CHAPTER I—THE GREENHORN
A rickety-looking cab, containing two passengers and much luggage, and driven by a gray-haired cocher, drew slowly up to a high iron gate and came to a halt. And the wheels had scarcely stopped before two young chaps, with exclamations of deep satisfaction and relief, literally tumbled out of the ancient vehicle and stared about them.
“Well, Don, here we are at last!” cried the elder.
“Yes, George. And this is certainly one of the greatest moments of my life. Tomorrow I start my training to become a pilot,” exclaimed the other, such a degree of enthusiasm expressed in his tone as to make the wrinkled cab driver turn, survey him with a curious grin, and comment in the French tongue:
“I guess that’s the way most of them act until something happens.”
But the boys scarcely heard him.
Surmounting the iron gate, inside of which an armed sentry was slowly pacing, this inscription in large, bold letters, stood out against the sky:
“École d’Aviation Militaire de Beaumont.”
“I certainly hope the Boches won’t get you, young monsieur,” continued the driver. “But, if you don’t mind, I’d be glad if you’d will your life insurance to me.”
“I’ll think about it,” laughed the boy. He deposited several pieces of silver in the palm of the hand held toward him, then began the task of getting his luggage off the vehicle. By the time this was done the sentry had opened the great iron gate.
With a hasty good-bye, the boys turned toward the soldier and producing several important-looking papers handed them to him.
And while the proceeding was underway this series of comments passed between five young men, attired in the horizon blue uniform of the French poilu, who were strolling inside the great enclosure not far away:
“Well, well! What have we here?”
“No doubt a couple more pilots.”
“But, if I’m not mistaken, one of them is actually wearing the stars and wings insignia of the air service on his uniform. He’s a corporal.”
“So he is! Such a young chap, too!—looks, for all the world, like a high-school boy on his way home from the place of demerit marks and ciphers.”
“Let’s give ’em the grand quiz.”
It took the sentry only an instant to scan the papers and nod his head in approval, and another instant for the newcomers to gather up their possessions and head for the group of five.
“Step up and give your names, boys.” The speaker was a tall, angular youth with bushy red hair and twinkling blue eyes.
“Don Hale,” answered one of the newcomers.
“George Glenn,” replied the other.
“Of the Lafayette Squadron?”
“Exactly! And on a couple of days’ furlough.”
And one of the natural but not very agreeable ways of the world was exemplified then and there; for Don Hale, the prospective student of the great military flying school, immediately found his presence totally ignored, while his companion, member of the most famous escadrille of the aviation service, began to receive the homage and admiration due to one who had attained such an exalted position in life. To be a member of the Lafayette Flying Corps was indeed a signal honor—an honor coveted above all things by the majority of the American aviation students.
Don Hale, smiling a little to himself, thereupon seized the opportunity to examine the view outspread before him.
And what the boy saw made him draw a deep, long breath, like one who has just experienced a feeling of vast satisfaction and pleasure. It was an immense level field, or rather a series of fields. Far in the distance long rows of low canvas hangars and tents stood out in faint gray tones against the background of earth and sky. Nearer at hand were lines of rather dingy-looking wooden structures—the barracks—and isolated buildings used for various purposes, while dominating all rose a tall and graceful wireless mast.
Far more interesting to the American lad, however, was the sight of several airplanes performing evolutions in the distant sky. The sun had descended in the west and its cheerful rays no longer touched the earth, but every now and again one or another of the graceful flying machines caught the glow, and, as if touched by a fairy’s wand, became transformed for the moment into a flashing object of silver and gold.
Don Hale felt his pulse quicken. How wonderful it was to be up in the heavens, soaring with all the ease, the grace, the certainty of a huge bird of the air! It made him long for the time to come when he, too, would have his ambition fulfilled! Presently a deep gruff voice broke in upon his meditations.
“Better come down to earth, son.”
The red-headed chap had spoken.
“Sure thing!” laughed the new student. “What’s that, sir—my last job, you ask? Oh, driving a Red Cross ambulance near the Verdun front.”
“I must say we seem to have met a couple of real heroes,” chuckled the other. “And now, to show you that I haven’t forgotten my Fifth Avenue manners, I’ll introduce these would-be flyers, most of whom as yet haven’t risen above the grasshopper stage of the game.”
Thereupon, with many chuckles, he presented Gene Shannon, Cal Cummings, Ben Holt and Roy Mittengale, adding that his own name was Tom Dorsey.
“Glad to know you all!” declared Don Hale, heartily.
“So am I,” exclaimed George.
“Very gratifying indeed, I’m sure!” laughed Dorsey. “We all hope that later on some people about whom we are hearing a whole lot won’t be so glad to meet us.”
“Oh, you coming aces!” grinned Ben Holt.
“Hooray, hooray, for the future cannon-flying express!” chuckled Mittengale. Then, turning toward Don, he said: “I suppose that the day you didn’t run into at least a half dozen or so hair-breadth escapes must have seemed like a pretty dull one?”
“I had all the close calls I wanted,” confessed the former ambulance driver.
“And yet you are now going in for something which at times ought to make that Red Cross work look like little rides of joy. Ever take a spin in a plane?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh, boy! There’s some job ahead of you, then.” Mittengale laughed. “You’ll have to get right down to business.”
“You can just better believe I will!” declared Don, enthusiastically. “I’m mighty anxious for the time to arrive when I can go up to business.”
“It may never come,” suggested Ben Holt. “’Tisn’t everybody who is fitted to be an airman. One or two bad spills—an airplane ready for the scrap pile, or a student now and then killed on the training field, and it’s all off with some!”
“If you don’t look out, Holt, we’ll elect you chairman and sole member of our committee on pessimism,” laughed Dorsey. “Say, son,”—he addressed Don—“I suppose you have all your papers?”
“Yes, and owing to my father having been a member of a Franco-American aviation corps I didn’t have much trouble in getting them,” returned Don. “He’s now an instructor in an American aviation school.”
“What did they do to you? I’d like to know if your experiences were like my own.”
“Well, here’s the story,” laughed the new élève[[1]] pilot. “I hoofed it to the recruiting office, which is located in the Invalides at Paris, filled out a questionnaire, signed a document requiring me to obey the military laws of France and be governed and punished thereby; then, after that agony was over, the medical man took me in charge. I just had to show him that I was able to balance myself on one foot with eyes closed, jump straight up from a kneeling position, and also walk a straight line after having been whirled around and around on a revolving stool until all the joy in life seemed to have gone.”
“Spies are Everywhere”
“Ugh!” grunted Dorsey. “The very recollection of that ordeal makes me wish to recollect something else.”
“The kind of air-sickness you get by the unearthly dips and twists of an airplane has sea-sickness beaten to a frazzle,” commented Ben Holt, pleasantly.
“Then I’m not anxious to make its acquaintance,” grinned Don. “I had a few nerve tests, too, made in a pitch-dark room, which weren’t altogether pleasant. Among other things, a revolver was unexpectedly fired several times close beside me.”
“It’s tough, how they treat a perfectly respectable chap,” chirped Cal Cummings.
“My, what a relief it was to receive a service order requiring me to report to the headquarters of the Flying Corps of Dijon!”
“That’s an old story with us,” drawled Mittengale. “Once there, you had to answer a lot more questions. Then you paid a visit to the ‘Vestiare,’ where the soldiers are outfitted. A uniform, shoes, socks, overcoat, hat and knapsack were passed out, and thereby, and also perforce, another chapter added to your brief but eventful history.”
“Besides all that, I received a railroad pass to come here, and also three sous, representing that many days’ pay,” chuckled the new candidate. “The salary I’ve already squandered,” he confessed, with a grin.
“Awful! The French Government should be told about it,” exclaimed Gene Shannon, laughingly. “But now, son, perhaps you would like to begin a new chapter by paying the captain a very necessary call?”
“To be sure!” said Don.
He stooped over, preparatory to gathering up his belongings, when Shannon stopped him.
“Leave the department store there, Don,” he remarked. “We’ll send some of the Annamites over to wrestle with ’em. Now come along.”
The “Annamites,” both Don and George knew, were the little yellow-skinned Indo-Chinese, who had journeyed from far-off Asia to give their services to the French Government.
Led by Tom Dorsey, the crowd began to pilot the new student and his chum toward headquarters. To Don Hale it was all wonderfully interesting. The boy was filled with that eager curiosity and anticipation which is one of the glorious possessions of youth. A new life—indeed a startlingly strange life, would soon be opening out before him—one that held vast possibilities, and also terrifying dangers. Whither would it lead him?
“I say, young chap”—Ben Holt’s voice broke in upon his thoughts—“you’ve got to mind your eye in this place. No talking back to officers; no overstaying your leave, eh, Monsieur Nightingale?”
“Oh, cut it out!” snapped Mittengale.
“Yes, there’s a chap who knows!” Holt chuckled. “One day Roy thought he’d enjoy a few extra hours in Paree—result: a nice little chamber two stories underground; a rattling good wooden bench, but uncommonly hard, as a bed; a bottle of water for company and eight days of delightful idleness, to meditate upon the inconsiderate ways of military men.”
“It was well worth it,” growled Mittengale. “Some tender-hearted chaps smuggled in paper and I wrote sixty-four pages of my book entitled ‘Life and Adventures of an Airman in France!’”
“An airman in France!” snickered Ben. “There’s nerve for you! Why, he hasn’t even been above the three hundred foot level yet.”
“Well, that’s just about two hundred and seventy-five feet higher than your best record,” retorted Mittengale, witheringly. “Don’t talk, you poor little grasshop.”
Don Hale paid no attention to these pleasantries, for, at that moment, one of the distant machines circling aloft, now dusky, gray objects, sometimes but faintly visible in the darkening sky, began to volplane. Down, down, came the biplane, in wide and graceful spirals, toward the earth. A few more turns and the wings were silhouetted faintly for the last time against the sky; another instant and they cut across the turf in still swiftly moving lines of grayish white.
“Good work, that!” cried Don, breathlessly.
“Fine!” agreed George.
“Won’t I be jolly glad when I can manage a machine like that!” Don happened to glance at his chum’s face, and was surprised to see a swift, subtle change come across it, an almost sad expression taking the place of his usual buoyant look. “What’s the matter, old chap?”
“I was thinking what a dangerous life you are about to begin, Don. As some of the boys in the squadron say: ‘Death is often carried as a passenger by the airman.’”
“And you engaged in the very same work yourself!” laughed Don. “There’s consistency for you! I understand, though, just how you feel about it, George. Honestly, at times, I’ve worried a whole lot about you. But”—a determined light flashed into his eyes—“we must ‘carry on’ the big job before us.”
“That’s the way to look at it,” acquiesced George, heartily. “You have a cool head and steady nerves, Don; and you’ll be called upon to use all your wits, all your courage and resourcefulness, as never before in the whole course of your life. Great adventures are ahead!”
“Better wait until he gets out of the ground-class before talking that way,” grinned Ben Holt, dryly.
“Don’t discourage the infant class, Holt,” put in Dorsey. “Now, boys ”—he turned to face Don and George—“that good-sized building you spy just across the field is the headquarters of the captain and moniteurs—teachers we call ’em in the good old lingo of the United States. By the way, know much French?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Don.
“Good! Frankly speaking, some of these chaps here do not.” Dorsey chuckled mirthfully. “Their efforts sound weird and wild. And sometimes it has the effect of making the moniteurs act wildly and weirdly.”
“The idea of Dorsey talking about French!” scoffed Ben Holt. “Why, he can’t even speak English. An Englishman’s the authority for that.”
“One’s shortcomings should never be mentioned in polite society,” grinned Tom. “And now, Don, while you’re over there parleying the parlez-vous we’ll get a bunch of the Oriental Wrecking Crew, the Annamites, to lift your traps.”
“As a rule, I rather object to having my things lifted,” laughed Don. “But this time it’s all right.”
“You’ll find our crowd, with a few additions equally handsome, in the big barracks—the third from the end. Now scoot.”
While Don and George didn’t exactly “scoot,” they nevertheless immediately left the group and made good time toward the building indicated. Within a few minutes they entered and were conducted by an orderly to the captain’s sanctum.
If Don had expected any effusive greeting or words of commendation for his willingness to give his services to aid the cause of France he would have been greatly disappointed. The captain, very alert and authoritative in manner, greeted the two boys in a casual, disinterested sort of way, and examined Don’s papers.
Then came the usual number of formalities and an order to report to the sergeant on the aviation field on the following morning.
Don Hale was now duly enrolled as an élève, or student pilot, in one of the most important of the great Bleriot flying schools in France.
| [1] | Élève—pupil. |