But there was one quarter where pride was lost in a sense of personal sorrow and bereavement, and that was in the local scout troop, of which Tom had been a member and a moving spirit.
I remember very well meeting Roy Blakeley as I stepped off the train that afternoon and, knowing him for the light-hearted youngster that he was, his condition seemed pitiable.
“Have you got a New York paper?” he asked me. “Is it true?”
He had evidently been waiting for the evening papers which came down on the train that I usually take, and as he stood there, trim and spruce in his scout regalia, his hat on the back of his head as usual, and craning his neck for a glimpse of the paper even before I unfolded it, his evident grief went to my heart.
“Yes, it’s true, I’m afraid,” I said.
“You remember about Quentin Roosevelt,” he almost pleaded. “They thought for a while he was saved—taken prisoner——”
“Yes, that hope was justified, Roy,” I told him, “because all that was known for a few days was that he had been in combat with a Hun plane and had not returned. This is different. You’ve got to face the fact and not flinch, just the same as Tom faced the enemy—without flinching.”
I opened the paper and we stood there together in a little recess of the Bridgeboro Station, and while I read the article aloud Roy’s eyes were riveted upon it, as if he almost doubted the truth of my words. In the Temple Camp office in the big bank building across the street hung a service flag with a single star upon it. It was there that Tom Slade had been employed. I noticed how Roy’s eyes wandered over to it every few seconds as if that, since it still hung there, somehow proved the falsity of the published reports.
JERSEY BOY’S DRAMATIC END
THOMAS SLADE OF THE FLYING CORPS