Air Service Boys Flying for France/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
OFF WITH A BOMBING UNIT
"I'm bringing you good news, Jack!"
It was just two days after Jack had expressed himself as "just dying for active service of some sort," that Tom burst in upon him with these words.
Jack was finishing dressing for an ascent, as he had been detailed to accompany the grizzled old sergeant on a little observation trip. He looked up with a glad light on his now tanned face.
"A letter from mother, is it?" he demanded, extending his hand.
"Mail isn't in yet for to-day " the other told him. "Guess again."
"You don't mean to tell me you've met Bessie—Oh, shucks! that would be an impossibility, seeing that this is the fighting front, where no women save Red Cross nurses are allowed to visit. Then it must be we're to accompany the next bombing raiders who are starting out!"
"Your last shot struck the target plumb center, Jack!"
"Bully for that!" ejaculated the other, immediately commencing to cut a few pigeon wings in the exuberance of his joy. "Now we'll have a break in the dull monotony, won't we, Tom?"
"I hope that may be the only break we will have," he was told. "Yes. I was called over to the General's headquarters, and he informed me that our captain had spoken a good word for us. He also assured me we really deserved some favor on account of the good work we had been doing ever since coming to the front."
"Then we're really going, are we?"
"As sure as anything can be in these queer times."
"When does it come off?" pursued the impatient Jack. "I hope right away, because I'll be counting the hours, yes, even the minutes, until we're shooting off over the lines of the Crown Prince, and headed, perhaps for Berlin."
Tom laughed.
"Oh! I don't believe for a minute they're thinking of any such big game as that. This is going to be much nearer home."
"But there was a fellow, a Frenchman, in the bargain, who did drop a bomb on old Berlin not so very long ago, Tom," expostulated Jack earnestly.
"Not a bomb," the other informed him. "It was some sort of placard, telling the German people that a live French aviator had succeeded in reaching their capital. He was on his way to the Russian front, where I believe he finally succeeded in landing. It was partly to send dispatches across country; but more in the line of bravado. They wished to let those smug Berlinese know that their old capital wasn't so isolated, as they had been believing."
"Huh!" grunted Jack, "I've always said that if Berlin could be bombed just as Paris and London have been, all that stuff would stop. But when do we go?"
"To-night!"
"And our objective?"
"We are bound up the Rhine to drop some tons of high explosives on munition factories that have been turning out a tremendous amount of supplies for the Crown Prince's army here at Verdun. The French commander believes that if only we can score some big hits there, it will cripple the assault that is preparing."
Jack heaved a sigh of relief.
"I'm glad to hear that. Of course I'm enlisted in this war, to see it through, whether Uncle Sam later on gets into the mess or not, but I'd hate to know that I had to drop those terrible bombs on a sleeping German town, where peaceful and innocent people would likely be the ones to suffer most."
"That's just why the British keep on refusing to pay back each raid on London. They have their faults, we know, but somehow there's a spirit of national pride about their love of a square game. They fight fairly and stubbornly, those British. The Germans once made all manner of fun of them, but they have a deep respect for both the French and British these days. It's been pounded into them with hard knocks."
It was then afternoon. Jack considered, and then came to a decision.
"Guess I'll have to call my appointment with Sergeant Jean off for to-day," he said, as he commenced to change his clothes again. "With such a long and tiresome trip ahead I'd better save myself all I can."
The night promised to favor them, a fact Jack rejoiced to see, for he kept fearing lest something should crop up to cause the general to call the expedition off.
"The moon is nearly at its full, Tom," he remarked, as they waited to hear the ever welcome summons to supper; "and while it may be a bit hazy, as it was night before last at the time they started, that will only be in our favor. I guess we'll get away all right."
"There's not a doubt about it," he was assured by Tom, who had not allowed himself to worry about that in the least. "By the way, I saw the old sergeant gripping your hand as you came away. He took it in the right spirit, of course, when you told him why you had to beg off?"
"Oh, yes. And, Tom, he's to be one of the party. Think of his going up this afternoon, just as if it was all in the day's work; when to-night he'll have to be in his plane for many hours, and cruise far up the Rhine and back."
"He's a hardened old vet!" laughed Tom. "Was he wishing you good luck, Jack?"
"Sure thing. He also told me to say this to you: 'Success on this trip will be the making of you as a warplane pilot.' And I guess it will put us in line for promotion besides. Before long we may take our place with the rest of the boys, and frequently meet a Boche in combat away up near the clouds."
Nothing was said at the supper-table about the bombing trip, so Jack reasoned that it had not been scattered broadcast. But Tom decided that others besides their captain might be told, as the secret would certainly not be passed on. One and all were glad that a chance had finally come for Jack and Tom to do "something worth while," knowing how they had been lamenting the enforced idleness.
Of course a bombing raid was "tame stuff" to those active members of the fighting escadrille. Aboard one of those heavy and cumbersome big machines, that made such slow progress compared with the speedy Nieuports, going a couple of hundred miles in a night, dumping the load of explosives on some object far below, and then returning to their base, was a mere matter of form. The danger connected with such an expedition could not for a moment be compared with what the fighting pilots risked every day they went up to perform their hazardous duties.
Nevertheless they did not by any means, scorn those who carried out the raiding expeditions. Their work was just as important, if not so exciting, as any other, since every munition dump, or factory, which they could successfully fire, meant hundreds of French lives saved in the end.
As there was to be no rest for them later in the night the chums retired to their room very early and lay down to snatch a few hours sleep. Tom had an alarm clock and set it so as to be sure they would awake on time.
It turned out that Tom was even better than the clock; or else that he was afraid to risk it, for he had shaken his companion, and told him to get up, before the alarm went off. Tom stifled the clock under the bed clothes, so as to prevent its noise from arousing the rest of the unit, by this time enjoying their initial sleep of the night.
When they got outside, however, they found a number of their fellows bent on riding over to the camp hangars, to see them fairly on their way. They made the short trip by means of a big car, one of many that had been commandeered for the service of the Americans and a few other aviators near by.
The busy mechanicians had the machines in line, and all tuned up for the trip, even to the bombs adjusted beneath the body of each big plane. Already the French pilots were around, and seeing that everything was in proper trim.
Every man was so bundled up that he might have passed unrecognized by his dearest friend so far as features went. Jack, however, had a means of identifying the old sergeant, and his last word of greeting received a buoyant reply that came straight from the heart, as Jean wished them "bon voyage, and a safe return my children;" that being a really French way of speaking, often used even by high commanders in addressing their armies.
After considerable delay from one cause and another, the word was given to start. In rapid succession did the great planes commence their flight. Exceeding care had to be exercised on account of the terrible missiles they were carrying for an unfortunate collision might have caused immense damage.
"Some adventure, believe me!" was Jack's comment.
"You bet!" returned Tom, laconically.
Presently Tom and Jack found themselves mounting upward in spirals, and following the tail-light of the plane that was to serve them as a pilot.