When the war came Jack was among the first to come forward. He went across to France with a Western Canadian battalion. In the next year Cullum was decorated for conspicuous gallantry three times, twice by the King and once by the French Government with the Croix de Guerre. His first act of bravery was performed when the Huns blew up a mine in No Man's Land, injuring many of his battalion. He, heedless of danger—and orders—rushed over the top, and attended his men in plain view of the enemy. For this he was given the Military Cross by King George; and a bar to the M.C. and the French decoration came later for acts of almost reckless courage. He was the first Canadian to win three decorations, and now he was thought to bear a charmed life by his comrades. Shortly after the last bit of ribbon came to him he applied for transfer to the fighting forces, resigning his commission in the medical corps, to accept a lower rank in the infantry. And just following this noble act, while sitting in a mess hut two miles behind the lines at Noulette Wood, a stray shell came through the roof, slightly injuring two other officers, and mortally wounding Cullum. His generous soul displayed itself to the last, for he absolutely refused to have his wounds dressed until after the others had been attended to, maintaining that his injuries were slight. And the gallant Cullum died in the ambulance on his way to the hospital.
But of course they are not all the fine types. You occasionally meet what the English call a rotter, but his kind is exceedingly scarce. After all, the finest type is the ordinary common soldier, without any special qualifications, who, day in and day out, night in and night out, performs the dirty, rough, hard, monotonous, and often very dangerous, tasks of the Tommy; who does his duty, grumbling perhaps, swearing often, but does it without cowardice, without hope of honor or emolument, except the honor of doing his duty and doing it like a man. When his work is done he comes back, if still alive and well, to sleep in wet clothes, on a mud floor, under a leaky roof or no roof, often hungry, or his appetite satisfied by bully beef and biscuit.
Yes; with all his swearing, despite any lead-swinging, the finest type of all, the real hero of the war, is the ordinary common soldier!
CHAPTER XIV
AIR FIGHTING
Up to the present the greatest aid given by the air service to any of the armies in this war is that of acting as scouts; or, in other words, the air service supplies the eyes of the army and navy.
Much is said of the time when thousands of planes will be used as offensive weapons on a large scale. It is quite possible that in the future this will come to pass; but up to the present, spasmodic bombardments of fortified positions by a few planes, and the useless murder of non-combatants by German zeppelins, has been the limit of the attacking power of air fleets. There are spectacular fights in the air between airmen of the opposing sides; and, when one considers the limited perspective of a man living in a seven-foot ditch, the monotony of such a life, and man's natural love of competition, one can easily understand the deep interest taken in these air duels by the men in the trenches.
One sometimes sees six or seven battles in the heavens in one afternoon, and another dozen machines driven back by shells from our anti-aircraft guns. Tennyson's prophetic words, written long ago in Locksley Hall, are indeed fulfilled:—
For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained
a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Let us hope that after this war for liberty and freedom has ended in the subjugation of militarism, his further prophecy in regard to "the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world" may also come true.