Air Service Boys Flying for France/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
BEHIND THE FRENCH LINES
After that wonderful day the two air service boys saw no more of real action for some little time. The French had achieved the main object they had in view. They were once more in possession of a further strip of the enemy trenches, and had held tenaciously to them despite all fierce counter-attacks.
This meant that still more precious French territory had been redeemed, even though to regain it it had virtually to be baptized with the blood of patriots and martyrs.
Tom and Jack heard a good deal of this talk as they met with the French officers who occasionally strolled over to the headquarters of the Lafayette Escadrille. It was not said with boasting, but was said proudly. Those heroic men who had laid their lives on the altar of their country's freedom would never be forgotten so long as France lived.
The boys wandered about considerably behind the French front when there was nothing afoot. They found much to excite their keen interest. It was, in the first place, perfectly amazing, as well as appalling, to see what a desert that once fair land had become, after the tidal wave of modern warfare had swept across it.
"Why!" Jack was wont to exclaim, "it must be heaps worse than the Sahara; for there the sand always was and always will be, while here there once nestled lovely little French villages, and every bit of the ground, they tell us, was taken up with gardens, fields and orchards."
"Yes, everything is gone," Tom would continue, looking around at the desolate picture, with some crows the only living thing in sight. Now, let's talk of something more cheerful."
"About—well, Bessie, for instance?" suggested Jack, with a sly grin.
Tom had to laugh at his chum's way of bringing the subject around to something he had evidently been thinking about lately.
"You're still wondering whether you'll ever run across that pretty little Gleason girl, I see," he remarked.
"Well, I took quite an interest in her, as you happen to know," admitted Jack candidly. "But it was partly on account of her having such a hard time of it with that guardian of her's. I didn't like Potzfeldt's looks for a red cent; and from certain things Bessie dropped I hang to the belief that he has some dark scheme up his sleeve, which will sooner or later involve the girl."
"Well, of course we couldn't do anything when on shipboard to try to take her away from him," said Tom. "Bessie told you he was her legally appointed guardian, so far as she knew; and was moreover some sort of relative—an uncle by marriage, or a second cousin of her mother's. I don't remember what."
"I can't just explain it, Tom, but somehow I feel it in my bones that one of these fine days I'm fated to come across that pair again."
"Well, if, as we believe, Mr. Potzfeld was trying to get into Germany some way or other," chuckled Tom, "that may mean you'll meet Bessie as a prisoner of war. From all we've heard about the way the Germans are treating their prisoners you're facing a dismal outlook, my boy. I prophesy that you'll look a whole lot thinner after you've been fed on black bread and water for three months."
"Say, Tom, what about Adolph Tuessig and your father's stolen paper?" went on Jack, after a pause.
"I don't know," was the reply and Tom heaved a sigh. "I wish I could learn something—for dad's sake."
So they chatted as they walked, and observed all that was to be seen around them, showing the horrors of modern warfare.
All the same the two young aviators had their busy times. These strolls were only allowable when the weather was bad for flying, and a period of dullness descended on the enterprising escadrille. It might be the fog was too heavy, or else a driving wind made flying too full of peril to send up many machines.
On other occasions the chums took part in numerous tasks. Each in turn served as photographer, accompanying a pilot over the German lines, guarded by a flotilla of fighting planes that hovered above them in a fashion to make Jack compare the situation to an old hen and her chickens.
"Only in this case," he hastily added, "it's the nimble little chicks that are watching over the clumsy old hen, so as to keep the German hawks from making a meal off her."
Whatever they attempted to do was done well. Many times did they receive a word of commendation from the French commander on that sector, when he had seen the splendid fruits of their snapshots; for both youths were expert photographers.
They had now been in almost every type of machine along the front. Even the small and active Nieuport had been used with satisfactory results, though of course both of them had served aboard one at Pau, and knew how to handle such a plane perfectly.
On his part Tom often found his thoughts roving to the subject of his father's recent loss, and wondering if the fortunes of war would ever again bring him in contact with the treacherous Adolph Tuessig.
He would sit while taking a sun-bath, and allow his fancy to imagine a meeting with the thief somewhere, perhaps even far back of the German lines.
"Wouldn't it be just grand," Tom would tell himself at such times, "if only I could swoop down on him like that hawk Jack was speaking about, and carry the rascal back to the French lines with me? Then I'd soon learn if, as I sometimes find myself hoping, Adolph Tuessig still carries that precious paper on his person."
It seemed like a wild and improbable dream, that could never come true. Even the sanguine Tom admitted to himself that there was hardly one chance in a thousand of such a meeting taking place. Still, strange things sometimes happen.
One night they learned that a squadron of "bombers" was scheduled to set out long before daylight. Their destination was a certain German city where it was known heavy reserves of troops, lately drawn from the Russian front, were being held until they were needed to take the place of war-weary men who had been fighting for long weeks day after day, and would soon need a rest.
"I wish we were going along with the boys," sighed Jack, as they planned to stay up and watch the departure in the moonlight. "I'd like to say I'd been off on one of those raids we've heard so much about. The fact is, Tom, so far I haven't had a first chance to bring down an enemy machine, or even engage in a serious fight."
"Well, if we did go," his chum told him, "I hardly think it would be in Nieuport fighting planes. We're still lacking a little in skill and experience."
"But we could manage a heavy Caudron, you know, and already we've learned how to manipulate the bombs that are to be cut loose. Besides, it would be mighty fine for us to be together, Tom. I'm getting a bit tired of trying to talk with a jolly Frenchman who can't manage much United States, while I'm a pretty lame duck with my French."
Tom smiled. He too felt the same way, and would have liked nothing better than an opportunity to go up with his comrade. Not for the sake of talking, however, since it is next to impossible to hold any. connected conversation in the air while the motor is droning, or thumping madly, so close to one's ears, and with their warm hoods covering a good portion of the head.
"Perhaps another time, Jack, we may manage to go along," he told the drooping one. "I mean to speak to the captain about it. He has considerable influence at aviation headquarters, you know, and may be able to put in a good word for us. As you say it would be experience for us both; and we want to learn everything there is to know about this game."
"Well, don't forget, and speak soon. I understand they mean to push this bombing business for a while now, in the hope of breaking up certain big plans they've learned the Crown Prince is thinking of putting through."
They waited up to see the bombarding unit depart in the moonlight. This came to pass about eleven o'clock that night, so as to have the full benefit of the moon. They had a long journey ahead of them, and the machines were slow and cumbersome when compared to the fleet Nieuports.
Each machine, the chums noticed, carried two men, the pilot and the observer. The latter's duties were especially to release the deadly bombs that were strung under the frame, when the proper time arrived. He was also in position to use the rapid-fire gun with which each plane was armed.
After the squadron had vanished the boys stood and listened to the sounds growing fainter in the distance. Some shooting followed, the Germans trying to pot them as they crossed over the lines, but without success, since they had already attained considerable altitude, and the firing was done at random.
Perhaps in the gray of early dawn they would return to the camp, the men tired, and almost frozen; but with glowing accounts of the immense damage they had managed to inflict on the concentration camps of the enemy.
Such is the life of an army aviator in war times.