Aces Up Part 24

The day following, Major Cowan called, and in his elation over the success of American arms at the recent battle of Chateau-Thierry, told McGee more in a short half hour than Red had been able to worm from all others with whom he talked.

The Germans, Cowan told him, had been stopped at Chateau-Thierry in an epic stand made by the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, A.E.F., and a few days later the Marines had crowned themselves with a new glory when, in liaison with the French, they had stormed the edges of Belleau Wood, gained a foothold, and then tenaciously pushed slowly forward in the bloodiest and bitterest battle yet waged by the untried American forces.

Counter-attack after counter-attack had been met and repulsed, with the net result that the Germans had been definitely stopped in the Marne salient. Their hope of breaking through to Paris was shattered, and though they were still pounding hard, their sacrifices were vain.

It was, Cowan declared, the real turning point of the war, and even now men were joyously declaring that the war would be won by Christmas.

As for the air forces, they had delivered beyond the fondest hopes of the high command. The casualties had been high, Cowan admitted, but not higher than might be expected and not without giving even heavier losses to the enemy. The squadron losses could have been held down had the members been less keen about scoring a personal victory over von Herzmann. Every pursuit pilot along the entire front was willing to take the most desperate chances in the hope of plucking the crest feathers of this German war eagle.

"I guess there's one member not particularly anxious to pluck any of the eagle's feathers," McGee put in at this point.

"No?" Cowan's voice was quizzical. "Who's that?"

"Siddons," McGee replied tersely.

A look of aggravation, or of pained tolerance, crossed Cowan's face.

"We won't discuss that," he said, deserting for the moment his air of good-fellowship and returning to the quick, testy manner of speaking which was so characteristic of him in matters of decision. "I take it you have said nothing to Larkin, or anyone else, concerning your--ah, our suspicions?"

"Nothing, sir. But I can't--"

"Good. Let Intelligence work it out, Lieutenant. One little rumor might upset all their plans. I can a.s.sure you, however, that G 2 knows all that you know. They are waiting the right minute--and perhaps have some plan in mind. Silence and secrecy are their watchwords. Let them be yours." He arose and extended his hand. "I must be moving along. I'm glad to see you doing so nicely. You'll be more than welcome when you get back to the squadron. Don't worry. There's plenty of war left yet."

4

Perhaps there was plenty of war left, but McGee soon discovered that a badly broken arm and a cracked, cut head can be painfully slow in healing. Days dragged slowly by, with Larkin's visits as the only bright spot in the enforced inactivity. Then, to McGee's further distress, the squadron was moved to another front. Larkin had been unable to tell him just where they were going, but believed it was to the eastward, where it was rumored the Americans were to be given a purely American sector.

This was unpleasant news to McGee. It meant that he would be left behind, and he could not drag from the hospital medicoes any guess as to when he would be permitted to leave the hospital.

Hospital life, with its endless waiting, sapped his enthusiasm. At night, in the wards, the men recovering from all manner of wounds would try to speed the lagging hours by telling stories, singing songs, and inventing the wildest of rumors. Occasionally, when the lights were out, some wag would begin an imitation of a machine gun, with its rat-tat-tat-tat, and another, catching the spirit of the mimic warfare, would make the whistling sound of a high angle sh.e.l.l. In a few moments the ward would be a clamorous inferno of mimic battle sounds--machine guns popping, sh.e.l.ls screaming toward explosion, cries of gas, and the simulated agonized wails of the wounded and dying.

"Hit the dirt! Here comes a G.I. can."

"Look out for that flying pig!"

"Over the top, my buckoes, and give 'em the bayonet."

Thus did men, wrecks in the path of war, keep alive their spirit and courage by jesting over the grimest tragedy that had ever entered their lives. And then they would take up rollicking marching songs, or sing dolefully, "I wanta go home, I wanta go home."

Invariably, when some chap began a narrative of the prowess of his own company or regiment, the others would begin singing, tauntingly:

"The old grey mare she ain't what she used to be, She ain't what she used to be, Ain't what she used to be.

The old grey mare she ain't what she used to be Many years ago...."

It wasn't really fun, it was only the pitifully weak effort to meet suffering, loneliness, homesickness and fear with bravado.

There is no one in all the world more lonely than a soldier in a hospital. Time becomes what it really is, endless, and without hope of a change on the morrow.

And the pay for it all was a gold wound chevron to wear on the sleeve, or a dangling, glittering medal testifying to courage and sacrifice!

CHAPTER XI

The Ace and the Spy

1

So slow was McGee's recovery that it was the middle of September before he received his final discharge from the hospital and was given orders to rejoin his old squadron, now operating in the St. Mihiel salient.

Three days prior to his release the American Army, operating on a purely American front, had attacked the Germans in the St. Mihiel salient with such determined vigor, and the entire preparation conducted with such successful secrecy, as to take the Germans by complete surprise, overrun all opposition and recover for France many miles of territory long held by the invaders. Thousands of prisoners, and arms of all calibre, were captured in the swift stroke, and all France was ringing with praise of the endeavor.

News of the progress of the battle reached McGee just before his final discharge. He entertained high hopes of rejoining the squadron in time to partic.i.p.ate in the feast of victory, but by the 15th, three days after the battle was begun, the salient had been pinched out and the battle won.

On the 16th, when McGee reached Ligny-en-Barrois, which had served as General Pershing's field headquarters at the beginning of the operation, he found that his squadron had been withdrawn from the sector and sent somewhere else.

Where? No one seemed to know. Furthermore, no one seemed to care a great deal. A pilot lost from his squadron, or a soldier lost from his regiment, was no new thing in France. It happened daily. Men were discharged from hospitals, ordered to a certain point to rejoin their commands, only to discover on reaching there that the outfit had seemingly vanished in thin air.

McGee spent a full day trying to find someone with the correct information as to the location of the squadron.

At last an officer on the General Staff looked over McGee's papers and gave him a transportation order to a little town west and south of Verdun.

"Is my squadron there, sir?" McGee asked.

"They should be," the officer replied. "At least near there," and he closed the conversation as though that were quite enough for any pilot to know.

But when McGee reached the town, part of the journey being by rail and part by motor lorries, he found himself as completely lost as possible.

Again no one seemed to know anything about the squadron. His search was made doubly difficult by the fact that there was an unusual air of activity; all the troops seemed to be on the move, and officers were far too busy with their own cares to listen to the troubles of a lost aviator.

That night McGee watched two or three regiments pa.s.s through the town, fully equipped for battle. It came to him, suddenly, that all this activity and night marching could mean only one thing--a new attack along some new front. Encouraged by the success of St. Mihiel, the Americans were going in again. But where? McGee put the question to a dozen officers, and not one of them had the foggiest notion of where he was going.

This served all the more to convince McGee that a new operation was being secretly planned by Great Headquarters, and from the many different divisional insignias which he had noticed, he felt convinced that it would be a major offensive. Regiment after regiment of soldiers marched through the little village; then came lumbering guns and caissons clattering over the resounding cobblestones of the street.

Battery after battery pa.s.sed by. They were followed by a long train of motor transports; then came some hospital units with their motor ambulances; then more infantrymen, singing and joking as they swung along in the darkness.

Watching them, McGee was suddenly seized with an idea which no amount of logical thinking could exclude from his mind. Where these troops were going, there he would find action. Somewhere, between this point and their final stopping place, the trenches, he would find some unit of the air force. The army must have its eyes, and any member of any air unit could tell him more than he could learn here.

The spirit of this new type of adventure moved him to action. He had often wondered about the life of the doughboy. Now, for the night, he would fall in and march along with them. It would be fun just to be going along, answerable to no one and making his way forward on foot, by hooked rides, or by whatever means that presented itself and seemed attractive.

Slinging his musette bag over his shoulder, and b.u.t.toning up his flying coat, he stepped into the street, followed along the dark buildings for a few yards and then fell in alongside a long line of infantrymen.

A mile beyond the edge of the town he regretted his action. Rain began to fall in torrents. Ponchos were quickly donned by the men and they again took up the splashing, sloshing line of march, grumbling a little, joking about "Sunny France," and complaining over the harsh order that forbade smoking.

From that one thing McGee knew for a certainty that they were being sent forward under orders of the utmost secrecy. Men on the line of march under cover of darkness were never allowed to smoke. An enemy airman, should he pa.s.s over, would see a long line of twinkling fireflies. From that he would know there was some sort of movement, and this information would be speedily carried to the German High Command. So, without displaying any lights whatsoever, the men and motors moved ever forward along the muddy road.

The rain ceased as suddenly as it had come. The night was warm, for September, and grey fog wraiths began rising from the ground. The sweating horses, straining at the big heavy guns at the side of the road, were blanketed in steam.

The traffic on the pitch black road was becoming increasingly heavy, and now and again halts were made until someone, far ahead, succeeded in working out the snarl. Then the troops would move forward again.