It is a fact that the career of Slade from the time he became an airman and even before was one of bravery and patriotism, and his disaffection, apparently, had come only at the very end of his service. Even then, as it seemed, he had not gone over to the enemy, but had accepted and carried out commissions from them while maintaining an appearance of loyalty. And I marvelled at the prowess and resource which he must have shown in this hazardous business. No one in all that sector, where he had come and gone as freely as the birds of the air, had suspected him; none spoke of him except in praise. Perhaps the newspaper account which had thrilled us so at home was somewhat in the nature of a “write-up,” and there were, indeed, several versions current as to just how Slade had met his death. Most of these fell a little short in the ingredient of reckless valor, but there was no question that he had been counted a very daring airman, and I could multiply instances of praise and expressions of trust and confidence from his comrades and superiors.
I supposed at the time that money had tempted this brave young fellow to his moral fall. About all I had ever known of him was that he had been of a simple mind and very poor. This much I had learned from Roy.
Before I left the Scuppers that night I had a mental tussle over the question of what I should do with these incriminating papers. If Slade had been living I should have turned them over to the authorities, but as it was I could not see that anything was to be gained by their preservation. They pertained to conditions which no longer existed, they revealed no facts that were of value now, and I decided to destroy them then and there—all except the picture of the girl and the scrap of her letter containing the familiar references to Bridgeboro, for I could not bring myself to cast those into the flames. Her friendly, companionable words, though they were not addressed to me, comforted me, nevertheless, and conjured up thoughts of home. The brief memorandum on the back I obliterated with my pen. With the other papers I made a little fire in my cave, believing that I could the better fulfill my promise to Roy if I put, or tried to put, this horrible sequel of a brave career out of my mind altogether.
I shall ask you to do the same while I try to give you a sketch of Slade’s remarkable deeds up to the time he became a patient “recovering from a slight wound,” in the Epernay Hospital. This tale of his career is necessarily disjointed and fragmentary, and was intended only for the perusal of Roy. I began it in the form of letters to him while I was myself a patient in that same hospital. These letters were never sent because I feared the censor, who had been dealing rather freely with my newspaper stuff, and I soon fell into the habit of stringing out a more orderly narrative.
You will understand, of course, that my chief interest in all these matters was for Roy Blakeley. He was my hero.
As to who will prove the hero of this whole extraordinary business, that shall be for you to say.
LETTERS TO ROY BLAKELEY
Dear Roy:
I am writing this letter propped up in bed in the little hospital at Epernay and a young chatterbox of a fellow in the cot adjoining mine says that my breathing reminds him of a goldfish. I cannot seem to breathe with my mouth shut, but I tell him that he can’t keep his mouth shut either and that he has not my good excuse—for I was gassed.
The nurses and patients call him Archie, and he has a bullet which was lately extracted from his shoulder and which he says he intends to take home to America for a souvenir. He is wounded slightly otherwise and was operated upon (had his retreat cut off, he told me) and is in all ways a most diverting youngster, something like yourself, except that he rolls his R’s like rapid-fire artillery. He calls the nurses “cross red” nurses, and talks incessantly.
I became acquainted with him only yesterday and I fancy he will beguile my convalescence. Seeing him lying with his eyes fixed on the rafters, I ventured to say, “A penny for your thoughts.”
“What d’you think I am—a slot machine?” he retorted.
“Excuse me,” I said, somewhat taken aback.
“Perrfectly excusable,” he responded cheerily, and added, “Do you see that place where the rafterrs arre new—with the big irron nails?”
“I see the nails,” said I.
“You can’t drive a nail with a sponge,” he said, “no matter how you soak it.”
“Perfectly true,” I said, essaying a little pleasantry of my own, “but what has that got to do with the price of onions?”
He drew his knees up in the bed in a way he has of lying. “That place is wherre a Gerrman bomb came through,” he said. “I got one of those nails forr a souveneerr.”
I looked at the spot with more interest. “It killed two of the nurses, didn’t it?” I asked. “I heard about that. But surely, you couldn’t have been here then.”
“No, but my pill was—I mean my pal—fellerr by the name of Slade; he sworre——”
That was as far as he got, for one of the nurses, stepping right in range of his torrential volley of R’s, began her ministrations, incidentally telling him for the hundredth time to be quiet so that other patients might sleep.
You may suppose that I was greatly interested in what he was telling me and the good old upstate rumble of that word sworre lingered in my mind, for I had no doubt that he was referring to your friend Tom Slade, and that a lucky chance (or an unlucky one) had brought me to the very hospital mentioned in the newspaper account which you and I read together. Whether Slade was really his “pill” or pal, I cannot say, for he spoke of everyone as his pal, from General Foch down, but I hope to talk more with him tomorrow. He has just fallen asleep with the parting injunction to “wake me earrly, motherr, dearrrr.” And silence reigns supreme.
This is all I am allowed to write today, but tomorrow I’ll “recount the adventure,” as you would say, which brought me here.
Dear Roy:
My new acquaintance is out on our little veranda for a sun bath. His name, they tell me, is Archer—Archibald Archer—and that he has lately been in the Motorcycle Corps. I wonder if any motorcycle can make more noise than he!
I came here after taking the village of Pevy—though I did not take it all by myself. The village sits on high ground a couple of miles beyond one of the steepest, rockiest hillsides I ever saw—a place where you can measure real estate with a plumb line. Our boys took the road which verged around and up the west slope of the hill, as the retreating Germans had done, while I took the short-cut, or rather climb, up this precipitous place.
It was thereabouts that Tom Slade fell, a fact that seems to admit of little doubt, and you must not continue to indulge in any day-dreams as to his being still alive. I am sure we are both more interested in some of the things he did while living than in the immediate circumstances of his death, and in this connection I intend to question my new acquaintance as soon as I get the chance.
Well, I had a difficult time of it scrambling up that rocky hill and it was pitch dark when I reached the top. I have made a rough pencil sketch of the locality which you may be interested in.
I fell in with our detachment about a mile out of Pevy and had a few hours’ rest until dawn, when we made our advance against the village. All this has nothing to do with Tom Slade so I won’t burden you with an account of how the retreating Germans made a stand before the town. But when we marched in, there was nothing to be found but burned homesteads and gas-poisoned atmosphere. It was not impossible to breathe in the open, but in the wrecked and charred buildings the deadly fumes lingered and I should have had sense enough to keep out of them. One of them, a makeshift hospital, had not been destroyed and I foolishly entered it.
For a few seconds I beheld a scene which struck horror to my very heart. They say over here that every American soldier fights with a wrath and desperation born of some particular discovery or experience of Hun brutality. One goes forth with the thought of a maimed and tortured comrade to give him strength; another with the memory of some violated truce or false and murderous cry of “kamerad!” Well, here was the sight to arouse in me the hatred of those beasts which I had not sufficiently felt before.
They had left their own people, their own sick and wounded, to suffer the agonizing death of those deadly gas fumes. If there are any degrees in loathesomeness, it seemed to me that this was more unspeakable than was the bombing of an enemy hospital.
I cannot describe what I saw, nor did I see it long. I remember groping toward a bed, on which lay the body of an old man, all the while trying, like the clumsy fool I was, to adjust my gas mask. I remember how my eyes pained and the horrible taste in my mouth, and how my fingers seemed to be asleep. I thought I saw one of those ghastly yellow patients sit up and fall back again. The next I knew I was here in this hospital in this spotless cot, and one of the first things I was really conscious of was this youngster next me, talking. I am given to understand that I had a pretty narrow squeak of it, and that I will cease breathing like a goldfish in time.
I am going to stop writing now in order to talk to my young neighbor, Archer (or “Souvenir” as they call him). They are just bringing him in in a wheel chair and he’s eating an apple. Never have I known of anyone who could eat so many apples—he lives on them.
LETTER RECEIVED FROM ROY
Note: As my acquaintance with young Archer was to prove both diverting and profitable, I have boiled our conversations down into a sort of narrative in which he will appear as something of a character, and the chapters which follow were intended to be the story of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps, which I should present to Roy on my return to America.
Before submitting this story to you, however, I wish to include here a letter which I received from Roy at about this time. It was sent to me at the hospital by the Associated Press after it had wandered like a lost soul up and down the shifting West Front. And it came to me like a cool breeze in summer.
I did not then attach any particular significance to its contents. Indeed, I am not sure now that it is important in this place. But it interested me greatly, and you will be glad to read it because of Roy’s epoch-making announcement (at which the public had better sit up and take notice) that he is himself soon to be launched on the literary sea!
Dear Friend:
You remember you said you’d like me to write you a letter when I got cheered up, and tell you all the news. Most of it is about our Scout troop. Last night we had a meeting and they gave me a present of a big picture of Tom that they had enlarged from the photograph. It’s great! It was in a frame and has some words underneath—“loyal, staunch and true”—quoted out of some book or other. Maybe by this time you have found out some things about him.
Pee-wee Harris said we should send you an anonymous letter—he meant unanimous letter. Honest, that kid is a scream. He’s Doc Harris’ son, you know. Jeb Rushmore, our camp manager up in Temple Camp, sent us an owl to have stuffed and Mr. Ellsworth told Pee-wee it would have to be sent to a taxidermist. Pee-wee asked me what that was and just for a kid I told him it was a man that drives a taxi. So he went down to the station with the owl and asked one of the taxi men to stuff it. I should worry!
After the meeting we had a debate and I chose the subject. It was to decide who was the greatest, St. Patrick or the Fourth of July. It was decided in the affirmative. Crinkums, that was some meeting!
Maybe you’ll be interested to hear that I’m elected Troop Historian, and I’ve got to write up all our adventures. Some job, believe me! I should worry. Mr. Ellsworth says maybe he’ll get it published. He says you get good money for writing a book—but not much of it! He says if I write just like I talk, it’ll be all right. I’ve decided to write it scout pace, kind of running, then walking—you know. It’ll be like a hike. Doc Carson, our first-aid scout, says it ought to be funny, and I promised I’d chuck some chuckles into it. Pee-wee is going to make the names for the chapters. Good-night! Maybe you’ll be willing to help me when you get back, especially with sunsets and green hills and weather and like that, because you have to have all those things in a book, especially weather. I said I wouldn’t bother with any weather, but Doc Carson said all the characters would suffocate. Pee-wee said he’s no use for weather in stories and he always skips it, anyway. Maybe I’ll have compressed air instead. Weather and prefaces—good-night!
There’s some news I guess you’ll be interested in. They caught Adolph Schmitt, who used to keep that grocery store—you remember? You know they found out he was a spy and he skipped. Now they’ve got him and he’s down in Atlanta Penitentiary. A long time ago Tom used to deliver groceries for him.
Well, I’ll say goodbye and if you can find out any things about Tom, you bet I’ll be glad.
Your friend,
Roy Blakeley.
I have included this letter from Roy partly because it contained the earliest portentous hints of those sprightly narratives which were later to create such a stir in Boy Scout circles, but more particularly because of its reference to the Schmitt affair.
I remembered the case of Schmitt very well, for it was a nine days’ wonder in Bridgeboro when this jolly, fat German grocer disappeared just in time to escape a visit from the Secret Service men. I never knew just what he was suspected of but I understood that incriminating papers, of a very treasonable purport, were found in the rooms over his store which he and his whole brood had so suddenly vacated.
The news that Tom Slade had worked for this man interested me, of course, and fitted pretty well with the secret knowledge which I had. Had Schmitt’s Grocery been the kindergarten where the poor, ignorant boy had learned the first contaminating lesson of disloyalty? Well, here I was with my green spectacles on again, and everything looked green. In any event, I was glad to know that Schmitt had been caught and lodged in Uncle Sam’s Penitentiary, where he belonged. Perhaps, I thought, the worst thing that he did was to insinuate his false reasoning into the simple mind of his employee and corrupt the clear, honest viewpoint of a young boy....
Narrative written for Roy Blakeley in the Epernay Hospital, and intended originally to form a complete story under the title of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps.