It wasn’t really fun, it was only the pitifully weak effort to meet suffering, loneliness, homesickness and fear with bravado.
There is no one in all the world more lonely than a soldier in a hospital. Time becomes what it really is, endless, and without hope of a change on the morrow.
And the pay for it all was a gold wound chevron to wear on the sleeve, or a dangling, glittering medal testifying to courage and sacrifice!
215CHAPTER XI
The Ace and the Spy
1
So slow was McGee’s recovery that it was the middle of September before he received his final discharge from the hospital and was given orders to rejoin his old squadron, now operating in the St. Mihiel salient. Three days prior to his release the American Army, operating on a purely American front, had attacked the Germans in the St. Mihiel salient with such determined vigor, and the entire preparation conducted with such successful secrecy, as to take the Germans by complete surprise, overrun all opposition and recover for France many miles of territory long held by the invaders. Thousands of prisoners, and arms of all calibre, were captured in the swift stroke, and all France was ringing with praise of the endeavor.
News of the progress of the battle reached McGee just before his final discharge. He entertained high hopes of rejoining the squadron in time to participate in the feast of victory, but by the 15th, three days after the battle was begun, the salient had been pinched out and the battle won.
216On the 16th, when McGee reached Ligny-en-Barrois, which had served as General Pershing’s field headquarters at the beginning of the operation, he found that his squadron had been withdrawn from the sector and sent somewhere else.
Where? No one seemed to know. Furthermore, no one seemed to care a great deal. A pilot lost from his squadron, or a soldier lost from his regiment, was no new thing in France. It happened daily. Men were discharged from hospitals, ordered to a certain point to rejoin their commands, only to discover on reaching there that the outfit had seemingly vanished in thin air.