“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.
57McGee, 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.”