I remember that shortly after the squadron took up its residence on the Nancy front, the Huns came over and bombed us severely; many of the mechanics were fresh from the factories in England and were quite unaccustomed to seeing the damage that one hundred pounds of high explosive can do to the delicate anatomy of the human being; panic seized them; but a greater fear possessed them when Jimmie's orders burst upon them like the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun; they marched as if on parade into the trenches, recently dug behind the hangars; then Jimmie, smoking an occasional cigarette, strolled up and down in front during the three hours' bombardment.
So the men soon learned, under Jimmie, the value of discipline; it meant their safety when under fire, and it meant freedom from military punishments. They were quick to grasp the fact that any negligence on their part might mean death to the aviator who flew in the neglected aeroplane. Flagrant neglect they soon learned might cause other deaths than those suffered by the unfortunate aviators.
II
There was Sammie, a prototype of the caricatured Englishman in our comic papers. Every American theatre-goer has seen Sammie exaggerated on the music-hall stage.
Sammie was a small boy with an eyebrow on his upper lip and an apparently permanent window over his right eye. Before joining the Flying Corps he had served seventeen months in the trenches as a private; finally, driven mad with filth, rats, and other vermin, he captured an enemy machine-gun emplacement single-handed, and was given a commission. Shortly afterwards he joined the Flying Corps, probably because he could not keep his new uniform clean while in the trenches.
Sammie was always immaculate, and as a uniform gives one very little opportunity to express one's individuality in dress, Sammie carried his handkerchief up his sleeve. Even Generals envied Sammie's field boots and every one who met him wanted to know the name of his tailor.
In peace-time Sammie would have looked like a toy Pom with a ribbon around its neck; but a more imperturbable man in the face of danger never lived.
"My word" was the expression used by Sammie to denote every degree of human emotion. If it was Sammie's lot to draw the occasional egg served in the Bedouin mess, his only remark when it hopped out of reach would be, "My word."
I remember one night when both of our machines were out of action, Sammie and I, who slept in the same hut, went to bed at the early hour of twelve o'clock; at about one in the morning the Huns dropped their first bomb very close to us; a picture of Sammie's mother was on a stand beside the head of his cot; a fragment of the bomb came through the wall of the hut and shattered this picture; I landed, as far as I know involuntarily, in the middle of the floor with a lighted torch in my hand; Sammie saw the shattered remains of his mother's picture; "My word, mother will be pleased," he said, turned over and was sound asleep instantly. I know Sammie slept because he never remarked on my taking a short cut to the trenches through the window.
Another time when a Hun bomb dropped in the officers' trench and failed to explode, Sammie, who was but two feet away, tried to lift it, failed, and then lay full length upon it, believing it to be of the "delay action" variety; when our Major, a bomb expert, appeared on the scene a few moments later and laughingly declared the bomb a "dud," Sammie's embarrassment expressed itself in "My word." If the detonating apparatus of this bomb had been all that the Huns intended it to be, Sammie would have returned to minute specks of dust and his name would have been added to the long list of dead heroes; but since the bomb was a "dud," Sammie was made the butt of his friends' wit.