In the Line of Duty

The story of a flying lieutenant who went A. W. O. L.

A heavy truck lumbered slowly along a road in central France. On both sides of the road was an uninspiring vista of brown fields, stretching away as far as the eye could reach, and only occasionally broken by small clumps of small scrubby trees. On the seat of the truck beside the driver sat a little man with a drooping mustache. This droopiness was evidence that he had come there by way of Paris. When he reached the French capital the mustache had been smartly waxed.

Finally he addressed the driver out of sheer boredom.

“Pretty sad dump around here, ain’t it?” he remarked obviously.

“Sad?” inquired the truck driver, a horse faced man with a large bulge in his cheek, who suggested mules rather than mechanical means of locomotion. “Sad? Say, Lieutenant, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet! Wait till you see the flyin’ field. They have to lay duckboards to get out to the airyplanes on. The only birds who have a good time around there are the Dutchmen—prisoners, you know. I took ’em out a load of beer and cognac this morning, and there was a hardboiled M.P. sergeant ridin’ the load to make sure it all got there, an’ it did, too. And then the lucky suckers work in the kitchen and get all they want to eat, too—the Dutch, I mean. Makes me sick to think o’ them krauts lyin’ around with nuthin’ to do but stuff an’ guzzle, while hard workin’ guys like me— Look, there’s the field now.”

He pointed ahead to a group of low barrack buildings which clustered near the road on the left hand side. Farther away could be seen several hangars, but no signs of activity.

“I don’t see any flying going on,” remarked the lieutenant, whose name was Tommy Lang.

“No, an’ you won’t prob’ly, till next spring,” returned the driver.

He turned off the rough but hard road through the gateway into the camp, and the engine of the truck began to labor as its wheels sank deep into the soft mud, so he shifted into second. Once more the truck lurched forward, but only for a moment. The driver shifted back into first, but the new impetus gained was only temporary, and presently the chainless wheels spun vainly. The driver shut off his motor and climbed to the ground.

“This is as far as we can go, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’ll have to lug your own baggage in from here. The frogs won’t let us use chains on the road, so they took ’em away from us.”

He proceeded around to the back of the truck and let down the tailboard with a bang. Tommy climbed down gingerly, but immediately sank almost to his knees. The driver was dragging out his bed roll and trunk, which fell to the ground with a squashy sound; then he went around to the front of the truck and began to labor at the crank.

“What do I do now?” asked Tommy, looking around.

There wasn’t another soul anywhere in sight.

“Report to the personnel officer up there,” answered the driver, waving his arm vaguely toward the row of long barrack buildings nearby. So saying, he climbed once more to the seat and began to churn his way backward toward firmer ground.

Leaving the sad monument of his baggage, Tommy sloughed through the mud until he reached a pathway of duckboards which ran parallel to the row of barracks. On one of these buildings was a sign, and as he approached it, the latest addition to the great American flying field was able to see that it read as follows:

“And the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,” thought Tommy as he climbed a short flight of steps and entered the office. The shepherd, a small, pot bellied man with captain’s bars but no wings on his serge blouse, eyed the newest flying lieutenant, his whipcord uniform and his papers with disfavor.

“All right,” he said in a querulous voice. “Find yourself a bunk in the flying officers’ barrack. You will be assigned to a section for duty. Look on the bulletin board in the operations office.”

Tommy saluted and went out. He saw his baggage still forming an island in the sea of mud, but it seemed to have shrunk appreciably since he left it. He had an idea that he must salvage it before it disappeared entirely.

Walking along the duckboard, he heard a chorus of voices raised in ribald song in one of the barracks and stopped, feeling that he had reached a friendly haven.

The noise ceased abruptly as the flying officer entered.

“Attention!” shouted one voice.

“Ma-a-a-a-ah!” said another.

The place was full of irreverent and antagonistic cadets, and Tommy retreated, feeling that it was not the time to stop and explain that the only reason he was not among them was through the mistake of some nodding Homer in Washington in giving him a commission as soon as he enlisted, instead of when he got his pilot’s license. The song followed him:

He came to the last barrack of all, which was only about three-fourths built. Going inside, he found it empty of human life, but the contents was reassuring. Under the neatly spread double-decker bunks were officers’ boots, and the walls were covered with overcoats bearing the single stripe of a first lieutenant, and with various flying clothes and equipment. In what would be the middle of the long building was a single large stove which feebly radiated its rays of heat against the blasts of cold damp air from the open end. Near that end were several unoccupied bunks, one of which Tommy decided must be for him.

It was commencing to get dark outside, and colder, too. The little flyer huddled closer to the stove and smoked a cigaret. Somebody must come in before long. Somebody did.

There was a clatter on the duckboards outside and a horde of flying lieutenants trouped in, making loud noises and crowding around the stove. Tommy scanned their faces anxiously, but there was nobody there he knew. A tall, thin man eyed him in a friendly manner, and Tommy asked him to help him with his baggage. The other assented readily, and they excavated the large French trunk and fancy bed roll which marked a man who had enlisted in Paris, and one by one dragged them inside.

“You might as well take this bunk next to me and Fat,” said the tall man, who was known as Long John. “We got left behind for a day in Paris by accident, and when we got here the barrack was almost full up, so we had to take bunks near the end. What ground school did you go to?”

“I never went to ground school,” returned Tommy. “I was an ambulance driver and enlisted in Paris.”

He looked around curiously at his companions in the barrack. They were of an unfamiliar genus, men who had had their preliminary training and got their commissions in the States.