“It’s not going to work,” Amos had said to Owen when the two were alone. “Eddy’s stubborn as a mule and rebellious as Cain!”
Owen had merely shrugged. “I don’t blame him much. He’s a grown man, and Nick’s trying to treat him like a kid. But I’ll do the best I can for him.”
All the good-byes had been said and now, as the two joined the milling throng, Owen edged closer to Castellano. “Well, I’ve got the idea this isn’t going to be much of a vacation, Eddy.”
“I can handle it!” Castellano snapped. He’d always liked Owen, had been impressed by the fact that he had once been a successful prizefighter. But from the moment Nick had told him that he’d have to listen to Owen, Eddy had grown resentful. Now his lips thinned and he refused to say more. Why should I listen to this man? he was thinking. A preacher! He don’t know no more about soldierin’ than I do! Nick musta been crazy to think of it, and I musta been crazy to agree to it. I won’t do it!
“All right, you birds! Come on!” A tall, wiry man they had met when they boarded the train made his way through the crowd, calling out the names of his squad members. “Come on, girls! It’s time to get you into this man’s army!”
Sergeant Mack Stone was regular army, from Texas. He had light blue eyes and prematurely white hair, and he even chewed tobacco in his sleep, it was told. Tough as boot leather, he was incredibly profane.
Stone led his group to a long low building. When they got inside, he ordered, “Okay now, strip!”
One young recruit named Tyler Ashland turned beet red. Owen, who had talked to Ashland on the train, took note. He’ll have to get over that, in this Army.
Under Sergeant Stone’s direction, they all stripped down to the buff and got in line. Running the gauntlet between two rows of bored medics, the men were jabbed, tapped, and injected. When Ashland saw the first needle, he shut his eyes, but when it came at him, he fainted dead away.
A hollow laugh went up and Eddy mocked, “What a sissy! They’ll never make a soldier outta him!”
Sergeant Stone stared at him. “But you’ll be one, won’t you, Castellano? It’s good to know I’ve got at least one tough guy in my squad. Go ahead, give him them shots,” he said. “He won’t feel ’em now.” The others watched as the needles were plunged into the unconscious form of Ashland, then Owen helped get him on his feet.
“Don’t feel bad,” Owen whispered to him. “I’m just about to do the same thing myself.”
Ashland, a fat, rosy-cheeked fellow, not much older than eighteen, was pale as dough. “I wish I’d never thought of this,” he mumbled.
“You’ll be okay. This is rough on everybody.” Owen made a mental note to stick close to the boy and try to deflect some of the worst of the ribbing.
After the men had all received their injections, they were led to the barber shop. Castellano was the first to crawl up into the chair.
“And would you like to keep your hair, sir?” the barber, a corporal, asked politely.
Eddy ran his hand through his black curly locks. “Yeah, I would.”
“Then you’d better get a sack!” A laugh went up from the other barbers at the old joke.
Eddy flushed but could do nothing more than sit helplessly while the barber ran a pair of clippers down the middle of his head, leaving two mountains of black hair on each side. Then the rest fell, covering the floor with black curls.
“There you go, soldier,” the corporal said. “Them cooties won’t have nothin’ to hold onto now!”
Soon the squad, naked heads shining, arrived at the quartermaster’s shed. They drew mess kits, blankets, a bed sack to stuff with straw, and a uniform. When they were dressing, Kayo Pulaski yelled, “Hey, this crummy thing’s too tight!” Pulaski, a husky, foul-mouthed man of twenty-seven, had been a fighter, although not a very successful one as far as victories in the ring were concerned. But he was right about the uniforms, as Owen discovered when he pulled his on.
The tight-fitting blouse was made of scratchy wool of the dullest olive drab. The jacket’s high collar came up under his chin, and he had an idea it would rub his neck raw immediately. The trousers were like riding breeches, roomy in the seat and tapered toward the knees. The “wraps”—six-foot lengths of woolen bandage that were wound around each leg from knee to ankle—came last. The trick, they were informed by Sergeant Stone, was to make the wraps look smart without cutting off circulation in the legs. Boots came in two sizes—Too Large and Too Small. The outfit was crowned by a high-peaked campaign hat with a wide brim.
“I’d like to meet the designer of this crummy uniform in the dark,” Pulaski muttered. He stuck the hat on top of his shaved head. “I’d show him a thing or two!”
“Well,” Owen said, “I guess we’ll see a little worse than this when we get to France.”
Sergeant Stone, standing nearby, scowled darkly. “You got that right. Now, you girls come on with me and we’ll start makin’ soldiers outta you.”
All through May, June, and July, Sergeant Stone struggled to turn his green farm boys and the soft city boys into battle-ready soldiers. He had little to work with, for weapons of every kind were in short supply in the training camps. Many a dummy labeled “Kaiser Bill” had his stuffing torn out by the rookies, lunging with bayonets tied to the end of broomsticks.
Despite these shortages, Stone was gratified to see the men hardening up. They learned to speak a new language, including M.P. (military police), AWOL (absent without leave), shavetail (second lieutenant), and doggie house (guardhouse).
Nasty details like digging latrines and filling sandbags became somewhat easier by singing nonsense songs such as “One Grasshopper Hopped Right on Another Grasshopper’s Back,” and “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” But the song that was most familiar was written by a doughboy named Corporal Irving Berlin: “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning!”
Training for Owen had been a snap. He’d been in good shape to begin with and was accustomed to discipline. Only once, when Kayo Pulaski had tried to bully Tyler Ashland—the fat-cheeked, baby-faced rookie—had Owen experienced a bad moment. Stepping between the two, Owen had gone outside with Pulaski and had toyed with the ex-prelim fighter, letting him tire himself, before knocking him out with one swift blow to the chin. Then he’d picked Pulaski up and made a friend out of the man, winning the undying gratitude of Ashland and other young recruits he had helped. And by the end of their training period, Owen Stuart was awarded his corporal’s stripes.
But the one recruit he’d wanted most to befriend turned a cold shoulder to him. “I don’t need none o’ your preachin’,” Eddy Castellano had said defiantly, “and I don’t need you to fight no battles for me, Owen. I can take care o’ myself! I know I promised Nick I’d listen to you, and I will—about soldierin’—but that’s all, see?”
“Okay, Eddy,” Owen said regretfully. “I know it’s tough on a young guy like you to be put under wraps. But if I can be of any help, I’m always here.”
By the end of August, it was time to ship out. Sergeant Stone came in one day, saying, “Okay, we’re about ready to go over the Big Pond. There’s gonna be one big review. Blackjack himself is gonna be here, so I want my outfit to look better than anybody else’s. Now get all your equipment ready.”
The big review took place in New York City. The first contingent of American soldiers to cross the Atlantic Ocean put on quite a show for the whole country. They marched down the main street under a storm of confetti, performed drills on some of the larger fields, and were given heroes’ send-offs by the city.
After all the festivities, Owen stood at the dock, saying good-bye to Allie and to Amos and his family. Down the way he could see Nick and Anna Castellano telling Eddy good-bye. There was nothing ominous about the scene to most of them, but Amos was painfully aware that of all the thousands of men boarding these ships, not all would return.
“Don’t worry,” Owen whispered to Allie, “I’ll be back.”
Allie held
him tightly. “Oh, Owen! I couldn’t live without you—!”
Just down the wharf, Anna was clinging to her son Eddy. She had grown plump over the years, and she held him as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. “Oh, Eddy, Eddy!” she moaned.
Eddy endured the embrace, then kissed her fondly on the cheek. “Aah, don’t worry, Mama. I’ll go over and teach those Huns a lesson, then I’ll be back.” He glanced at Nick and winked. “When I learn a few tricks over there, I’ll be about ready to take over from you, big brother.”
Nick forced a smile. “Sure, kid. That’s the way it’ll be.”
The ship’s horn gave three short blasts, and the sergeants and noncoms marched the soldiers on board the ships, and soon they were sailing out of the harbor.
These troop ships, really converted ocean liners, were unlike anything the men had ever imagined. No longer proud sea queens, they were painted in gray, black, and white stripes to confuse U-boat commanders. The vessel that Owen and his squad was on carried upward of nine thousand troops, three times their normal capacity. Living quarters were so cramped you couldn’t move without stepping on someone. The sergeants would be forced to work overtime, breaking up fistfights, but most of the men remained too seasick to get out of bed.
The land started fading into the distance, and Owen shoved through the throng to stand beside the members of his squad at the rail. Silence fell over them as they stood waving to the crowds on the wharf.
“This is gonna be great!” Eddy said.
Owen thought about what lay ahead, then looked out to see Allie growing smaller as the ship cleared the harbor. “No,” he said sadly, “it won’t be great, Eddy.”
16
ESCAPE!
The small town of Villengen bordered the prison camp where Gavin Stuart was taken. Villengen was in Baden, a small section of Germany lying on the east bank of the upper Rhine River. Across the surface of Baden, the high plains and the mountains of the Black Forest rose up spectacularly. The camp itself, surrounded by barbed wire and considered to be escape-proof, was outside the village.
On the morning he was brought in, Gavin took one look around as the steel gates slammed behind him and vowed, I’ll get out of this place or die trying! He was assigned to one of the barracks housing thirty other prisoners. But during the first two weeks, he found it was not as bad as he had expected. The food was plain, consisting mostly of potatoes with an occasional portion of pork, but the farmers round about were enjoying bumper crops, so prisoners were fed vegetables fairly regularly. The prisoners themselves were a mixed lot of French, Belgians, English, and a few other nationalities thrown in.
On his entrance into the barracks, Gavin met a young man of twenty-two by the name of Harry Douglas, whose distinct dialect gave him away at once.
“Take that bunk. It’ll ha’ fewer bedbugs than the rest, I think,” said Douglas.
“Thanks,” Gavin murmured and tossed the few items of clothing he had been issued on the bunk, then sat down. It was quiet in the barracks, most of the men being outside, and he turned to the young man. “You been here long?”
“Aboot three months,” Douglas replied with a broad Scots accent. “What’s your outfit?”
“Lafayette Escadrille.”
Douglas lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “We’ve heard aboot ya. Got shot doon, I suppose?”
Gavin nodded. “That’s it. But I got shot down with class. Baron von Richthofen himself did the honor.”
“Aye, he’s a real fighting mon, so I hear.” Douglas nodded. “Weel, this is no’ a bad place for sittin’ oot the war. The food’s not Scottish, but it’s pretty good for the bloody Krauts.”
“What about escape?” Gavin asked instantly. “I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life in this place.”
“Ah, weel now, that’s a noble aspiration.” Douglas grinned. “But it’s no picnic, gettin’ oot o’ here. The place is guarded like the Bank o’ Scotland. There’ve been three attempts in the last two months and no’ a man o’ them got ootside. All but one was shot doon just ootside the wire.” He stared curiously at his young neighbor. “It’d take quite a magician for a mon to get oot o’ this place.”
Gavin shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not going to stay here,” he said. “This war’s going to go on for a long time, and I’m not going to rot in a prison camp.” He walked to the window and looked outside where the barbed wire fences rose in the distance. “That piece of barbed wire was put there by a man. And anything a man can do, some other man can undo.”
Douglas continued to study the young flyer. “Ah, I feel the same way, laddie, but a mon would have to be a bird to fly over that wire. Or a mole to tunnel under it. They check three times a day. We all line up, and if a mon’s missing, they throw a cordon round the whole camp, thick as fleas.” He dropped his head sadly. “If you think o’ anythin’, let me know. I’m the mon to go wi’ you, if you find a way oot o’ this place, that is.”
The days stretched into weeks, and Gavin endured his captivity with an impatience he did his best to suppress. He got no letters, and he wrote none, but during the long days and even longer nights, he thought and dreamed of home…and of Heather Spencer. The possibilities of escape seemed to be diminishing, although he and Harry Douglas spent hours and hours making plans. Some of them were fantastic and totally unrealistic; all of them seemed impractical. He grew fond of the young Scot and the two formed an exclusive club, the focus of which was escape.
June, however, with all of its balmy breezes and warm sunlit days, seemed the ideal time to break out. They walked around and around the inside of the compound, gazing at the high mountains of the Black Forest.
“If we cud just get into those woods, I’d take my chances,” Harry said one day. “But getting oot o’ this place…I don’t know, Gavin. Seems like it canna be done.”
“It can be done, Harry!” Gavin retorted stoutly. “We’ve just got to find a way!”
Not long after that conversation, two prisoners constructed crude ladders, set them against the barbed wire, and had just reached the top when they were cut down by machine gun fire. Another group made a flimsy bridge of small pine boards from Red Cross boxes and tried to scale the high fences. They, too, were shot down. After both escape attempts, all prisoners were lined up into ranks and addressed by the Commandant, who informed them harshly that the guards had been instructed to shoot to kill any man who touched the fence in the future. In fact, he insisted, they would be better to stay at least ten feet away from the fence itself.
A month after the last escape attempt, Gavin lay in his bunk staring into the darkness, his brain fluttering like a bat as he reviewed the possibilities of breaking out of the camp. Getting over that fence had become the biggest goal of his life, and he knew that he would give twenty years of whatever time he had left just to be on the outside.
Wearily his mind turned over old schemes, rejecting them. Finally he tried to put it aside and lay in the darkness, thinking of other things—mostly of Heather—before reliving the instant he had been shot down by von Richthofen. He seemed to hear again the stutter of the German Spandau machine guns and the whistle of the slugs past his ear. Clenching his fists, he remembered the horror of going down, reliving the instant when his plane went completely out of control and plunged toward the earth and sudden death.
And then he remembered something he had evidently blocked out. God…help me get out of this! His frantic prayer came back with sudden clarity, and then he remembered that the plane had somehow, against all the laws of gravity, pulled out of the spin so that he was able to land.
That couldn’t have been God! Gavin thought stubbornly. It was just an accident. Nevertheless, the more he thought about it, the more he was forced to question his own beliefs. Owen had said, God’s in everything, Gavin. What we think is a coincidence may be something he puts in our way to help us. The things we feel are bad might turn out to be good. Don’t ever give up on God.
All night long Gavin lay slee
pless, thinking about his prayer—the first one he’d prayed in years—and his miraculous escape from death. Finally, almost in jest, he said silently, Well, God, you’ve gotten me out of one mess. Let’s see you get me out of this one!
Then strangely, even though he had not been serious, a quietness seemed to settle over his spirit, and a sudden assurance came to him. If a voice had spoken, it would have said something like, I will show you what I am able to do. That was all. He heard nothing, and he felt almost foolish. Yet for several days he pondered those words: I will show you what I am able to do.
Finally, almost in desperation, lying again on his bunk with that phrase running through his mind, Gavin Stuart gave up. “All right, Lord,” he whispered very quietly so no one could hear, not even Harry, snoring in the bunk next to his. “I can’t do anything for myself, so I’m asking you to show me what you can do.” He felt hypocritical as he prayed. He had not served God—in fact, he had run away from him—and now here he was asking God to do something for him. Nevertheless, he held his ground and whispered fiercely, “If you’ve spoken to me…then I want to see what you can do!”
Almost immediately an idea began forming in Gavin’s brain. It came in small impulses of thought, but with such clarity that it was almost like watching one of those new motion pictures that had taken the country by storm. He lay there, his breathing short and choppy, as these “visions” flickered in his imagination. They did not last long and then they stopped, but he knew that it could not have been his own mind that had devised these things.
“Harry!” he whispered. “Harry, wake up!”
Hope Takes Flight Page 19