Then he went to a sordid little shack where languished a certain French soldier, Lauzerne by name, whom he knew and liked. Here is a time when I should like to know just what he said. But at least I know what Lauzerne said. Slade asked him if he would be willing to help him in a certain matter that night “if things came around right.” Lauzerne asked what it was, for, though presumably of French impulsiveness and generosity, he was a cautious poilu. Slade told him (“I suppose in that stupid drawl of his,” Archer observes) that if a certain German airplane should make a landing on the grounds that night he hoped to go away in it and advise the allies of their peril.
“Ziss ees—what you say—crazee!” exclaimed Lauzerne.
To which Slade replied that all he wanted Lauzerne to do was to turn the propeller for him, but that he wasn’t sure of anything yet.
We have it on his own authority that Lauzerne looked at him with dismay for full half a minute and that Slade said, “What’s the matter with you?”
Then it was that Lauzerne threw his hands into the air, his fingers spread wide, and uttered the national exclamation of France, more eloquent than the Marseillaise:
“Oi, la, la! Oi, la, la!”
[2]. The supreme and final test for an airman before he enters upon his regular war duties.
[3]. A condition in which a number of guards around the enclosure being removed, those remaining must lengthen their patrols in order to cover the ground.
[4]. Approaching a balloon in an airplane and puncturing it with a rocket.