A Pass to Paris
1
The following morning dawned with the quiet splendor and benediction
which April mornings bring to the rural province of Cote d'Or. By the
time the sun had climbed above the low hills to the east and was turning
the dew covered fields into limitless acres of flashing diamonds and
sapphires, McGee and Larkin had hurried through breakfast and were on
their way out to the hangars where the mechanics, following Larkin's
orders, would have the two Camels waiting on the line. As the car rolled
along the smooth highway leading to the flying field, McGee sank back in
the none too comfortable cushions and drank deep of the tonic of early
morning.
"Some day!" he said. Larkin merely nodded--the only reply needed when
Spring is in the air.
"It would be more fun to drive up to Paris," McGee offered.
Larkin looked at him in surprise. "Where'd you get that idea?"
"Well, nearly all of my impressions of France are from the air. It
stands for so many squares of green fields, of little rivers gleaming
like silver ribbons interlaced through squares of green and brown plush,
of torn up battlefronts where there is no life, no color--nothing but
desolation. But this seems like another world. Here are spring flowers,
the orchards are in bloom, and children are playing in the narrow
streets of the towns. Flying over it, you look down on all that. You see
it--and you don't see it. But in driving we would feel that we were a
part of it. There's a difference. It gives you a feeling that you are
better acquainted with the people, and you get a chance to smell
something besides the beastly old Clerget motors in those Camels. I'm
getting so I feel sick every time I smell burning oil. Let's drive up,
Buzz."
Larkin, being in a different frame of mind, shook his head.
"No, you're too blasted poetic about it already. Besides, we have
permission to fly up, not to drive. I suppose we could get the pass
changed, but why fool with your luck? And the quicker we get there the
more we see."
"All right, but on a day like this I could get more pleasure out of just
wandering through the countryside than in seeing all the cities of the
world rolled into one. Look!" he pointed to the flying field as the car
turned from the highway. "There are the Camels, warming up, and filling
this good, clean air with their sickening fumes. Bah! I hate it!"
"Say, have you got the pip? You talk like a farmer. Snap out of it!
We're headed for Gay Paree!"
The car had rolled to a stop at the edge of the field. McGee climbed out
slowly. "All right, big boy. You lead the way. And no contour chasing
to-day. I'm too liable to get absent-minded and try to reach out and
pick some daisies. Besides, this motor of mine has been trickier than
usual in the last few days despite the fact that the Ack Emma declares
she is top hole. So fly high and handsome. Know the way?"
Larkin was crawling into his flying suit and did not answer.
"Know the way?" McGee repeated.
"Sure. That's a fine question to ask a pilot bound for Paris. We land at
Le Bourget field, you know."
"No, I didn't know."
"Where'd you think you'd land--in the Champs Elysees?"
"I'm liable to land on a church steeple if that motor cuts out on me as
it did yesterday afternoon--for no reason at all. Remember, no contour
chasing and no dog-fighting. We're going to Paris."
Larkin grinned. Rarely did they go into the air together but what they
engaged in mimic warfare--dog-fighting--before their wheels again
touched the ground. It was the airman's game of tag, the winner being
that one who could get on the other's tail and stay there. It was a
thunderous, strut singing game wherein the pursued threw his plane into
fantastic gyrations in a frenzied, wild effort to shake off the pursuer
and get on his tail. It was a game in which McGee excelled. Although
Larkin recognized this fact, he was always the first to start the dog
fight and had never found McGee unwilling to play. As for contour
chasing--well, they had broken regulations times without number, and to
date had paid no penalty.
McGee, knowing what thoughts lurked behind Larkin's grin, wagged a
prudent finger under his nose.
"Mind your step, Buzz," he warned. "We are supposed to be sedate,
dignified, instruction-keeping instructors. Fly northwest to Auxerre,
then follow the railroad toward Sens and on to Melun. Then swing
straight north and come into Le Bourget from the east."
"All right. All set?"
"Yes. You lead off and I'll follow. Wait! On second thought I think I'll
lead and pick my own altitude. And if you start any funny business, I'll
leave you flat!"
They climbed into the waiting planes, whose motors were still warming
idly. Members of the ground crew took up their stations at the wing
tips. McGee was on the point of nodding to the crew to remove the wheel
chocks when he remembered that for the first time in his experience as a
pilot he had climbed into the cockpit without first casting an
appraising eye over braces, struts and turn buckles. He promptly cut the
motor and climbed from the plane, saying, half aloud; "I must be getting
balmy. It's the weather, I guess."
"How's that, sir?" asked the air mechanic.
"I say, it's balmy weather we're having."
"Oh! Yes, sir."
"You've checked her all over, Wilson?"
"Yes, sir. And fueled her according to Lieutenant Larkin's
instructions."
"Hum." McGee slowly walked around the plane, giving every functional
detail a critical look, nor was he the least hurried by the fact that
Larkin was displaying impatience. Satisfied at last, he climbed back
into the plane. A member of the ground crew took his place at the
propeller.
"Petrol off, sir?"
"Petrol off."
Whish! Whish! went the prop as the helper began pulling it over against
compression.
"Contact, sir!"
"Contact."
The motor caught, coughed, caught again and the prop whirled into an
indistinct blur. The sudden blast of wind sent clouds of dust eddying
toward the hangar, but ahead lay the cool, fresh, dew-washed green of
the field. McGee turned to look once more at the wind sock which, for
want of a breeze, hung limp along its staff. He nodded to the men at the
wheel chocks, waved his hand to Larkin and gave her the gun.
No pilot in the service could lift a Camel off the ground quicker than
could McGee, but this morning he taxied slowly forward and was getting
dangerously near the end of the field before he began to get the tail
up.
Larkin, watching him, chuckled. "Guess he wants to take a spin on the
ground," he commented to himself. "Fancy that bird wanting to go to
Paris by motor!" Then to show how little he thought of the ground he
advanced his throttle rapidly and took off on far less space than should
ever be attempted by one who knows, from experience, how suddenly a
crowded Clerget-motored Camel can sputter and incontinently die. And as
a parting defiance to his knowledge, Larkin pulled back his stick and
zoomed. Altitude was what McGee wanted, eh? Well, here was the way to
get altitude in a hurry.
McGee, glancing backward, saw the take-off and the zoom. "The poor
fish!" was his mental comment. "If he shows that kind of stuff to this
squadron they'll be needing a lot of replacements--or yelling for a new
instructor."
But the appreciative ground crew, watching, expressed a different view.
"Boy!" exclaimed an envious Ack Emma. "Can that baby fly! I'll tell the
world! Watch him out-climb McGee. Did you see how McGee took off? Like a
cadet doin' solo--afraid to lift her. And they say he's one of the best
aces in the R.F.C. Huh! I think he's got the pip! Ever since he first
touched his wheels to this 'drome he's been yellin' about his motor
bein' cranky. And it's all jake. She takes gas like a race horse takes
rein."
"Yeah," growled a mechanic by the name of Flynn, who by nature and
nationality stood ready to defend anyone bearing the name of McGee, "a
lot you know about those little teapots in them Camels. You was trained
on Jennies and--and Fords! What you know about a Clerget engine could be
written on the back of a postage stamp. Say, do you know why he took her
off so gentle? Well, I'll spread light in dark places, brother. He took
off slow because he _knew_ you didn't know nothin', see?"
"Say, listen--"
The quarrel went on, despite the fact that the two pilots constituting
the meatless bone of contention were rapidly becoming specks in the sky
to the northwest.
At five thousand feet McGee leveled off and swung slightly west. He
looked back and up. Larkin was five hundred feet above him and somewhat
behind, but at McGee's signal he dived down, taking up a position on the
left. In this manner they could point out objects below and engage in
the sign language which they had perfected through many hours spent in
the air together.
As they flew along McGee felt his spirits mounting. It was a good world
to live in and life was made especially sweet and interesting by the
soft unfolding greens of a land brought to bud and blossom by April's
sun and showers. In the beautiful panorama below there was nothing to
indicate that a few miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving
over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie
fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint--yes, far
below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly
dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and
McGee--troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road
a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward.
Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange monsters, these,
to be coming from the green fields and woods of a seeming peaceful
countryside. Forward, ever forward they made their way. Never, it seemed
to McGee, had he seen roads choked with returning men and munitions. Was
the maw of the monster there to the eastward bottomless and insatiable?
Where were the roads that led men back to the land of living, green
things?
As they passed over a town, McGee saw Larkin point down. On the
outskirts of the village a great cross in a circlet of green marked the
location of a military hospital. Ah!... Yes, some came back. But even
then they must brand their pain-racked sanctuary with the mercy
imploring emblem of the Red Cross so that enemy planes, bent on
devastation, would mingle mercy with hope of victory and save their
bombs for those not yet carried into the long wards where white-robed
doctors and nurses battled with death and spoke words of hope to the
hopeless.
It was a sorry world! McGee, who but a few short minutes ago was
entranced by the beauty of the world, now felt a sudden, marked disgust.
He pulled his stick back sharply. He would climb out of it! He would get
up against the ceiling, where the world became a dim, faint blur or was
lost altogether in a kindly obliterating ground haze.
On McGee's part the action was nothing more than an unconscious reaction
to distressing thoughts. Larkin, however, on seeing the sudden climb,
grinned with delight. This climb for altitude was nothing more than the
prelude to a dive that would start them into a merry game of hare and
hound. So McGee had forgotten all about his doleful sermon against
dog-fighting? And so soon. Ha! Trust the freckled "Little Shrimp" to
feel blood racing through his veins when motors are singing sweetly.
Instead of following, Larkin decided to nose down and offer more
tantalizing bait.
McGee, seeing the dive, found it more than he could resist. Besides, a
merry little chase would serve to wash the brooding thoughts from his
mind. This was a morning for sport, for jest, for youth--for hazard!
Forward went the stick and he plunged down the backwash of Larkin's
diving plane, his motor roaring its cadenced challenge. This was
something like! Sky and ground were rushing toward each other. The
braces were screaming like banshees; the speed indicator hand was
mounting with a steady march that made one want to dive on and on and on
until--
Larkin, in the plane ahead, brought his stick backward as he made ready
to go over in a tight loop. McGee smiled and followed him over. When
they came out of the loop they were in the same relative
position--Larkin the hare, McGee the tenacious hound.
For the next few minutes the open-mouthed countrymen in the fields below
were treated to a series of aerial gymnastics which must have sent their
own pulses racing and which might well serve them for fireside narration
for years to come.
The two darting hawks Immelmanned, looped, barrel-rolled, side-slipped,
and then plunged into a dizzy circle in which they flew round and round
an imaginary axis, the radius of the circle growing ever shorter and
shorter. Every action of the leading plane was immediately matched by
the pursuer.
Larkin, realizing that his skill in manoeuvering was something less than
McGee's, decided to bring the contest to a close with a few thrills in
hedge hopping.
Of all sports that offer high hazard to thrill satiated war pilots, that
of hedge hopping, or contour chasing, occupies first place. This is
particularly true when the pilot is flying a Sopwith Camel powered by
the temperamental Clerget motor with its malfunctioning wind driven
gasoline pump. The sport had been repeatedly forbidden by all the allied
air commands, but these commands had to deal with irrepressible youth,
which has slight regard for doddering old mossbacks who think that a
plane should be handled as a wheel chair.
Larkin dived at the ground like a hawk that has sighted some napping
rodent, and so near did he come that by the time he had leveled off, his
wheels were almost touching the ground--and wheels must not touch when
one is screaming through space at the rate of a hundred and forty miles
per hour.
He glanced back. Sure enough, McGee was still on his tail. No hedge
hopping, eh? Huh! Trust The Shrimp to keep young, he thought. Fat chance
they had of getting old. Who ever heard of an old war pilot? Ha! That's
a good one! And here's a double row of tall poplars fringing the road
directly ahead. Hold her close to the ground and then zoom her at the
last minute ... landing gears just clearing the topmost branches ...
make it, and that's hedge hopping. Fail to make it--and that's bad news!
Larkin made it, a beautiful zoom that carried him over the trees by a
skillful margin. Then he swooped down again, skimming along the level
field on the other side of the road.
McGee's zoom was just as spectacular and as nicely timed, but as his
nose climbed above the first row of trees his motor died as suddenly as
though throttled by the strangling hands of some unseen genii. Sudden
though it was, McGee had sensed that he was crowding the motor too much
and had tried to ease her off and still clear the trees. It was too late
to relieve the choked motor but he did clear the first row of trees. He
was about to close his eyes against the inevitable crash into the
poplars on the other side of the road when he saw that two of the trees
had been felled, and that so recently that the woodsmen had not yet
worked them up. There was one clear chance left. If only he could slip
her over just far enough to clear the outstretched limbs of the tree to
the right.
At such a time seconds must be divided into hundredths, and action must
be instantaneous, instinctive, and without flaw. McGee felt one of the
spreading limbs brush against his right wing tip, felt the plane swerve
for a moment, then respond to rudder and aileron. It was a case where
one moment he was supremely thankful for flying speed, and the next, as
the ground of the level field was flashing under the wheels, wishing
that he had held to his resolution concerning hedge hopping.
The wheels struck hard. The plane bounded, high, and again the wheels
touched. Again the plane bounded, and this time came down with a shock
that left McGee amazed with the realization that the undercarriage was
intact and that he still had a chance to keep her off her nose if only
he could get the high-riding tail down.
Crash! Crack! The tail was down now ... and broken to splinters, like as
not. Never mind.... By some great mercy he was at last on three points
and rolling to a stop.
He suddenly felt very weak. A narrow squeeze, that! Stupid way for an
ace--and an instructor--to get washed out. Like a Warrior falling off
his horse while on the way home from a victorious field.
He saw Larkin bank his ship into a tight turn, set the plane down in a
perfect landing and come careening down the open field to stop within a
dozen paces of McGee's plane.
Larkin, white-faced, tight-lipped, crawled from his plane and came
forward on the double-quick. Not a word did he speak until he stood by
the side of Red's plane, his hands gripping the leather piping at the
edge of the cockpit until his knuckles were white.
"What happened, Red? Gee, you're white! All the freckles gone."
"Lucky I'm not gone!" McGee answered. "My knees are too shaky to crawl
out yet. It looked like _finis la guerre pour moi_ for a second."
He turned and blew a kiss at the gap in the trees. "Thanks, Mr.
Woodchopper, whoever you are. Buzz, never repeat that old poem about
'Woodman, spare that tree!' If he had spared those two--well! Take a
look at my tail skid, Old Timer. Is it broken off?"
"No. It's cracked and sort of cockeyed, but a piece of wire from that
fence over there will fix it all O.K. What happened?"
McGee fixed him with a baleful glare. "You should ask--with as much
experience as both of us have had with these tricky motors. I choked it
down, that's all. That same little fault has sent many a pilot home in a
wooden box. Go get me a piece of that wire. We'll fix the skid, somehow,
and when I get to Le Bourget I'll set her down on two points. And
listen! From here on in we do--"
"No contour chasing," Larkin completed, forcing a thin smile. "Seems I
heard that somewhere before. Crawl out, Shrimp. You said you wanted to
be out among the flowers and sweet things. Well, here's a sweet thing,
and this field is full of flowers. I brought you down low so you could
enjoy them."
"Yeah! I said I wanted to be among 'em--not pushing 'em up. Hurry over
and get that wire before I do something violent."
2
Thirty minutes later two chastened pilots took off from the level field,
with a half dozen curious French peasants for an audience, and laid a
straight course for Le Bourget. No more acrobatics and no more hedge
hopping. To an observer below they would have resembled two homing
pigeons flying rather close together and maintaining their positions
with a singleness of mind and purpose.
When they reached Le Bourget they circled the 'drome once, noted the
wind socks on the great hangars, and dropped as lightly to the field as
two tardy, truant schoolboys seeking to gain entrance without attracting
notice.
A newly arrived American squadron was stationed at the field, jubilant
over the fact that they were trying their skill on the fast climbing,
fast flying single-seater Spads. Five of these swift little hawks were
now on the line, making ready for a formation flight.
McGee and Larkin introduced themselves to the officer in command,
presented their passes and authority for refueling, and McGee requested
that his tail skid be repaired and his motor checked over.
"Let's stick around and watch this formation flight," McGee then said to
Larkin. "I want to see what these lads can do with a real ship."
"All right, but don't get goggle-eyed. I came up here to see Paris, and
I'm thirty minutes behind time now."
The take-off of the five Spads was good, and in order. McGee noticed
with considerable satisfaction that the flight commander knew his
business, and the four planes under his direction followed his signaled
orders with a precision that would have been creditable in any group of
pilots.
"Nice work!" Red said to an American captain who seemed not at all
impressed.
The captain was six feet tall, burdened by the weight of rank and the
ripe old age of twenty-four or twenty-five years, and was somewhat
skeptical of McGee's judgement. He wondered, vaguely, what this
youthful, freckle-faced, five-foot-six Royal Flying Corps lieutenant
could know about nice work. Why, he couldn't be a day over eighteen--in
fact, he might be less than that. A cadet who had just won his wings,
probably.
"Oh, fair," the captain admitted.
McGee, sensing what was running through the captain's mind, and having
no wish to set him right, winked at Larkin and said:
"Let's go, Buzz. It isn't often that two poor ferry pilots get a
twenty-four hour leave."
Later, as they were bounding cityward in a decrepit, ancient taxi driven
by a bearded, grizzled Frenchman who without make-up could assume a role
in a drama of pirates and freebooters, McGee said to Larkin:
"You know, Buzz, I think a lot of these American pilots are better
prepared for action right now than we were when we got our wings. And we
had hardly gotten ours sewed on when we were ordered to the front. These
fellows will give a good account of themselves."
"I think so, too. Do you remember how the Cadets of our class were sent
up for solo in rickety old planes held together by wire, tape and
chewing gum? Poor devils, they got washed out plenty fast! I've seen 'em
go up when the expression on their faces told that they had forgotten
everything they had learned. No wonder a lot of them took nose dives
into the hangars and hung their planes on smokestacks and church
steeples."
McGee frowned, remembering some of the friends who had tried for their
wings and drew crosses instead. Quickly he threw off the mood with a
laugh.
"Yes, and I was one of those 'poor devils' who forgot. I'll never forget
_that_! I had no more right being up in that old Avro than a hog
has with skates. But England needed pilots and needed them badly. I
guess it was a case of 'what goes up must come down' and the government
gave wings to the ones who came down alive. The others got angels'
wings."
"I suppose so. And before another month passes the need will be greater
than ever. Look what the Germans did to the British Fifth Army just last
month. I'll never know what stopped 'em. But they're not through. What
do you make of that long range gun that is shelling this very city?
"Um-m. Dunno. Seems to me that well directed reconnaissance flights
should be able to locate that gun."
"Maybe; but locate it or not, its purpose is to drive war workers out of
Paris, cripple the hub of supplies and make it more difficult for us to
coordinate the service of supplies through here when they make their
drive at Paris. It'll come within a month. Then we'll need every pilot
and every ship that can get its wheels off the ground. I'm tellin'
you--a month!"
"Think so?"
"I know so! America is going to have her big chance--and may the Lord
help us if she doesn't deliver! I don't know how many combat troops she
has landed, but I do know that her eyes, the air service, is in need of
ships. The French and English are willing to give them all the old, worn
out flying coffins that they can pick up out of junk heaps--old
two-seater Spads, old A.R.'s, 1-1/2 strutter Sopwiths, and crates like
that. If they can get new Spads, like those we saw 'em flying this
morning, or Nieuport 28's, or the Salmsons which their commander has
been trying to get, then all will be jake. Otherwise--" he shrugged his
shoulders expressively.
"Otherwise," McGee took advantage of the pause, "Otherwise they'll
deliver just the same, even if they have to fly Avros, Caudrons or table
tops. Buzz, these Americans over here have fight in their eyes. They've
got spirit."
"Yes, but spirit can't do much without equipment."
"Huh! Ever read any history?"
"What's on your mind now, little teacher? I read enough to pass my exams
in school."
"Then you've forgotten some things about American history, especially
about spirit and equipment. Where was the equipment at Valley Forge?
What about the troops under Washington that took the breastworks at
Yorktown without a single round of powder--just bayonets? What about the
war of 1812, when we had no army and the English thought we had no navy?
You don't remember those--"
"That's just what I do remember," Buzz interrupted, "and that's what I'm
howling about. We never have been prepared with anything except spirit.
Right now we have a lot of good pilots over here and the air service is
having to beg planes from the French and English. And here we are, sent
down to this front to act as instructors to a shipless squadron, at the
very time when the Germans are making ready for another big drive. It's
all wrong. Every minute is precious."
McGee had been looking out of the window of the swaying, lurching cab
that was now threading its way through hurrying traffic. "Forget it!" he
said. "Give Old Man Worry a swift kick. Here we are in Gay Paree. The
war's over for twenty-four hours!"
3
To all allied soldiers on leave of absence from the front, Paris
represented what McGee had voiced to Larkin--a place where the war was
over for the time limits of their passes. Forgotten, for a few brief
hours, were all the memories of military tedium, the roar of guns, the
mud of trenches, the flaming airplane plunging earthward out of
control--all these things were banished by the stimulating thought that
here was the world famous city with all its amusements, its arts, its
countless beauties, open to them for a few magic hours.
The fact that Paris was only a ghost of her former self made no
impression on war-weary troopers. What mattered it, to them, that the
priceless art treasures of the Louvre had been removed to the safety of
the southern interior? Was it their concern that the once mighty and
fearless Napoleon now lay blanketed by tons of sand bags placed over his
crypt to protect revered bones from enemy air raids or a chance hit by
the long range gun now shelling the city? What mattered it that famous
cafes and chefs were now reduced to the simplest of menus; what
difference did it make if the streets were darkened at night; who that
had never seen Paris in peace time could sense that she was a stricken
city hiding her sorrow and travail behind a mask of dogged, grim
determination?
Paris was Paris, to the medley of soldiers gathered there from the four
points of the compass, and it was the more to her credit that she could
still offer amusement to uniformed men and boys whose war-weary minds
found here relief from the drive of duty.
Everywhere the streets were swarming with men in uniform--French,
English, Australian, Canadian, New Zealanders, colored French Colonials,
a few Russians who, following the sudden collapse of their government,
were now soldiers lacking a flag, Scotch Highlanders in their gaudy
kilts, Japanese officers in spick uniforms not yet baptized in the mud
of the trenches--a varied, colorful parade of young men bent on one
great common objective.
At night, the common magnet was the theatre, and the _Folies
Bergeres_, featuring a humorous extravaganza, Zig Zag, in which was
starred a famous English comedian, drew its full quota of fun-seeking
youths.
It was this show that McGee and Larkin had come to see, and at the end
of the first act they were ready to add their praises to the chorus of
approval. During the intermission they strolled out into the flag
bedecked foyer to mingle with a crowd that was ninety per cent military
and which was in a highly appreciative frame of mind. One particularly
pleasing note had been added rather unexpectedly when one of the
feminine stars, in singing "Scotland Forever," had been interrupted by a
group of Highlanders who boosted onto the stage a red-headed,
bandy-legged, kilted Scotchman who had the voice of a nightingale. And
when, somewhat abashed, he took up the refrain, he was joined by a
thunderous chorus from the audience that made the listeners certain that
Scotland would never die so long as such fervor remained in the hearts
of her sons. The English soldiers, not to be outdone, had followed with
"God Save the King" and then, down the aisle with a flag torn from the
walls of the foyer stalked an American sergeant, holding aloft Old Glory
and leading his countrymen in the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner."
Trust a group of soldiers to take charge of a show and run it to suit
themselves. But they were pleased, beyond question, as was evidenced by
the buzzing conversations during the intermission.
"Great show, eh?"
"I'll tell the world!"
"Hey, Joe! You old son-of-a-gun! How'd you get down here? Thought you
were wiped out up at Wipers."
"Huh! Not me! They haven't made the shell that can get me. Look who's
over there with a nice cushy wound to keep him out of trouble. Old Dog
Face himself. Hey! Dog Face ... Come here!"
Such were the greetings of soldiers who hid their real feelings behind a
mask of flippancy.
McGee drew Larkin into an eddy of the milling throng where they could
the better watch what Red termed "the review of the nations." A
strapping big Anzac, with a cockily rosetted Rough Rider hat, strolled
arm in arm with a French Blue Devil from the Alpine Chasseurs. A kilted
Highlander, three years absent from his homeland and bearing four wound
stripes on his sleeve, was trying vainly to teach the words of "Scotland
Forever" to a Russian officer whose precise English did not encompass
the confusing Scotch burr. Mixed tongues, mixed customs, variety of
ideals; infantrymen, cavalrymen, artillerymen, war pilots; men with grey
at the temples and beardless youths; here and there a man on crutches,
here and there an empty sleeve, and many breasts upon which hung medals
awarded for intrepid courage; here grizzled old Frenchmen with backs
bowed by three years of warfare, and there fresh, clean young Americans
recently landed and a little amazed that they should be looked upon as
the hope of the staggering allies. Color, color, color! Confused
tongues, the buzz and babble of a thousand half-heard conversations, the
fragments of marching songs! Here was a cross section of the Allied
Armies, all of them with but one purpose. How could they fail!
The scene had a telling effect upon McGee and Larkin. Wordless, for a
few minutes, they stood watching the throng. It was McGee who spoke
first.
"Did you ever see anything like it, Buzz? Just look at the different
uniforms. There--look over there! A bunch of American Blue Jackets.
Wonder how they got here?"
"Humph! Wonder how all of us got here? That's what I've been thinking
about. This is just a moment snatched from the lives of all these
fellows. What went before? What homes did they come from, and who is
waiting for them? And what comes to them to-morrow? Gee!" He shook his
head, slowly. "It doesn't do to think about it. You want to find out
about them ... and you get to wishing they could all go on back home
to-morrow. Say, who started this talk, anyhow? Come on, let's go back
in."
"Wait a minute!" McGee seized his arm and turned him around. "There's
plenty of time before the curtain. Look, Buzz. See that black fellow
over there in French Colonial O.D.? Came from Algiers, I guess, or
Senegal, maybe. What brought him here, and what sort of stories will he
tell ... when he gets back home? Will he tell about what he did, or will
he talk about what he saw and what others did?"
"Dunno. Why?"
"Well, this has set me to thinking. We're all here on exactly the same
business. The uniform doesn't count so much, nor does the branch of the
service. It's just a question of getting the job done--a sort of 'Heave
Ho! All together, now!' Get me?"
"Yes--I guess so. What are you driving at?"
"This. See that American sergeant over there--the one who carried the
flag down the aisle and jumped up on the stage?"
"Yes. Big fellow, isn't he?"
"You said it! The biggest duck in this puddle, in more ways than one.
And I want to get into the uniform he is wearing. Understand, Buzz? Oh,
I'm proud enough of the one I'm wearing, but when he started the
national anthem, and they all came in on that chorus, 'Oh, say can you
see, by the dawn's early light,'--well, I felt cold shivers running up
and down my backbone. None of the other songs did that to me. Do you get
me, Buzz?"
"Sure. I felt it, too." He put both his hands on Red's shoulders,
holding him off at arm's length. "You want back under the old Stars and
Stripes, don't you? ... you little shrimp!"
"Yes," slowly, "and--yet--"
"I know how you feel. I'm with you, fellow, when you get ready to make
the change."
McGee's eyes lighted with surprise and joy. "Really, Buzz?"
"Surest thing you know!"
"And you don't think we'd feel like--like--"
"We'd feel like two Americans, _going home_. Shake, little feller!
There, I feel better already. Come on, let's go in; that's the curtain
bell."