The lucky little stiff

France. Mud. A khaki-clad column of fours slogging along to the rhythm of their own muttered but heart-felt blasphemy--a common enough sight in the winter of 1917-1918.

But in one particular this procession of sufferers was unique. On the shoulders of each performer shone bright silver bars, and their more or less manly chests were spanned by Sam Browne belts. A casual observer would have taken them for officers. But no, on each breast was a pair of silver wings, and their uniforms were of well-fitting but variously designed whipcord. The pot-bellied little person in the indecently short yellow serge blouse who led them was an officer; his followers were flying lieutenants.

They were a part of the personnel-in-training of the great American aviation field of Issy-la-Boue, the advance guard of the ten thousand American bombing planes which publicity agents said were going to blast the Huns out of Berlin.

The column passed between two long barracks, one of which, filled to capacity with double-decker bunks, yawned thru an unfinished open end.

“Squads right!” shrilled the pot-bellied one with the captain’s bars in a startling tremolo. “Heh!”

The men behind squads-righted in a dispirited fashion and came to a halt in straggling lines. The squawky voice continued:

“I want to say that you are the most undisciplined body of men I ever saw. That--er--mélée you staged when you were unwittingly marched into--er--contact with a body of enlisted men was the most disgraceful exhibition on the part of officers so-called I ever saw in my life. I--er--want to say you are a disgrace to the service. That’s all I want to say. Oh, I--er--believe Lieutenant Crosby has something to say to you.”

Flying-Lieutenant Crosby stepped forward and cleared his throat. He was a born Babbitt, a destined getter-together.

“Men,” he began, and then hesitated. Perhaps he should have said “officers,” but that wouldn’t have sounded right either. He rushed on, “I want to remind you that Happy’s and Sam’s funeral is this afternoon. All flying is called off as usual. There wasn’t much of a crowd out for poor old Bill yesterday. I know it’s a long walk and all that but we want to get a good crowd out this afternoon. The cadets are going to try to get a good crowd out for their fellow who got bumped, and we want to get a good crowd out too. That’s all I wanted to say.”

He retired to the ranks. The fat officer shouted “Dismissed!” Then he changed his mind.

“As you were. The commanding officer wanted me to announce that quarantine to the post is on again until the perpetrator of the outrage of stopping the Paris Express has been discovered and punished. Dismissed!”

The half-broken ranks scattered in the direction of their barracks. Toward the one with the unfinished end went three oddly dissimilar figures. They were always together, and of course some one had already thought of calling them “The Three Musketeers.”

One was short, dark and slim, with pathetic eyes and a dispirited mustache. Another was tall and lathy, with a long lugubrious countenance. The third was blond and almost corpulent.

“I knew it, Tommy, I knew it,” said the tall man. “How come you and ‘Fat’ to pull such a stunt, anyway? Ain’t such a joke now, is it? What’re you going to do about it?”

The three entered their barrack and sat down on a bunk near the open end, well away from the crowd huddled around the stove in the middle. The little man gazed sadly before him.

His mustache drooped dolefully. Some observant person had remarked that he could read Tommy by his mustache. When it was freshly waxed and pert, he was just going on a party. When it was sorry and unkempt, he had just been on one.

“You know we didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “All that stuff the frogs put out about our trying to wreck the train was a dish of prunes. As if it wasn’t bad enough to miss the truck and walk out here twelve miles from town without having all this on top of it. When the quarantine for the itch was taken off, and Fat and I got those “thirty-six hours on condition you don’t go to Paris” passes, we got by the M. P.’s at the gare in Paris all right.

“We went out through the baggage-room. I wasn’t in the Ambulance for nothing. We came back into the station the same way, and once we got on the train we went right to sleep. They sure do put up a good champagne cocktail at Henry’s, and then all those beers at the Follies!

“Well, when I woke up we were at a station. I looked out and the sign on it said Chateauroux. I knew where we were all right because I’ve flown over the place. We’d passed Issy. So I woke Fat up and pulled him off the train. There was another train standing in the station, and I asked a frog where it went to and he said it was the Paris Express. So I knew it would take us back to Issy again, and we hopped on.

“We got into a third class compartment with a lot of poilus, and they had beaucoup red wine, and we drank to la belle France, and les-Êtats-Unis, and when I woke up again the train was just leaving a station, and the sign said Issy-la-Boue. By the time I realized what it all meant we were going too fast to jump off, so I pulled that handle on the wall, and the train stopped.

“When we saw how wrought up the frogs were, we beat it. No wonder we had to come over and help them win the war, if they’re all as bum shots as those birds were! Guess they thought we were bandits or spies or something. Well, we had to walk home to keep from being A. W. O. Loose from roll-call this morning, and never got home till four o’clock. Suppose after flying, I’ll have to go over and ’fess up to Herman, or you birds will never get any more passes. But I know I’ll never get one if I stay here for the duration of the war.”

“No pass ain’t nothin’ to what you’ll get, boy!” said “Long John.” “Shot at sunrise, is my bet. But I admire your self-sacrificin’ spirit.”

“Never mind, we’ll take our medicine, won’t we, Fat? And if I don’t mention you, maybe he won’t say anything about it.”

Fat grunted dolefully. Outside a bugle blew. The three rose to go.

“It’s me and Tommy to fly the eighteen meters,” said Long John. “Where do you go, Fat?”

“Machine-gun,” was the answer.

“Hum, too bad. I heard the guy they shot there last week croaked. The bullet went right thru his leg, and the quack dressed the place where it went in all right, but forgot to see if it came out. Gangrene set in and his leg rotted off, and they had to shoot him. Now a feller your build-- say, it wouldn’t go through at all. Just stay there and fester--”

But his victim was gone.