Hope Takes Flight Read online

  All too often, the front line rested on a marshy flat, and wherever the trench fell, it was shielded by a thicket of barbed wire strung in broad aprons, sometimes a hundred and fifty feet or more in depth. Soldiers called “Pioneers” trimmed the barricades by night, and enemy artillery tried to blast them apart by day. At times, the distance between the trenches was so close that the Germans and the Frenchmen fought within hearing range, often screaming at one another. At other times, the lines were more than a mile apart. The pattern followed no sensible plan that Gavin could see, but then nothing about this war made any sense.

  Great gun duels would go on for hours, often, he knew, arising from nothing more significant than a nose-thumbing incident from a soldier. First, the small weapons would be put into play, followed by the complete orchestration. Where the opposing trenches were close, the soldiers were mutually immune to the big guns, but were vulnerable to grenades, mortars, automatic fires, and trench raids.

  All this ran through Gavin’s mind as he and his comrade made their way back through a diagonal trench until they reached the field kitchen. The cooks occupied a space underneath what was called a bomb-proof—which was nothing more than a hole in the ground, covered by sandbags. Inside, the half-naked cooks had their stoves going, and one of them looked up grumpily and asked a question in French. Marcel replied sharply, and the two men fell into some sort of argument. Finally, DeSpain seemed to have won the argument, for the cook began slamming pots and pans about. Ultimately, the two soldiers left the cookshack with four iron pots of food, enough for the whole squad.

  When they made their way back through the trenches and reached their own sector, they called out, “Sarge! Here’s the grub!”

  Moritz nodded. “I’ll keep watch. See that all the men are fed.”

  Gavin and Marcel carried the food down the line. Each man had his own pan, and when they were all served, they found themselves a place and sat down to eat.

  DeSpain stared into his tin plate and shook his head. “I wouldn’t eat this slop if someone brought it to me in a restaurant,” he said moodily. “What is it, anyway?”

  Gavin stared into his own plate and said, “Better not to know, I reckon. Just eat it and be glad it’s hot.”

  The two soldiers ate the tasteless stew slowly, pausing from time to time when a flare went off, waiting to see if a bigger shell would follow or if the sergeant would call out that an attack was forming out of the trenches. They finished and Gavin cleaned his plate as best he could with his filthy handkerchief, then stuck it back into his knapsack.

  “Well, no dessert,” he said, and grinned at DeSpain. “If I was home, I’d be having apple pie or blackberry cobbler.”

  “Blackberry what?” Marcel demanded.

  “Cobbler! You pick blackberries, you make crust, and you put the blackberries in the crust with their juice, and when they’re all bubbling up, you eat it! Gosh, I wish I had some right now!”

  DeSpain stared with sunken eyes at his friend and shook his head sadly. “You’re not likely to get any coobler around here,” he grunted. He was a gloomy young man, given to writing poetry which he was careful never to show to anyone…except once or twice to Gavin. Gavin had no literary taste at all, so he bragged on it enthusiastically.

  DeSpain had been in the army since a week after war broke out in 1914. He had come in with high hopes, but like many others, he had seen so many men killed and so little accomplished that now he was completely stripped of any hope of victory, or even of an end to the hostilities.

  As they sat there, he began explaining again his theories of war to Gavin. “You see, as long as armies are mobile,” he said, waving his hand around, “they can change positions. One can catch another from the flank, sneak around, and come in behind them.”

  He glared around at the trench and continued, “But in a hole like this—these trenches—the enemy never moves and we never move. Nobody can catch anybody else by surprise.”

  “Well, sometimes there’s a surprise attack,” Gavin argued.

  “Yes, there is.” Marcel laughed bitterly. “And what happens? Either they rush across into our machine gun fire and they all get killed, or we rush across into theirs and we all get killed. And the bodies pile up in no-man’s-land out there.”

  Gavin was still young enough and green enough to have some hope. “Well,” he said, “it’ll have to end sometime, won’t it? I mean, we can’t keep on killing each other forever.”

  “That’s right, my friend,” Marcel nodded, disillusionment scarring his face. “It will end when everybody is dead. When the Germans are all dead and we Frenchmen are all dead and the English are all dead…when you are dead and I am dead…then it will all be over.”

  The two young men went on arguing and finally Sergeant Moritz said, “All right, you two. Get up on the step. I want you to watch. I think I saw something moving out there.”

  But there was nothing moving. Nor for the next two weeks did anything seem to move. By day, the artillery blasted the barbed wire, and by night the Pioneers laid it back, but nothing happened.

  The only thing that gave Gavin any relief in the filthy trench was that from time to time during the day, he would look up and watch the planes fly over. Just by observation he had learned to tell the Allied planes from the German planes, and twice there had been a dogfight in the air over him, when he had almost been able to see the faces of the pilots. Unfortunately, the Germans had won both times, and the French planes went down somewhere behind his line. Once the victorious German had flown his plane over the trenches, waggling his wings. He was so close Gavin could see his goggled face.

  Gavin dreamed about those planes. It was why he’d come to France in the first place. He would have sold his soul to be a pilot. But no matter how much he protested or attempted to transfer, his pleas were met with ridicule.

  “You’re a trench bug, Yank,” Sergeant Moritz would say with a short laugh. “You’ll stay here ’til you’re buried in the mud like all the rest of us. Now, get back to your place.”

  Nevertheless, Gavin hoped that someday, something would change. This was no life at all; rather, it was like a living death. The new year came and went and still nothing changed. Twice his unit was called on to go over the top to charge the German machine guns. But the first time, the attack was called off before they got ten yards from their own trench.

  The second time was not the same. Gavin crouched on the fire step, waiting for the signal. When it came, he threw himself over the top and ran clumsily toward the hole in the barbed wire that had been blown by their artillery. He looked around to see Marcel DeSpain running beside him, behind the rest of the squad.

  Suddenly it became like a mad race to Gavin. He had to get to that trench, where those Germans poked their spiked helmets up, and kill them. If I could do that, somehow he reasoned, the war would be over. And I could go home.

  The tremendous rattle of the machine guns addled his senses, and the jarring sounds of grenades exploding on both sides of him added to the nightmare. Still he ran forward, aware that others were falling like limp bundles into the mud. Some were caught on the barbed wire and began screaming at once. Sometimes the scream would be cut off abruptly as machine gun fire raked the body.

  Finally, hearing a soft cry to his right, he turned and saw Marcel standing rigidly, his eyes wide with disbelief. He merely looked at Gavin, saying something Gavin could not understand. Then he grabbed his chest, and blood spurted from his mouth in a crimson fountain. He fell forward into the mud, his face burying itself, and lay still.

  Gavin dropped his rifle and ran to him, but then he heard Moritz shouting, “Leave him! Leave him! Get going, Yank!” Gavin grabbed his rifle and started once again across the field.

  Once more the charge was halted short of their goal. And one of the noncoms shouted, “Retreat! Retreat!”

  Gavin, mad with battle lust, would have gone on, but Moritz grabbed him, turned him around, and gave him a kick. “Back to the trench, you
stupid idiot!”

  Gavin stumbled back to the line along with the rest. As the bullets crisscrossed the area, he somehow found himself sitting back in the water at the bottom of the trench. Then a thought occurred to him. As the others came stumbling in, he tried to climb back up on the fire step.

  But it was the sergeant again who grabbed him, demanding, “Where do you think you’re going!”

  “It’s…Marcel!” Gavin gasped, his eyes wild. “I’ve got to go back and get him! He’s been shot!”

  Moritz shook his head. He was a tough, crude soldier, but he had developed a liking for this young man. “Too late, boy,” he muttered in a kindly tone. “I saw him go down. Three bullets right in the chest. He’s gone.”

  Gavin stared at him. Slowly the meaning sunk in. Without a word, he stumbled away, sat down with his back against the bulkhead, put his head in his hands, and began to weep.

  After the death of Marcel DeSpain, Gavin Stuart was careful to form no new friendships. He could not afford to go through that kind of grief again. He saw the men go down from time to time, and each time he had to tell himself they were just numbers. At night, he would sometimes dream of Marcel, but he never told anyone.

  The year wore on, and one day early in May—the sixth, it was—Gavin was awakened from a nap by a shout. “Look! Look! He’s coming down!”

  Gavin rose with a start, looking around in confusion. Focusing on the noises coming from above him, he looked up to see a plane coming down directly in front of his position. It was, he knew instantly, an Allied plane, but there was no enemy aircraft in sight. The plane was belching white vapor, which Gavin guessed to be gasoline. He expected to see the frail aircraft explode at any moment, but it did not. It came down almost at full speed, it seemed, and Gavin could see that the pilot was still alive, though the plane seemed to be shot to pieces.

  The aircraft touched down, miraculously kept going past crater after crater, until it dropped its wheels in a very small one. Then it bucked up into the air, performed a small flip, and landed on its back.

  “Poor beggar,” Moritz said. “He ain’t got a chance! Them gunners have him spotted.”

  It was true, Gavin knew. German machine guns had already begun to rattle and several rifles as well—all aimed at the hapless airman. Fortunately the craft itself was hidden behind a huge mound, and the gunners could not get a clear shot at the victim, who was struggling in his harness.

  It was one of those moments Gavin would never forget—the sight of that airman trying to get loose, the sound of the crackling gunfire. Afterward, he could never remember what went on in his mind. Everything seemed to have been blotted out. All he knew was that he was racing across the cratered field without a gun, and the sergeant was screaming at him to stop. He heard the whistle of a slug as it went past his ear. He dodged, fell down, and saw the dirt where he had been standing blow up into fine dust. Somehow he managed to stay concealed behind the raised mountains of the craters until he reached the plane. When he had made it, he scrambled underneath.

  The smell of gas was strong and, looking inside, he saw that the pilot was covered with blood. Probably dead, he thought.

  But at that moment the goggled face turned to him and said, “Get me out of this, will ya, fella?”

  Gavin used his pocketknife to sever the straps. The pilot, a big heavy man, fell on top of him and the two rolled in the mud.

  “Can you walk?” Gavin asked, jumping to his feet.

  The pilot put up his goggles and glanced down at his bloody leg. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But I can crawl. Let’s get out of this place.”

  The airman did his best, but halfway across, he fainted from the loss of blood. With bullets striking all around, Gavin managed to drag him to safety, using what cover he could find. The machine guns on his own side, he was aware, were crackling to cover him as much as possible. He fell halfway into the trench, wrestling the body of the heavy man over with him, and the two of them were at once pulled inside to safety.

  “Here! Put him on this stretcher!” Sergeant Moritz barked. “He’s bleedin’ like a fountain!”

  “Lemme go with him to the hospital, Sarge,” Gavin pleaded.

  Sergeant Moritz grinned at him. “You bloody beggar! Ain’t got the sense of a flea!” He shook his head. “Okay, you can go with him. But get back as soon as you can.”

  “Right, Sarge.” Four of them lifted the stretcher and began the trip through the maze of trenches. They staggered into the field hospital and Gavin said with more authority than he felt, “You fellas go on back. I’ll stay with the pilot.” To his surprise, they nodded and left at once.

  Gavin hovered nearby while doctors stripped the pilot of his uniform and began working on him. When they were through, Gavin edged close enough to peer down at the wounded man.

  The pilot’s eyes were open and he said, “Hey, you’re the joker who brought me in, aren’t you?”

  Gavin grinned, for the accent was unmistakably American. “Sure did,” he said. “How you feelin’?”

  The aviator said, “Well, from the sound of your talk, you must be from the good ol’ U.S.A.”

  Gavin nodded. “Way back in the hills of Arkansas. Are you all right?”

  The pilot shrugged. “No, I think they’re going to ship me to a hospital in Paris.” A light flashed in his eyes, and he said, “Listen. I want you to come with me, Bud. I ain’t said thank you yet, and we got some talking to do.”

  Gavin shook his head. “I can’t do that. I’d be a deserter.”

  The big man grinned at him. His face was pale from loss of blood, but there was something authoritative in every line of his body. “I’ll take care of that,” he said. He called one of the French doctors over and rattled off something in French. The two talked for a moment, and at last the doctor nodded in agreement.

  “He’ll get word back to your unit. Tell him your name and your outfit. Then you can stay with me ’til I get out of that bloody hospital.”

  Ten minutes later Gavin was climbing into the ambulance beside the wounded aviator.

  “My name’s Bill Thaw,” he said before he drifted off to sleep. “When we get to the hospital, you stay close to me. I’ll tell them you’re my body servant or wing man or something. I need somebody close to me besides these Frogs, okay?”

  “Sure, Lieutenant,” Gavin assured him and patted the beefy shoulder. “Don’t worry none. I’ll stay right with you from now on.”

  8

  TWO KINDS OF PILOTS

  Gavin could not tear himself away from the shower. He had been admitted to the hospital as Bill Thaw’s roommate or wing man and had been given a bed in one of the wards. Adjoining the ward was a bath, and the first thing Gavin did was to strip off his clothes and plunge under the cool water. Over and over again he let the soothing liquid run over his head, trying to wash away the filth that had accumulated during months in the trenches.

  When he finally got out, he stared at the dirty clothes he had thrown on the floor. Determined not to wear them in that state, he washed them with laundry soap scrounged from one of the ward attendants. With no change of clothes until his wet ones dried, he crawled between the clean sheets and fell asleep instantly.

  He awoke with a start. The familiar stench of the trenches and the sounds of cannon booming and machine guns rattling were missing. The silence seemed to sweep over him and startled him more than the explosion of a mine or a bomb falling from an airplane. He lay there, luxuriating in the feel of the clean sheets next to his equally clean body. He finally got up, put on his freshly washed uniform, and made his way out of the ward.

  The other patients appeared to be sleeping, so Gavin left quietly. Going at once to the desk at the end of the hall, he found an attendant, a tall Frenchman, who spoke only broken English. After a struggle with the language, Gavin learned where Lieutenant Thaw was quartered. He made his way through the hospital, getting lost more than once. He finally found the room he was seeking.

  Pausing o
utside the door of a hospital room, Gavin heard a very English voice behind him. “Are you looking for Lieutenant Thaw, Private?”

  Gavin wheeled around and found himself looking into the face of one of the most attractive women he’d ever seen in his life. She was obviously a nurse, wearing a white uniform that reached to the toes of her polished black shoes, and some type of a fitted cap on her head.

  “Why…I…yes, ma’am, I am.” He stared at her. “You’re…uh…not French, are you?”

  The young woman smiled at him. “No, I am English,” she said. “I’m Nurse Spencer.” She was rather tall—about five-eight, he guessed—and no more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Her ash blond hair and blue-gray eyes made a perfect match for her oval face. But, Gavin reasoned, I haven’t seen a woman in so long that even a female gorilla might look good to me!

  “Yes, Nurse, I’m here to take care of Lieutenant Thaw until he gets out of the hospital.”

  Nurse Spencer nodded her approval. “That’s fine, Private. What’s your name?”

  “Gavin Stuart.”

  “American, aren’t you?” The nurse gave him an appraising look. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. We’re packed and jammed with the casualties from the big push. Have you had any experience nursing?”

  Gavin scratched his head and stared at her. “Well, ma’am…I mean Nurse…not really, just tendin’ horses and cows and dogs, I guess.”

  Nurse Spencer laughed out loud, making a delightful sound. He had read somewhere in a book that certain women laughed with a tinkling sound, like music, but he’d never expected to hear it. “It’s all about the same, I suppose,” she said quickly. “Come inside and I’ll give you instructions.”

  She half turned to go inside, but Gavin put a hand on her arm. “How is he, Nurse? Is he hurt bad?”

  “Oh, no. The wound in his leg is healing nicely. It didn’t break any bones. I think he can go home in a couple of days. The main thing is to see that an infection doesn’t get started. Of course, he lost quite a bit of blood so we need to build his strength up. Come along. He was awake a few moments ago.”