"Chuck it!" he exclaimed. "Not my fault, really. If this is the R.A.F. idea of a sensible and serviceable get-up, I'm sorry for the R.A.F."
"It'll come in handy when you sign on as a cinema chucker-out après la guerre, George," chimed in another, as he deftly adjusted his cap and made sure that his brightly-gilded buttons were fulfilling those important functions ordained by the Air Ministry Regulations and Service Outfitters. He shot a rapid glance through the window, for the long corridor was now ejecting the crowd of cadets in a continuous stream of khaki, mingled with blue.
"Buck up, George!" continued the last speaker, addressing a slightly-built youth who, red in the face, was bending over his up-raised right knee. "What's wrong now?"
The individual addressed as George—and in the R.A.F. it is a safe thing to address a man as George in default of giving him his correct name—explained hurriedly and vehemently, directing his remarks with the utmost impartiality both to his would-be benefactor and to a refractory roll of cloth that showed a decided tendency to refuse to coil neatly round his leg.
"These rotten puttees, Derek!" explained the victim. "I've had a proper puttee mornin'—have really. Got up twenty minutes before réveillé, too. Razor blunt as hoop-iron; hot water was stone cold; three fellows in the bath-room before me; an' some silly josser's pinched my socks. Not that that matters much though," he added, brightening up at the idea of having outwitted a practical joker. "I'm not wearing any. Then, to cap the whole caboodle, I lost a button off my tunic in the scrum at the mess-room door."
Derek Daventry, one of a batch of newly-entered flight-cadets at Averleigh, was a tall, lightly-built fellow of eighteen and a few months. Dark-featured, his complexion tanned by constant exposure to sun and rain during his preliminary cadet training, supple of limb and brimful of mental and physical alertness, he was but one of many of a new type—a type evolved since the fateful 4th day of August, 1914—the aerial warriors of Britain.
The second son of a naval officer, Derek had expressed a wish to enter the Royal Air Force, or, rather, the Royal Naval Air Force as it then was, from the moment when it became apparent that the schoolboy of to-day must be a member of one of the branches of His Majesty's Service to-morrow. Captain Daventry, R.N., D.S.O., and a dozen other letters after his name, was equally keen upon getting Derek into the navy by the post-entry of midshipmen process, thus making good an opportunity that had been denied the lad at an age when he was eligible for Osborne.
"It's not only now," declared Captain Daventry. "One has to consider what is to be done after the war."
"Time enough for that, Pater," rejoined Derek. "The end of the 'duration' seems a long way off yet."
"Possibly," said his father. "On the other hand it may be much sooner than most people imagine. Of course I know that there are thousands of youngsters similarly situated to yourself, but the hard fact remains that the war must end sooner or later."