bit of brown fungus on that lonely tree....
CHAPTER VI
Tells of the appalling secret which was revealed to me
in the Scuppers and of my decision with regard to it.
I now approach a point in my story where it is difficult for me to write
calmly, yet I wish to unfold this wretched business to you exactly as it
unfolded itself to me. What I learned that night was all I ever knew
until I knew all, and much was to happen before that time. It is not
easy, sitting here now and with the whole amazing story in mind, to
reproduce my mental state so that you may see and feel exactly as I saw
and felt then.
Reaching the ground, I took the bundle of stiffened shreds and crawled
into the little cave formed by the tree roots, for it was now nearly
dark and I was cautious enough not to turn my flashlight on in the open.
I think I never experienced such a feeling of suspense as when I
hurriedly rummaged the rotted pockets of this bleached rag which had
once been part of the uniform of the boy from my own home town, in
far-off America, Roy Blakeley’s friend, the young hero who had begun as
a Boy Scout and gone to his death in a glorious dramatic triumph. And I
was thrilled as I repeated his name to myself—_Tom Slade_.
In the sickening, earth-smelling dampness of that little grotto I
ransacked the pockets of the tattered garment, my searchlight laid upon
a piece of rotted wood so that its glare was cast upon my work. The
watch I found to be at one end of a coarse, brass, lock-link chain, at
the other end of which was fastened an oilskin wallet with an ingenious
system of folds and interfolds intended to exclude water and dampness.
The chain was long enough so that the watch could rest in the breast and
the wallet in the hip pocket. There was no hip pocket here, of course,
and the wallet I found in the rotted folds of the garment. I think it
must have been plastered fast between the jacket and the tree-trunk.
Probably it had been jerked out of the trousers pocket when the victim
fell from the tree.
Three things about the watch interested but did not surprise me. It had
stopped at twenty minutes after five, presumably the time of Slade’s
fall; it was of American manufacture, and the initials T. S. were
engraved upon the back of it. Here was confirmation, if I needed any, of
the identity of its owner. It was very much the worse for rain and
weather, but these facts were plainly discernible.
The oilskin wallet was of German manufacture, exactly like one which the
boys had taken from a dead Boche and which I had seen and examined. That
wallet of poor dead Fritzie’s had contained a childishly sentimental
letter from Frankfort. This one, as you shall hear, contained documents
of quite a different character.
The first thing I brought forth was the photograph of a girl—a very
pretty girl indeed, if I am any judge. As I looked at it I had a vague
recollection of having seen the girl somewhere—at a patriotic gathering
in Bridgeboro, I thought, or perhaps it was just on Main Street, or in
the library or the post-office. Anyway, she was no French girl and I
could have vowed that I had seen her in Bridgeboro. So here, at least,
was a pretty touch in the harrowing catastrophe. Tom had had a girl—as
every soldier should have.
You will not be impatient if I run over the contents of this wallet with
some particularity. The next thing was half of a half sheet of note
paper, torn from a letter presumably, and with an irrelevant memorandum
written on the other side The letter was from our young lady, I felt
sure, and I thought it rather an ungallant treatment of her missive. The
few sentences on this fragment ran thus. I copy them from the scrap
itself.
looked about it seemed as if everyone in Bridgeboro was
there. And of course the Boy Scouts and that excruciating
imp of a Blakeley boy were on hand—Ruth’s brother, you know.
Oh, by the way, who do you suppose is in the old place on
Terrace Avenue? Guess. The Red Cross ladies and I’m working
with
That was all, but it took me back home to Bridgeboro with a rush! And
here, thought I, with half the world between us, here in this ghostly,
forlorn scene of tragedy, am I reading of that “excruciating imp”—Roy
Blakeley! Of course the Red Cross ladies were plying their needles in a
vacant store on Terrace Avenue—I knew that well enough. But what was the
grand affair at which the whole of Bridgeboro seemed to be present?
Poor Roy, poor Tom, poor girl, all to be stricken in one way or another
because some bloody tyrant thought he owned the earth.
But I found companionship and solace in those few broken sentences and
it was with wistful thoughts of home that I turned the scrap over and
read in another hand:
See Capt. Pfeifer about list and supplies from Berry-au-Bac.
Captain Pfeiffer! Here was a good old German name for a loyal American
captain—Pfeiffer! The least he could have done would have been to change
it to Fifer. Well, he could kill the Germans with any name, but——
I scrutinized the memorandum a little more intently. _List and supplies
from Berry-au-Bac._ Hmph! Why, Berry-au-Bac was fifteen or twenty miles
within the German lines. At the time of Tom’s last service it must have
been double that. What had Tom Slade to do with lists and supplies from
Berry-au-Bac?
Why, of course, he had descended upon Berry-au-Bac and captured lists
and— No, it was absurd.
Puzzled, I turned the scrap of paper over and found some reassurance in
those cordial, friendly words written in the girl’s hand. No, sir, we do
not turn out spies or traitors in Bridgeboro. How should _I_ know what
that memorandum meant? But if my name were Pfeiffer, I’d change it to
Fifer or Fife, I knew that much. Tom Slade knew his business, I was sure
of that.
So thinking, I unfolded the next paper and found that he knew his
business only too well. Here was a rough map showing every last hospital
and dressing station beyond the American lines in that sector.
Two were crossed off—blown up, I suppose. There were some twenty or more
still to be blown up. Underneath were written these words, as nearly as
I can remember them:
Report dressing station foot of Fav Hill joined to one on
top—empty—don’t bother. Ask about supplies from Wangardt.
Correct list sent to Cap. Dennheimer so I don’t get blame.
Tell him G station on other list is full.
And so on, and so on—I could not read any more. The name of that
unspeakable wretch, Dennheimer, was quite enough. His deeds of bestial
inhumanity were such as to call down the vengeance of Heaven and damn
him for all eternity. I knew that he had his minions peering out under
their big gas bags and skulking about like the unclean bird I had been
watching, putting the doom of certain death on those already wounded. I
knew that, like that sinister, cowardly bird, he made it his special
function to defile the blue sky, sending his sneaking minions of the air
forth upon their barbarous errands. They did not fight, the gallant
fliers of this command, they skulked and murdered and fled.
And here in my hands, incredible as it seemed, was the last damning
memorial of one of them.
And an American!
With an uncertain hand and a kind of limp disgust, I drew the papers
forth and scanned them one after another. I felt sick, sick with a kind
of nausea of bewilderment and utter despair. For if this were true (and
how could it be otherwise?), then I had no more faith in human nature.
Yes, I had—I had faith in the faith which I knew lived back in
Bridgeboro, and I think I drew a little hope, perhaps still a little
confidence, from the stout heart which would not even believe that
this—this aviator—was dead. Excruciating imp! Hero, I called him, and I
resolved that he should never hear this from me. He believed that the
worst had not happened, loyal, stouthearted friend and champion and
comrade that he was. But death is not the worst.
I need not trouble you with the sordid contents of those other papers;
nor have I them at hand to copy. They were the familiar baggage of a
traitor and a spy, with all the nice details of sneaking ingenuity and
signs of moral turpitude, such as to arouse the wrath of a saint. It
will be enough to tell you that if this creature had lived, the hospital
at Dormans would probably have seen its agonized victims writhing in
flames. And one of our little cemeteries, with its rows of wooden
crosses, was to have been torn with jagged holes—I do not know why.
There was a detailed report for Dennheimer which would have pleased him
had he received it. And Captain Pfeiffer would not have been
disappointed.
I sat there, holding the watch in one hand, the wallet in the other,
jerking the coarse chain as If I would break it asunder, and separate
the American timepiece bearing the initials of an American boy from this
other souvenir of cowardice and treachery. Then I looked again at the
picture of the girl with the clear, honest eyes, and then at her
friendly words about Bridgeboro. And he had torn a piece from that
letter to make a treacherous memorandum. The wretch!
So I sat in the darkness and pondered, noticing a spider which hurried
back and forth in the small glare of my light, and other irrelevant
trifles, as one will do under the stress of shock and sorrow. My head
throbbed and I felt a strange disinclination to move.
Could this thing be? Why, he had vowed to be revenged upon those
wretches! Had the whole business, first and last, been a treacherous
ruse? Had he gained admission to the hospital simply to spy there? Was
the newspaper account all wrong and he, the sneak and traitor, been but
the hero of some misinformed newspaper correspondent? Everything is
green when you look through green spectacles and the only thing I could
be certain of now was the unmistakable meaning of these papers and the
identity of their possessor. Everything else seemed readily susceptible
of a dark and sinister construction.
As I groped in my mind for some saving fact or discrepancy which might
explain, or at least raise a doubt, the thought of one final clinching
circumstance forced itself upon me and I gave up in hopeless despair. I
knew now why the Germans had come here and taken away Slade’s body. It
was not his body they were after, but his papers and for these they had
searched in vain. The decent burial of his poor remains in some less
cheerless spot than here, and the dropping of his American
identification disk and scout badge (which apparently he had continued
to wear) were perhaps the kindly act of Fritz in one of his erratic,
sentimental moods—a fraternal and charitable afterthought.
And this was the secret of the Scuppers—dark and sordid and depressing,
like all else there; and so, I was resolved, it should remain—an
invisible part of that gloomy derelict community, like the very
atmosphere of that grim, cheerless spot to which fate or a merciful
Providence had relegated it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART TWO—REMINISCENCES OF SLADE’S CAREER
FOREWORD
It is a fact that the career of Slade from the time he became an airman
and even before was one of bravery and patriotism, and his disaffection,
apparently, had come only at the very end of his service. Even then, as
it seemed, he had not gone over to the enemy, but had accepted and
carried out commissions from them while maintaining an appearance of
loyalty. And I marvelled at the prowess and resource which he must have
shown in this hazardous business. No one in all that sector, where he
had come and gone as freely as the birds of the air, had suspected him;
none spoke of him except in praise.
Perhaps the newspaper account which had thrilled us so at home was
somewhat in the nature of a “write-up,” and there were, indeed, several
versions current as to just how Slade had met his death. Most of these
fell a little short in the ingredient of reckless valor, but there was
no question that he had been counted a very daring airman, and I could
multiply instances of praise and expressions of trust and confidence
from his comrades and superiors.
I supposed at the time that money had tempted this brave young fellow to
his moral fall. About all I had ever known of him was that he had been
of a simple mind and very poor. This much I had learned from Roy.
Before I left the Scuppers that night I had a mental tussle over the
question of what I should do with these incriminating papers. If Slade
had been living I should have turned them over to the authorities, but
as it was I could not see that anything was to be gained by their
preservation. They pertained to conditions which no longer existed, they
revealed no facts that were of value now, and I decided to destroy them
then and there—all except the picture of the girl and the scrap of her
letter containing the familiar references to Bridgeboro, for I could not
bring myself to cast those into the flames. Her friendly, companionable
words, though they were not addressed to me, comforted me, nevertheless,
and conjured up thoughts of home. The brief memorandum on the back I
obliterated with my pen. With the other papers I made a little fire in
my cave, believing that I could the better fulfill my promise to Roy if
I put, or tried to put, this horrible sequel of a brave career out of my
mind altogether.
I shall ask you to do the same while I try to give you a sketch of
Slade’s remarkable deeds up to the time he became a patient “recovering
from a slight wound,” in the Epernay Hospital. This tale of his career
is necessarily disjointed and fragmentary, and was intended only for the
perusal of Roy. I began it in the form of letters to him while I was
myself a patient in that same hospital. These letters were never sent
because I feared the censor, who had been dealing rather freely with my
newspaper stuff, and I soon fell into the habit of stringing out a more
orderly narrative.
You will understand, of course, that my chief interest in all these
matters was for Roy Blakeley. _He_ was _my_ hero.
As to who will prove the hero of this whole extraordinary business, that
shall be for you to say.
* * * * *
LETTERS TO ROY BLAKELEY
Dear Roy:
I am writing this letter propped up in bed in the little hospital at
Epernay and a young chatterbox of a fellow in the cot adjoining mine
says that my breathing reminds him of a goldfish. I cannot seem to
breathe with my mouth shut, but I tell him that _he_ can’t keep his
mouth shut either and that he has not my good excuse—for I was gassed.
The nurses and patients call him Archie, and he has a bullet which was
lately extracted from his shoulder and which he says he intends to take
home to America for a souvenir. He is wounded slightly otherwise and was
operated upon (had his _retreat_ cut off, he told me) and is in all ways
a most diverting youngster, something like yourself, except that he
rolls his R’s like rapid-fire artillery. He calls the nurses “cross red”
nurses, and talks incessantly.
I became acquainted with him only yesterday and I fancy he will beguile
my convalescence. Seeing him lying with his eyes fixed on the rafters, I
ventured to say, “A penny for your thoughts.”
“What d’you think I am—a slot machine?” he retorted.
“Excuse me,” I said, somewhat taken aback.
“Perrfectly excusable,” he responded cheerily, and added, “Do you see
that place where the rafterrs arre new—with the big irron nails?”
“I see the nails,” said I.
“You can’t drive a nail with a sponge,” he said, “no matter how you soak
it.”
“Perfectly true,” I said, essaying a little pleasantry of my own, “but
what has that got to do with the price of onions?”
He drew his knees up in the bed in a way he has of lying. “That place is
wherre a Gerrman bomb came through,” he said. “I got one of those nails
forr a souveneerr.”
I looked at the spot with more interest. “It killed two of the nurses,
didn’t it?” I asked. “I heard about that. But surely, you couldn’t have
been here then.”
“No, but my pill was—I mean my pal—fellerr by the name of Slade; he
sworre——”
That was as far as he got, for one of the nurses, stepping right in
range of his torrential volley of R’s, began her ministrations,
incidentally telling him for the hundredth time to be quiet so that
other patients might sleep.
You may suppose that I was greatly interested in what he was telling me
and the good old upstate rumble of that word _sworre_ lingered in my
mind, for I had no doubt that he was referring to your friend Tom Slade,
and that a lucky chance (or an unlucky one) had brought me to the very
hospital mentioned in the newspaper account which you and I read
together. Whether Slade was really his “pill” or pal, I cannot say, for
he spoke of everyone as his pal, from General Foch down, but I hope to
talk more with him tomorrow. He has just fallen asleep with the parting
injunction to “wake me earrly, motherr, dearrrr.” And silence reigns
supreme.
This is all I am allowed to write today, but tomorrow I’ll “recount the
adventure,” as you would say, which brought me here.
* * * * *
Dear Roy:
My new acquaintance is out on our little veranda for a sun bath. His
name, they tell me, is Archer—Archibald Archer—and that he has lately
been in the Motorcycle Corps. I wonder if any motorcycle can make more
noise than he!
I came here after taking the village of Pevy—though I did not take it
all by myself. The village sits on high ground a couple of miles beyond
one of the steepest, rockiest hillsides I ever saw—a place where you can
measure real estate with a plumb line. Our boys took the road which
verged around and up the west slope of the hill, as the retreating
Germans had done, while I took the short-cut, or rather climb, up this
precipitous place.
It was thereabouts that Tom Slade fell, a fact that seems to admit of
little doubt, and you must not continue to indulge in any day-dreams as
to his being still alive. I am sure we are both more interested in some
of the things he did while living than in the immediate circumstances of
his death, and in this connection I intend to question my new
acquaintance as soon as I get the chance.
Well, I had a difficult time of it scrambling up that rocky hill and it
was pitch dark when I reached the top. I have made a rough pencil sketch
of the locality which you may be interested in.
I fell in with our detachment about a mile out of Pevy and had a few
hours’ rest until dawn, when we made our advance against the village.
All this has nothing to do with Tom Slade so I won’t burden you with an
account of how the retreating Germans made a stand before the town. But
when we marched in, there was nothing to be found but burned homesteads
and gas-poisoned atmosphere. It was not impossible to breathe in the
open, but in the wrecked and charred buildings the deadly fumes lingered
and I should have had sense enough to keep out of them. One of them, a
makeshift hospital, had not been destroyed and I foolishly entered it.
For a few seconds I beheld a scene which struck horror to my very heart.
They say over here that every American soldier fights with a wrath and
desperation born of some particular discovery or experience of Hun
brutality. One goes forth with the thought of a maimed and tortured
comrade to give him strength; another with the memory of some violated
truce or false and murderous cry of “kamerad!” Well, here was the sight
to arouse in me the hatred of those beasts which I had not sufficiently
felt before.
They had left their own people, _their own sick and wounded_, to suffer
the agonizing death of those deadly gas fumes. If there are any degrees
in loathesomeness, it seemed to me that this was more unspeakable than
was the bombing of an enemy hospital.
I cannot describe what I saw, nor did I see it long. I remember groping
toward a bed, on which lay the body of an old man, all the while trying,
like the clumsy fool I was, to adjust my gas mask. I remember how my
eyes pained and the horrible taste in my mouth, and how my fingers
seemed to be asleep. I thought I saw one of those ghastly yellow
patients sit up and fall back again. The next I knew I was here in this
hospital in this spotless cot, and one of the first things I was really
conscious of was this youngster next me, talking. I am given to
understand that I had a pretty narrow squeak of it, and that I will
cease breathing like a goldfish in time.
I am going to stop writing now in order to talk to my young neighbor,
Archer (or “Souvenir” as they call him). They are just bringing him in
in a wheel chair and he’s eating an apple. Never have I known of anyone
who could eat so many apples—he lives on them.
* * * * *
LETTER RECEIVED FROM ROY
Note: As my acquaintance with young Archer was to
prove both diverting and profitable, I have boiled
our conversations down into a sort of narrative in
which he will appear as something of a character,
and the chapters which follow were intended to be
the story of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps, which
I should present to Roy on my return to America.
Before submitting this story to you, however, I wish
to include here a letter which I received from Roy at
about this time. It was sent to me at the hospital by
the Associated Press after it had wandered like a lost
soul up and down the shifting West Front. And it came
to me like a cool breeze in summer.
I did not then attach any particular significance to
its contents. Indeed, I am not sure now that it is
important in this place. But it interested me greatly,
and you will be glad to read it because of Roy’s
epoch-making announcement (at which the public had
better sit up and take notice) that he is himself soon
to be launched on the literary sea!
Dear Friend:
You remember you said you’d like me to write you a letter when I got
cheered up, and tell you all the news. Most of it is about our Scout
troop. Last night we had a meeting and they gave me a present of a big
picture of Tom that they had enlarged from the photograph. It’s great!
It was in a frame and has some words underneath—“loyal, staunch and
true”—quoted out of some book or other. Maybe by this time you have
found out some things about him.
Pee-wee Harris said we should send you an anonymous letter—he meant
unanimous letter. Honest, that kid is a scream. He’s Doc Harris’ son,
you know. Jeb Rushmore, our camp manager up in Temple Camp, sent us an
owl to have stuffed and Mr. Ellsworth told Pee-wee it would have to be
sent to a taxidermist. Pee-wee asked me what that was and just for a kid
I told him it was a man that drives a taxi. So he went down to the
station with the owl and asked one of the taxi men to stuff it. I should
worry!
After the meeting we had a debate and I chose the subject. It was to
decide who was the greatest, St. Patrick or the Fourth of July. It was
decided in the affirmative. Crinkums, that was some meeting!
Maybe you’ll be interested to hear that I’m elected Troop Historian, and
I’ve got to write up all our adventures. Some job, believe me! I should
worry. Mr. Ellsworth says maybe he’ll get it published. He says you get
good money for writing a book—but not much of it! He says if I write
just like I talk, it’ll be all right. I’ve decided to write it scout
pace, kind of running, then walking—you know. It’ll be like a hike. Doc
Carson, our first-aid scout, says it ought to be funny, and I promised
I’d chuck some chuckles into it. Pee-wee is going to make the names for
the chapters. Good-night! Maybe you’ll be willing to help me when you
get back, especially with sunsets and green hills and weather and like
that, because you have to have all those things in a book, especially
weather. I said I wouldn’t bother with any weather, but Doc Carson said
all the characters would suffocate. Pee-wee said he’s no use for weather
in stories and he always skips it, anyway. Maybe I’ll have compressed
air instead. Weather and prefaces—good-night!
There’s some news I guess you’ll be interested in. They caught Adolph
Schmitt, who used to keep that grocery store—you remember? You know they
found out he was a spy and he skipped. Now they’ve got him and he’s down
in Atlanta Penitentiary. A long time ago Tom used to deliver groceries
for him.
Well, I’ll say goodbye and if you can find out any things about Tom, you
bet I’ll be glad.
Your friend,
Roy Blakeley.
I have included this letter from Roy partly because it contained the
earliest portentous hints of those sprightly narratives which were later
to create such a stir in Boy Scout circles, but more particularly
because of its reference to the Schmitt affair.
I remembered the case of Schmitt very well, for it was a nine days’
wonder in Bridgeboro when this jolly, fat German grocer disappeared just
in time to escape a visit from the Secret Service men. I never knew just
what he was suspected of but I understood that incriminating papers, of
a very treasonable purport, were found in the rooms over his store which
he and his whole brood had so suddenly vacated.
The news that Tom Slade had worked for this man interested me, of
course, and fitted pretty well with the secret knowledge which I had.
Had Schmitt’s Grocery been the kindergarten where the poor, ignorant boy
had learned the first contaminating lesson of disloyalty? Well, here I
was with my green spectacles on again, and everything looked green. In
any event, I was glad to know that Schmitt had been caught and lodged in
Uncle Sam’s Penitentiary, where he belonged. Perhaps, I thought, the
worst thing that he did was to insinuate his false reasoning into the
simple mind of his employee and corrupt the clear, honest viewpoint of a
young boy....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Narrative written for Roy Blakeley in the Epernay
Hospital, and intended originally to form a complete
story under the title of Tom Slade with the Flying
Corps.
CHAPTER I—COMRADES
The following story of a remarkable career was told me mostly by my
young friend, Archibald Archer, who was for a time an occupant of the
adjoining cot to mine in the Epemay Hospital. I shall take the liberty
of enlisting him as a sort of joint narrator with myself, in the sense
of using his own language when that seems desirable. Much that he told
me, I jotted down in shorthand without his knowledge. He was recovering
from slight injuries received while serving with “extinction” (I suppose
he meant distinction) in the Motorcycle Corps. He lived on a farm in New
York State, rolled his R’s, ate apples by the peck when he could get
them, and collected souvenirs by the ton. On the whole, I liked him and
I am sure that when he was not in the mood of banter he was honest and
sincere.
He and Tom Slade had crossed the ocean together as ship’s boys, and
Archer had remained in France resolved to win glory under “Generral
Perrshing.” He became an assistant cook in the Lorraine sector where his
most dramatic exploit in the cause of humanity was the placing of a bowl
of soup on a listening post in No Man’s Land, in such a way that in the
still hours of the night it tumbled its contents upon the proud head of
a sumptuously attired German lieutenant who had leaned against the post.
He did not receive the Distinguished Service Cross for this deed of
heroism, but no doubt it was appreciated, for he shortly became orderly
to some officers and has the lace of an officer’s puttee to prove it.
How he drifted back into sea service again, I do not recall. In any
event, he did and worked again as a ship’s boy, I suppose. Perhaps he
was going home on leave. In any case, he was sitting on the “forrwarrd
hatch,” eating an apple, and was just about to throw the core at a
purser’s assistant when a torpedo struck the ship. It is one of the vain
regrets of his life that he did not throw the core a moment sooner.
A few more days found him in a German prison camp where he soon became
the chief entertainer of that hapless community. Not only did he hobnob
with “Old Piff,” the German commandant, but his genius as a chef won him
immediate recognition and prestige. Here it was that he enlivened the
tedium of the prisoners by handing a bottle of ink to a German guard,
who had demanded some insect dope, to rub on his face one sultry night,
and the “guarrrd’s” face, according to Archer, presented a diverting
sight next morning. He still has the cork of this ink bottle as a
treasured memento or “souveneerrr.”
In the camp, to his great astonishment, he fell in with Tom Slade, who
had also been gathered in with the survivors of a torpedoed transport,
and the two, being kindred spirits and old friends (“comrades to the
death,” Archer said), had contrived to escape together and make their
way through Switzerland into France.
“Slady used to be a Boy Scout,” Archer told me, “and he knew all about
trackin’ and trailin’, and a plaguey lot of otherr things besides. Only
he’d never let you know he knew ’em. He knew about signalling and
’lectricity, and aerroplane engines—he had that old storrage warrehouse
of a head of his filled up with all kinds of junk.”
“What did he look like when you knew him then?” I asked.
“Oh, he looked like he was mad—always sorrt o’ scowling. But he was
trrue as the marrinerr’s compass—I’ll say that forr him.”
“And that’s saying a great deal,” said I. And this reminded me (I can’t
say just why) to ask if Slade had been interested in any girl back in
America.
“Gurrrl? Him?” Archer said. “He had no use forr gurrls, and nutherr have
I. I’d rutherr have an apple any day. Gurrls make me sick.”
“Indeed,” I said. “I should think the apples you eat would make you
sick.”
“Slady told me when we werre comin’ through the Black Forest that he
neverr got no letterrs from gurrls. He said most soldierrs do, but he
didn’t.”
I was a little puzzled at this because—well, just because I was. I think
you will agree, Roy, that soldiers should receive letters from girls. I
was under the impression—but no matter.
When Slade and Archer reached the American front in Alsace they joined
the Motorcycle Corps, becoming messengers behind the lines. In their
long journey through the Black Forest and Switzerland they had resolved
on entering this branch of the service, but their paths soon diverged,
Archer’s sphere of duty being in the neighborhood of Paris, while Tom
rushed back and forth on his machine in the Toul sector until he was
sent far west into Picardy and Flanders on some specially dangerous
service. As long as Tom was attached to the command in Toul sector he
and Archer met occasionally at Troyes and Chaumont where their longer
errands sometimes took them. Then there came a time when Archer saw his
former comrade no more, and he later heard of Tom’s being sent west
where the streams were running red and the paths of the cyclist
messenger were being torn with jagged shell holes.
“I thought maybe Slady had run his machine pell-mell into one of those
places,” said Archer, “until——”
“Well, don’t try to tell me now,” I said. “Lie down and get some sleep.
We’ve all tomorrow before us.”