Part 2

“If the Trente-Neuf is like its C.O,” Langdon said to his flying mates, “this dump’s going to be a home. Guess we can work here.”

For anybody looking for work, the place could supply the limit. Having heard that the air branch was the eyes of the Army, the Artillery, Infantry--and even the Medical Corps, through force of bad habit--were incessantly asking for observations. They did not care much what was observed, but they liked to keep the Air Service in hot water. These old line branches know how easy it is to loaf when it rains, or the fog gets too heavy; so they figure that, being the highest branch of the Service, aviation should do its stuff while others sleep. And the young branch, extending itself to the limit, made those observations; flew when flying was out of the question, and sacrificed men when men were scarce.

* * * * *

That evening, by low candles in the Trente-Neuf’s mess, Langdon and his two mates met the outfit. Except for one, it was easy to know. That one, Lieutenant Charles Mudd, F.F.V., A.S., U.S.R., was hard for Langdon to meet because he had met him before.

F.F.V. Mudd and Langdon had both been assigned to the 10th Aero Squadron for shipment overseas. Together, at Mitchel Field, they had reported in to the 10th’s old topkick, Sergeant Benton; and upon reporting, when the 10th’s C.O. was absent, the Old Man had had them sign the register. Langdon had signed first, and in a self-conscious way.

“Put down your rank, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Dad Benton had said. “There’s no misters in this man’s Army. Put down your ‘Lieutenant, First’, and your ‘A.S., U.S.R’.”

Next, Lieutenant Mudd signed. But first he found a resting place for his swagger stick, and deposited his gold tipped cigaret on the edge of Dad’s blotter. And when that baby signed, he signed--and how!

“First Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd, F.F.V., A.S., U.S.R.”

“What the hell’s all this ‘F.F.V.’ stuff?” the old sergeant quizzed.

“That, suh, is, First Families of Virginia,” Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd answered.

Of course, his tone of voice was the tone that should be used when a lieutenant speaks to an enlisted man. And it went just about as far as the talk of a lieutenant usually goes with an enlisted man. The old sergeant, with a stroke of the broad pen, struck out the F.F.V.

“There are no F.F.V’s in this man’s Army, Lieutenant Mudd.”

Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd stepped back. His pale face grew even paler. The sensitive lips and chin quivered, and the flesh above his knees prickled within their well tailored confines. His breath came hard, his eyes flooded, then the proud youth fell to chewing his lower lip. The Army, uncouth thing that it is, had taken him for another ride.

Finally, deciding against mixing with a lowly sergeant, Lieutenant Mudd retrieved his swagger stick and cigaret, and strode to the door. He hesitated upon the threshold long enough to say--

“I’ll report this, Sawgent.”

“Report and be damned,” the old topkick mused, and closed the register.

More than a quarter of a century in the service of Uncle Sam had placed Sergeant Dad Benton in a position where lieutenants, and even higher rankers, were of no more importance than the most lowly 10th Aero buck. With the ever expanding bubble that was the war of T7, wise heads of Dad’s caliber were only too few. Newly made captains, suddenly advanced majors and dizzy colonels came hurriedly into the old man’s council to ascertain just what gentlemen of their rank should do under this, that and the other condition. And they got their answers.

“You’ll find the answer to that, sir,” the old man would say, after twisting his long mustaches for maybe as much as ten seconds, “on page so and so, paragraph this or that in your Blue Book.”

And how any man, even in twenty-seven years, could memorize--page and paragraph--as large a volume as Army Regulations, is beyond the understanding of one who could never remember which of two was the right foot.

So you can see, First Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd’s report, if made, caused no ripple on the already troubled waters of Mitchel Field. And Mudd’s report, very likely, was turned in because, in the several weeks of his stay with the 10th, the lieutenant was hard to get along with. He wanted salutes from the enlisted men. Enlisted men, though, seldom salute those who fail to command their spontaneous respect; and Mudd was out of luck.

Shortly after the 10th’s arrival upon an active field in France, a plane crew sent Mudd into the air with an almost empty gasoline tank, two flying-wire turnbuckles unsafetied and a landing gear wheel loosed and ready to fall off. When the motor died at five thousand feet, Mudd came down for a landing. When he hit the ground, the right wheel bounced through his lower off-side wing and went places. The small pursuit plane, a Nieuport 27, with one wheel missing, somersaulted three times, by the count, and Mudd came up from the wreckage like an angry hen from a messed up nest. Shades of Southern hospitality and gentility! What a yell went up!

However, the 10th Aero was a good outfit. It was also a mighty useful outfit and had an important top sergeant in its orderly room.

“The whole damn’ affair must have been just an accident,” Dad Benton convinced the benzine board appointed to smell into Mudd’s rotten charges. “Why, these 10th boys are worked to death. Sixty-odd pursuit planes in the air for five periods a day. Of course now and then something is going to go wrong.”

The benzine board made its report. Headquarters made a move. Mudd was the pawn. And because the 10th gang ran with every other gang at Issoudun’s many fields, headquarters made the move big enough to put Mudd out of danger for all time. He, First Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd, F.F.V., was sent to observation, away from Issoudun.

* * * * *

Now, with the Trente-Neuf, Langdon and Mudd were in the same outfit once again.

“How are they breaking, F.F.V?” Langdon asked.

Mudd gazed through Langdon and went to his place at table. A quiver of anticipation went through the room. And that told Langdon that Lieutenant Mudd had not changed one whit.

“You’ll remember, Lieutenant Langdon,” Mudd said, when he was seated, “my Army salutation is Lieutenant Mudd.”

“The hell you tell!” Langdon smiled. “Where at is your F.F.V., Charles?”

Mudd gave his attention to the meal. The table tried hard to smother its mirth, and Langdon explained--

“Lieutenant Mudd and I made our transport with the same outfit, attached to the 10th Aero--”

“The swine!” Mudd snarled.

“The best damn’ air unit in France,” Langdon said. “That is, with the exception of the Trente-Neuf.”

“That’s the spirit, Lieutenant Langdon!” Major Mack cheered from his end of the long table. “The old outfit is always good, but the new outfit, to be an outfit, must always be _the_ outfit ... stand, devils-- To the Trente-Neuf!”

“This Trente-Neuf,” a man at Langdon’s right said, after the toast, “is a jake outfit, Langdon. There’s only one thing wrong with it.”

He stopped talking and stared at Mudd.

“There was only one thing wrong with the 10th,” Langdon told the man, “and it was the same thing. An outfit’s mistakes are its own, and the unpardonable mistake is the mistake made when an outfit makes the mistake of not rectifying its mistakes. Am I right?”

“No mistake,” the other agreed.

Next morning, Langdon went out on his first mission behind Mudd. That is, because of seniority, F.F.V. was in the front plane of a three ship flight. Now, this thing of following F.F.V. Mudd was not the worst medicine on earth, and Langdon had no kick coming. Mudd was a flying man, and that seems strange. None, no matter what his idea of manhood, could ever deny Mudd his place in air, and for more than two months now, he had been taking missions out and, what was more important, he was bringing them back. Maybe that was why the Trente-Neuf had not taken steps to clean up this one mistake.

Mudd was one of those conscientious flight leaders who gave flying orders like a pedagogue and then expected every man to do his duty. There was no fun to be found behind him. The objective was the objective, and not fun. His unit took no long chances. If enemy planes were above, Mudd toured all France on their four hour DH tanks, then came back. Came back, got the pictures or observations, and went hell bent for home. A pilot might just as well have been touring France with the “Y”. And on more than one occasion, he had been told so; but not by Major Mack. No matter what the major might have thought personally, he stood firmly behind Mudd because of results shown. The business of an observation squadron is observation. Let the pursuit groups do the combat stuff.

This first Front line flight of Langdon’s was the quietest thing imaginable. Not an enemy craft crossed their skies. He wondered where these comebacks from the Front got all their stuff about dog fights, painted circuses and German infested ceilings. And as he followed Mudd, above territory that should have been bad, he recalled what Rube Williamson had told them, back at Issoudun.

“Hun planes! Never saw a single Hun plane in two weeks’ flying. Maybe they’re there for some, but they were not there for me.” And now they were not there for Langdon.

At the end of the eastward mission, Mudd, with the observations on the cuff, signaled for a turn and back home push. Then, for about ten minutes, Langdon kept the other two planes close in where they belonged and began to look about to see what he could see. They came above a road that was jammed with the properties of Germany’s late summer try. Without a great deal of thought, Langdon parted company, dropped down from Mudd’s six thousand feet elevation and went to strafing the enemy activities.

* * * * *

It was fun. It was war. It was more like it. He turned to his observer--a Lieutenant Akeley--and winked. Akeley stood up on his stool, bent over Langdon’s shoulder, and yelled:

“Go back and give ’em hell! When you come in above that little burg where they were eating--where all the smoke was--sideslip and let me get a crack at ’em with my gun. Hop to it!”

Langdon looked for his two companion planes. Mudd and the other had gone ahead. For a moment he might have hesitated. This thing of pulling a private strafe while detailed on a mission would not be considered exactly good. But being a strong youth, Langdon weakened. He flew a turn and went back along the German supply road.

Where he found the field kitchens smoking, Langdon climbed to about five hundred feet. From that altitude, with the nose of his plane high, he slipped right and gave Akeley his chance with the rear gun. At the same time, watching his slip, he also watched Akeley and cheered the gunner above the roar of slipping struts and wires. At a hundred feet or less, he kicked out of the slip, redressed his ship, whaled full motor to the craft and flew across the concentration of troops--and through a hail of rifle fire ... Akeley went back to the Trente-Neuf a corpse in Langdon’s rear pit.

At sunset, Jack Langdon sat upon his heels before a hangar, smoked, and tried to figure out the whole thing. Within the hangar at his back, under a tarpaulin, was the quiet Akeley. A short distance away, where the sun’s light was yet available, Trente-Neuf mechanics worked at patching thirty-seven holes in Langdon’s DH. The mechanics talked and wondered why that new bird, Langdon, did not get bumped too.

Within his quarters, till the evening’s dusk gave way to dark, Lieutenant Mudd, martinet at heart, worked assiduously upon his report. He missed supper in its completion; then with the several pages in hand, the conscientious one straightened his blouse, put a rag to his boots, strapped on his Sam Browne and went toward Major Mack’s room. On the way, Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd detoured only once, and this detour sent him past the enlisted men’s quarters where the loungers were forced to snap into it and deliver the salute.

“Too bad, Lieutenant Mudd,” Mack said as he received the report. “Hell, I liked Akeley. We’ll miss him. The whole Trente-Neuf will miss his mandolin of evenings.”

“It was murder!” Mudd snarled. “This man Langdon-- It was murder, sir!”

“But Sergeant Rictor--” the armorer of the Trente-Neuf--“reported that Bob had fired several hundred rounds. His gun was still warm when Lieutenant Langdon returned,” Major Mack protested. “And you know Bob Akeley, Lieutenant. If he had a chance to go out like that, in action, why, the boy was at a feast with a fork in each hand.”

This glorification of personal thrill was not for Mudd. Wordless, white and a-tremble, he weaved on the threshold and tried again and again for words. In the end, he said:

“You have my full report, sir. A flight leader must have unbending discipline, sir.”

Major Mack walked toward the window. Then, because there was nothing else he could do, he walked back.

“Lieutenant Mudd,” he said. “Send Lieutenant Langdon to me.”

Major Mack was still pacing when Langdon knocked, came in and reported. The Major eyed the pilot and paced once more to the east window, then he paced back and eyed Langdon once more.

“What have you got to say, Lieutenant?” the superior finally asked.

“Not a word, sir.” Langdon fought hard to swallow his grief. “I know I’ve pulled a star boner. Guess I’ve had my war--been hired, fed and fired all in a day, sir.”

“Whose idea was it, Langdon?”

“Mine, sir. As yet, I can’t always remember that I have another man behind me. Observers weren’t in my first schooling, sir.”

“Even if the thing were excusable, Lieutenant, you should have asked Akeley what he thought of the plan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Maybe you did.”

“No, sir. I just got the idea that I could do damage on that road, so I shoved down the nose and went. Then we got together, Akeley and I. He said--“‘Go back and give ’em hell!’ And we went.”

“I thought that was it!” Major Mack smiled. “Langdon, ever since Bob Akeley came to this squadron, at least twice a day he’s been in here trying to talk me into turning the squadron to pursuit. Of course we can’t sanction such doings, Langdon. And for my own part, I wouldn’t pull such a strafe. No, I’m a little too old and slow on the controls. You see, I like to have a little more space between my wheels and the ground. But I’m not so old as to be unable to appreciate the finesse of the thing and, Lieutenant, if we could roll back time, and circumstance would place Langdon in Mack’s place, and Mack in Langdon’s-- Well, that road would have been strafed today. Maybe not as good, but after a fashion at least.

* * * * *

“Now, Lieutenant, I’m neither going to call out a firing squad nor mark you on the ground. Between you and me, aviation, as the eyes of artillery, doesn’t carry even the weight of a good joke. I’m an old artillerist myself, Langdon, and I know. So if we can wage any kind of a war of our own, I’m not going to stand in the way of progress. You understand, Langdon, I am not authorizing, sanctioning or legalizing future side trips; but in your own right, you are in command of one ship while off the ground. Orders, the best orders ever made, were only made to be broken. And so long as they are broken without going into the red, when it’s all over, there’s no kick coming. In other and fewer words--be sure you’re right, then go ahead and don’t slip up. The quick are always right in war, Langdon. But it is far better that the quick be dead than be wrong.

“Now, there’s one observer in the Trente-Neuf with whom I want you to become well acquainted. It is Lieutenant Samter. Samter, during such times as Bob Akeley wasn’t pestering me, has spent much wind trying to show me where and how this outfit might run up a big record in combat victories. He’s of the opinion that an observer should only observe when there’s no fighting to be done. And he can do things with that rear machine gun, Langdon. Sergeant Rictor tells me that Samter has shown him more trick stuff than he’s ever seen before. And Sergeant Rictor has been an armorer for upward of fifteen years. If you and Samter find that you have much in common, come to me and we’ll talk it over. No reason at all why he shouldn’t hold down your rear stool on all flights . . . English fags, they are. Take a couple with you, Lieutenant.”

Late into that night, Langdon and Samter talked. And they discovered that they had just about everything in common, including a rotten opinion of one Charles Surry Mudd, F.F.V. Lieutenant Samter had been riding behind Mudd a great deal of late, and the war had lost its flavor.

“I’d rather hold on to the rear saddle of a motorbike with an enlisted stiff chewing hard on the handlebars,” he told Langdon. “All of the white haired boy’s good flying is wasted. And I’ll say old F.F.V. can pilot. But what’s the use of being behind him--just going the route, delivering the milk and coming home? There’s more thrill working at kitchen police where you have the ever present danger of cutting your finger while paring spuds, eh?”

“Sure,” Langdon agreed. “The C O. gave me these cigs. They’re English. Ain’t they rotten, what?”

“I wouldn’t walk a mile,” Samter answered, “unless it was to get away from such smokes.”

The next day it rained and the new team worked ship. Langdon and the Trente-Neuf’s head rigger washed out the outer bays of all four wings. Also they took out one of each pair of outside flying wires.

“They don’t need all these wires,” the rigger agreed. “Each one of these cables has a breaking strength of more than two thousand pounds. When would you ever get such a load on a wing? Same way with the landing gear. You know how to set these babies down, Lieutenant. I watched you when you brought Akeley in yesterday. You wouldn’t have broken an egg, so we’ll pull out all the extras and that will help to speed the crate up too.

“We’ll do some streamlining on her, too. I’m glad to get a chance to see what can be done about pepping up a DH. I always argued that something could be done. They ain’t such dead culls. They’ll maneuver if you’ll help ’em.”

Samter and Rictor put hour after hour on the two guns. That DH had surely fallen into good hands. Toward the end of day they flushed the water radiator, drained the old and refilled with new motor oil, cleaned ignition heads, and the ship was set. Then they prayed for a morrow full of flying weather.

Next morning, September the twenty-third, Langdon and Samter mooched their way into a real melee above the road from La Harazee, where the 77th Division was convoying guns through to the Bois des Hautes Batis. That fight, by rights, belonged to the pursuit gang. It was no place for a DH. But when Langdon and Samter pulled out, they had done damage enough to justify a bid for confirmation on two enemy planes. Their ship had been hit seven times, and Samter once. But his was just a minor rap, only a little job for the squadron doctor.

* * * * *

On the day following, the two wild men accounted for three of eight German observation balloons that had hung above the main road through the Vesle. And Langdon and Samter were beginning their traditional climb toward lasting air fame.

On October the thirteenth, divisional headquarters called for a rock bound verification on all observations covering that tough stretch of road between Grand Pre and St. Juvin. It had been a hard line to bend--that German stronghold along the northern bank of the Aire: but now, one way or the other, it was not only going to be bent, but broken--and completely.

Mudd, with four following ships, and covered from above by twelve pursuit planes, went out to do the job. They were nearly above Grand Pre before hell broke loose; and they were past St. Juvin and making a turnabout before the first Hun ship broke the high defense and took a DH off the Trente-Neuf’s rear.

With his remaining three, stiff lipped and obstinate, Mudd flew his turn and went down the St. Juvin-Grand Pre line for a return whirl. Then a second DH fell, and Langdon broke out with combat, quit formation, and won another Boche ship from the milling group.

Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd worked long and late upon another report. Then Major Mack paced late and long into the night and tried hard to be a good fellow and, at the same time, a good soldier. Which is a thing well nigh impossible. In the end, he called all six who had returned. All of Mudd’s five companions, including Mudd’s own observer, swore by all that might have been holy that Langdon, in quitting formation and taking on combat, had only done so to cover the successful retreat of the camera planes. And Charles Surry, F.F.V., went into the night talking to himself and kicking stones. That war was a war for him.

Langdon and Samter, listening to the guns that were pouring it into Grand Pre and the road to the east, waited impatiently for the morrow.

“This damn’ swagger stick dude of a muddy Mudd!” Samter said from his shakedown. “If the simple minded, simpering juvenile does anything more to tear down our meat house, Jack, I’ll work him over with a prop wrench on my own time. Reports for the major! He’ll make one more report to the Old Man and I’ll land on him so hard that his brains, if any, will detonate and blow some he-man color into his insipid map.

“F.F.V.--Far From Vodka, Finest Fish Vender, Faint Falsetto Voice--I’ll F.F.V. the white haired, white livered rat!”

“Check--a madman,” Langdon laughed. “Roll over, Samter, and tear off some sleep. Charles F.F.V. is the least of our many worries. And he’s a good enough gun. One Wing. The only thing is, you and I are fighting a different war. On the level, Mudd’s scrap is gamer than ours. His is an impersonal _guerre;_ and he doesn’t even keep a diary.”

“A good drunk is what Mudd needs,” Samter decided. “A trip to town, a big town, a good drunk and--”

“That’s a two or three motored ship, and she’s mighty close,” Langdon said, as they caught the throb and pump of a night flyer. “Wish we were doing night missions, too.”

“Ambitious guy,” Samter said to his inflated pillow. “When would Mudd find time to write lengthy reports?”

“It really doesn’t make much difference,” Langdon said to his blanket, “because nobody ever reads them anyway.”