Roy Blakeley.
I have included this letter from Roy partly because it contained the earliest portentous hints of those sprightly narratives which were later to create such a stir in Boy Scout circles, but more particularly because of its reference to the Schmitt affair.
I remembered the case of Schmitt very well, for it was a nine days’ wonder in Bridgeboro when this jolly, fat German grocer disappeared just in time to escape a visit from the Secret Service men. I never knew just what he was suspected of but I understood that incriminating papers, of a very treasonable purport, were found in the rooms over his store which he and his whole brood had so suddenly vacated.
The news that Tom Slade had worked for this man interested me, of course, and fitted pretty well with the secret knowledge which I had. Had Schmitt’s Grocery been the kindergarten where the poor, ignorant boy had learned the first contaminating lesson of disloyalty? Well, here I was with my green spectacles on again, and everything looked green. In any event, I was glad to know that Schmitt had been caught and lodged in Uncle Sam’s Penitentiary, where he belonged. Perhaps, I thought, the worst thing that he did was to insinuate his false reasoning into the simple mind of his employee and corrupt the clear, honest viewpoint of a young boy....
Narrative written for Roy Blakeley in the Epernay Hospital, and intended originally to form a complete story under the title of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps.
CHAPTER I—COMRADES
The following story of a remarkable career was told me mostly by my young friend, Archibald Archer, who was for a time an occupant of the adjoining cot to mine in the Epemay Hospital. I shall take the liberty of enlisting him as a sort of joint narrator with myself, in the sense of using his own language when that seems desirable. Much that he told me, I jotted down in shorthand without his knowledge. He was recovering from slight injuries received while serving with “extinction” (I suppose he meant distinction) in the Motorcycle Corps. He lived on a farm in New York State, rolled his R’s, ate apples by the peck when he could get them, and collected souvenirs by the ton. On the whole, I liked him and I am sure that when he was not in the mood of banter he was honest and sincere.
He and Tom Slade had crossed the ocean together as ship’s boys, and Archer had remained in France resolved to win glory under “Generral Perrshing.” He became an assistant cook in the Lorraine sector where his most dramatic exploit in the cause of humanity was the placing of a bowl of soup on a listening post in No Man’s Land, in such a way that in the still hours of the night it tumbled its contents upon the proud head of a sumptuously attired German lieutenant who had leaned against the post.
He did not receive the Distinguished Service Cross for this deed of heroism, but no doubt it was appreciated, for he shortly became orderly to some officers and has the lace of an officer’s puttee to prove it.