I shouldn’t be surprized if I swayed lightly on my feet—a mere suggestion of being knocked slightly off my pins. There he was, same as before—fleshy, dark face, pop eyes of light blue, three creases between his brows and deep-cut lines through the fat around his mouth. He looked more sullen than ever, and his black hair was much thinner.
If I was knocked for a row of Abyssinian applejack barrels, he was at least three laps ahead of me. Just as an ungodly feeling of joy and well-being went frolicking through my hardening arteries, his mouth was working spasmodically in an endeavor to say something. He had leaped to his feet like a shot, the other two being a split-second behind him, and he stood there as stiff as I was at my first Fireman’s Grand Supper Entertainment and Ball back in Utah, where I originated.
“Rest!” I grinned, as the two soldiers relaxed.
But not Marston. He was unable to do anything momentarily.
In a flash I grasped the explanation. Marston had been made an officer from a sergeant during the war, and undoubtedly, when the regular army was formed from the temporary troops, he had been unable to pass the exams on such military matters as Latin, English literature and the biennial theorem. Consequently he, like many others, went back to his former grade.
“So you’re a sergeant now, and you’re to be my flight sergeant all summer!” I observed pleasantly.
How I was going to pay him back for days of mental agony was making a new man of me as I stood and looked at him. You may, brethren, give vent to several loud, uncultivated snorts at the idea of me being in mental agony about anything. To tell the truth, I figured when I was a cadet that the country might struggle along without me in the flying corps, and I didn’t give three whoops in hallelujah whether or not I was an officer.
But I did want to fly, and I wanted to get to France, and I didn’t care whether or not I was carrying gold bars on my shoulders or a corporal’s stripes on my sleeve. Any man who wanted to be an officer could go to a training camp and get the commission in three months. It took a lucky flyer six months and a few broken bones to get his.
Any man who became a flying cadet had his mind set on flying, and George William Marston was the nastiest, meanest obstacle in the way I had ever come across. He gave an order in a way that made it sound like an insult. And he seemed to take delight in rubbing our noses, particularly mine, in the dirt and then trying to discharge us if we objected to the smell. Of course, my nose was unduly prominent. Gents, he sure rode me into the ground.