The following story of a remarkable career was told me mostly by my young friend, Archibald Archer, who was for a time an occupant of the adjoining cot to mine in the Epemay Hospital. I shall take the liberty of enlisting him as a sort of joint narrator with myself, in the sense of using his own language when that seems desirable. Much that he told me, I jotted down in shorthand without his knowledge. He was recovering from slight injuries received while serving with “extinction” (I suppose he meant distinction) in the Motorcycle Corps. He lived on a farm in New York State, rolled his R’s, ate apples by the peck when he could get them, and collected souvenirs by the ton. On the whole, I liked him and I am sure that when he was not in the mood of banter he was honest and sincere. He and Tom Slade had crossed the ocean together as ship’s boys, and Archer had remained in France resolved to win glory under “Generral Perrshing.” He became an assistant cook in the Lorraine sector where his most dramatic exploit in the cause of humanity was the placing of a bowl of soup on a listening post in No Man’s Land, in such a way that in the still hours of the night it tumbled its contents upon the proud head of a sumptuously attired German lieutenant who had leaned against the post.
He did not receive the Distinguished Service Cross for this deed of heroism, but no doubt it was appreciated, for he shortly became orderly to some officers and has the lace of an officer’s puttee to prove it.
How he drifted back into sea service again, I do not recall. In any event, he did and worked again as a ship’s boy, I suppose. Perhaps he was going home on leave. In any case, he was sitting on the “forrwarrd hatch,” eating an apple, and was just about to throw the core at a purser’s assistant when a torpedo struck the ship. It is one of the vain regrets of his life that he did not throw the core a moment sooner.
A few more days found him in a German prison camp where he soon became the chief entertainer of that hapless community. Not only did he hobnob with “Old Piff,” the German commandant, but his genius as a chef won him immediate recognition and prestige. Here it was that he enlivened the tedium of the prisoners by handing a bottle of ink to a German guard, who had demanded some insect dope, to rub on his face one sultry night, and the “guarrrd’s” face, according to Archer, presented a diverting sight next morning. He still has the cork of this ink bottle as a treasured memento or “souveneerrr.”
In the camp, to his great astonishment, he fell in with Tom Slade, who had also been gathered in with the survivors of a torpedoed transport, and the two, being kindred spirits............