18
Away from All That
I
A TELEPHONE call for Lanny at the Crillon. He answered, and let out a whoop. “Where are you? Oh, glory! Come right up.” He hung up the receiver. “It's Rick! He got leave!” Lanny rushed out to the lift, to wait for his friend; grabbed him and hugged him, then held him off at arm's length and examined him. “Gee, Rick, you look grand!”
The young flying officer had grown to man's stature. His khaki uniform was cut double in front, making a sort of breastplate of cloth; on the left breast was a white badge, indicating that he had a flying certificate, and high up on both sleeves were eagle wings. His skin was bronzed and his cheeks rosy; flying hadn't hurt him. With his wavy black hair cut close and a brown service cap on top he was a handsome fellow; and so happy over this visit — they were going to see Paris together, and Paris was the world!
“Gee, Rick, how did you manage it?”
“I had done some extra duty, so I had it coming.”
“How long have you got?”
“Till tomorrow night.”
“And how is it, Rick?”
“Oh, not so bad.”
“You've been fighting?”
“I've got two boches that I'm sure of.”
“You havent been hurt?”
“I had one spill — turned over in mud; but fortunately it was soft.”
Lanny led him to the room, and Robbie was glad to see him, of course; he set up the drinks, and Rick took one — they all drank in the air force, too much, he said, it was the only way they could keep going. Lanny drank soda, but said nothing about it. He sat, devouring that gallant figure with his eyes; so proud of his friend, thinking that he, Lanny, would never do anything as exciting and wonderful as that; his father wouldn't let him, his father wanted him to stay at home and make munitions for other men to use. But at least he could hear about it, and live it vicariously. He asked a stream of questions, and Rick answered casually, not much about himself, but about the squadron and what they were doing.
Of course Rick knew what was in his younger friend's mind, the adoration, the hero-worship; and of course it pleased him. But he wouldn't give a sign of it, he'd take it just as he took the job; nothing special, all in the day's work.
Rick could tell now what the censor wouldn't let him put on paper. He was stationed with General Allenby's Third Army, which lay in front of Vimy Ridge. He belonged to what was called the “corps wing,” the group of fliers who served a particular body of troops. Observation planes equipped with two-way radios, or with photographic apparatus, went out to observe enemy positions, and fighting planes went along to protect them. Rick flew a machine known as a “Sopwith one-and-a-half strutter.” It was a single-seater, such planes being lighter and faster, and the competition of the German Fokkers had forced it. Both sides now had what were called “interrupter gears”; that is, the action of the machine gun was synchronized with the propeller, so that the stream of bullets went through the whirling blades without hitting. So you didn't have to aim your gun, but just your plane; your job was to get on the other fellow's tail, and see him straight through your sights, and then cut loose. You would see two fighting planes maneuvering for position, darting this way and that, diving, rolling over, executing every sort of twist and turn. That sight was seen over Paris pretty nearly every day, and Lanny hadn't missed it.
His friend told many things about this strange new job of fighting in the air. In the sector where he flew, it was hard to distinguish the trenches, for the entire ground was a chaos of shell-craters. He flew at a speed of ninety miles an hour, and at a height of twelve hundred and fifty feet. When you came down suddenly from that height, you had headache, earache, even toothache, but it all passed away in three or four hours. The most curious thing was that you could hear the whine of the bullet before it reached you, and if you ducked quickly you might dodge it. Somehow that gave Lanny the biggest thrill of anything he had heard about the war; a mile and a half a minute, a quarter of a mile above the earth, and playing tag with bullets!
II
England and France were getting ready for the big spring “push”; everybody knew where it was to be, but it was a matter of good form not to name places. “Be silent,” read the signs all over Paris; “enemy ears are listening.” Rick said the air push was on all the time; the two sides were struggling incessantly for mastery. The English had held it pretty much through 1916; now it was a local matter, varying from place to place and from week to week. The Fokkers were fast, and their men fought like demons. The problem of the English was to train fliers quickly enough; they were used up faster than they could be sent across.
Rick stopped after he had said that; for it wasn't good form to reveal anything discouraging. But now and then he would mention a name. “Aubrey Valliance — you remember that fellow with the straw-colored hair you raced with, swimming? He was downed last week, poor chap. We don't know what happened — he just didn't come back.” Lanny got the picture of those bright-cheeked English schoolboys, eighteen or nineteen, some younger, having told a fib about their ages. They would volunteer, and have a few tests of eyesight and sense of balance, and then be rushed to a training camp, listen to a few lectures, go up a few times with an instructor to be taught the rudiments, then go up alone and practice this and that, maybe a week, maybe less, thirty hours of flying, or even as-few as twenty — and then off to France.
“Replacements,” they were called; half a dozen would arrive in a truck at night and be introduced to their fellows; you hardly had time to remember their names. They would look on the bulletin board and see themselves scheduled to fly at dawn. They would have a drink, and a handshake, or maybe a salute. They would say: “Very good, sir,” and step into their seats; the propellers would begin to roar, and away they would go, one after another. Maybe eight would go out, and only six would come back; you would wait, and listen, trying not to show your concern; after a certain period there was no use thinking about them any more, for the plane had only so much petrol, and no way to get any more. If the chap was down in enemy territory, you wouldn't know whether he was alive or dead; unless he had put up an extra-good fight, in which case an enemy flier might bring a bundle containing his boots and cap and pocketbook, and drop them onto the camp.
“Don't you ever get afraid, Rick?” asked Lanny. That was after Robbie had gone out to keep his engagements, and the two were alone.
Rick hesitated. “I guess I do; but it's no good thinking about. You've a job to do, and that's that.”
Lanny recalled Mrs. Emily Chattersworth's mother, that very old lady who had told about the American Civil War. One of her stories had to do with a young Confederate officer whose knees were shaking before a battle, and someone accused him of being scared. “Of course I'm scared,” he said; “if you were half as scared as I am you'd have run away long ago.”
Rick said that was about it. He said that now and then there was some youngster whose nerves came near to breaking, and you had to figure out how to buck him up and get him started. The hardest job was that of the ground officer who had to send chaps out, knowing they weren't fit; but there was no choice, they had to keep up with the Germans. Apparently things weren't any better with them, because the score was about even. You'd soon know if they had the edge.
III
The pair went for a walk on the boulevards. Paris in wartime; every sort of uniform you could imagine, and Rick pointing them out to his friend: English Tommies out for a lark; Australians and New Zealanders, tall fellows with looped-up hats; Highlanders in kilts — the Germans called them “ladies from hell”; Italians in green; French zouaves with baggy knee-pants; African colonials, who fought fiercely, but looked bewildered in a great city. The poilus had a new uniform of gray-blue; the picturesque kepi rouge and the baggy red pants had offered too good a target.