Chapter IX: Part 9

"You should have seen him, eh? A stripling of nineteen who knew how to fly and insisted. He was just from the _lycée_; he had been rejected four times, but he insisted and he came to Pau to the aerodrome. _Eh bien_, they let him in at last, and I will tell you what he did. I went up with him once, after we were both aces, to get some photographs, because I understand photography. And the last thing he said to me was: 'Old fellow, I give you warning. To-day I dodge no shells. To-day is my anniversary.'

"Well, we went up and they recognized him--they always do, because he flies like no one else in the world. Never have I heard such a cracking of shells. They started in a big circle all around us and came nearer and nearer, but he did not move. On the course he kept, and I--took photographs. At last I report that I have enough; but, no, he asks me to take some photographs of the puffy clouds around our plane. And when that is done he starts home again, but turns again and does a spiral, I do not know how many times, right over one of the batteries which had been looking for us. In the line they thought he was crazy. But I knew well enough that Guynemer was paying us out for his early days when we dared to patronize him!"

Guynemer's development was coincident with that of the light aircraft of the _Nieuport_ type. In the little machine with the clipped wings that must take the earth at sixty miles an hour because it has no buoyancy at a lesser speed, Guynemer was at home. He won his "aceship" in a slower type, but his developed tactics required a craft that could make its 10,000 feet in ten minutes, and maintain a speed of 120 miles an hour.

Estimates based on the carrying capacity of the machines that Guynemer destroyed credit the captain with accounting for more than eighty pilots, observers, and gunners, all told. It was Guynemer who shot down Lieutenant Hohendorf, pilot for a French aeroplane factory before the war, who had destroyed twelve French machines. It is not impossible that Guynemer himself was an unfortunate victim added to the record of Richthofen's squad.

II--STORY OF DORCIERES--DUELLIST OF THE CLOUDS

For a generation Rouzier Dorcieres has been one of the most picturesque figures in Parisian life, holding the unique position of the dean of duellists. A dinner was given to him in April, 1911, by two hundred and fifty men, every one of whom had either fought a duel with him, been his or his opponent's second in a duel, been seconded by him, or had participated as principal or second in a duel he "directed." All told, he had been director of 267 sword or pistol combats, and of the occasions on which he had played the rôle of second he had completely lost count. He himself had fought no fewer than twenty-five duels, fifteen with the sword and ten with the pistol.

It is not surprising, then, that such a firebrand volunteered to serve France in arms when the war broke out, though he had passed the age limit set by the order of mobilization. Bulletins announced that fact at the time, and added that he had been attached to the aviation service. Bulletins equally brief announced that Dorcieres was "missing"--presumably either dead or wounded. No further details have been given of his fate until this story of the dramatic end of a remarkable man.

* * * * *

On the night of August 2, 1914, Dorcieres and a few of his old cronies--old because all of the younger men who had consorted with him were mustered into the Army--gathered at their table in their favorite café.

"My friends," said Dorcieres, as calmly as though he had been announcing that he was going to Deauville for a holiday at the seaside, "I bid you farewell. To-night I am going to volunteer as a soldier of France.

"You may wonder why, at the age of thirty-nine, I voluntarily enlist in the Army, and why I choose to enter the aviation service, distinctly the place for a youth. Listen, then. You have always believed that I have never suffered an affront in my life that was not avenged. But there was one time when I was insulted--grossly--and the man who did it escaped me. Do you remember the winter, five years ago, that I passed in Switzerland? It was there, when I was stopping in Zurich, that the thing occurred. It was after dinner, when the man sitting next to me nudged my shoulder.

"'So you are Rouzier Dorcieres,' he said. 'I recognize you. And they say you have never been touched in a duel. Well, I am sorry I have never had the good fortune to meet you in one.' Then he laughed a sneering laugh.

"My blood boiled. 'But you will have the chance to meet me to-morrow morning,' I replied, glaring at him for his insolence. And then as I surveyed his countenance I saw the answer for his piggishness. He was a Prussian.

"'No,' he answered me, 'I will not be able to avail myself of the pleasure of measuring swords with you, as I leave for Germany on the midnight train. I am attached to the Imperial Aviation Corps and must report at Johannisthal to-morrow.'

"I looked at my watch. It was but a few minutes after eight o'clock. 'Then I will teach you your lesson to-night,' I told him.

"'Monsieur,' he said, 'I shall meet you here before ten o'clock with my seconds and the swords. We will settle this affair before I depart.'

"I bowed with pleasure as he stalked from the restaurant. And then whom did I see sitting near me but our old friend, the Comte de B----, as fine a second as any man ever had. In a few words I had recounted the incident and called on him to act in my behalf. I waited in that restaurant with the Comte until eleven o'clock. The Prussian officer did not appear. Two years afterward I read in a dispatch from Berlin of his being brevetted as an aviator in the Kaiser's service, and recently I read of how he was working in the air-service of the German Army.

"That is why I enter the aviation service of France. Because I still hope to meet him and make him repay his debt of honor to me."

Dorcieres went to the front to seek in the air the only man who had ever insulted him and failed to pay the price. His pilot, the aviator who operated the aeroplane in which he fought his last duel, told the rest of the story to Dorcieres's friends long after the official bulletins had announced his death:

"He told me to find you, messieurs, and to tell you just what he told me as he lay dying--dying from eleven machine-gun bullets which riddled his torso in that last combat which nearly cost me, also, my life.

"Rouzier Dorcieres was the strangest machine-gunner I ever had with me. Unlike other gunners, he always carried binoculars, and when we sighted and approached a _Boche_ aeroplane he spent his preliminary time in peering intently at the occupants of the enemy machine instead of preparing and testing his mitrailleuse anxiously as most gunners do.

"As we circled near the German machine in his last flight Dorcieres passed me a scrap of paper. On it he had scrawled a request that I swoop past the German as near as I could. Instantly I divined his reason--and his reason for always carrying and using his high-power glasses. He thought he recognized one of the occupants of the other aeroplane.

"I swerved and doubled and shot past the _Fokker's_ tail. Dorcieres's eyes had been riveted to the glasses, but he dropped them now, heedlessly, and they smashed in the bottom of the fuselage.

"Dorcieres's right hand was on the mitrailleuse-trigger and his left was feeding the cartridge-belt cleanly into the loading-chamber as we rounded and flashed by, abreast, but a little higher, than the enemy.

"Taca-tac-pouf-pouf-taca-tac-pouf-pouf--and he drove thirty rounds at the _Fokker_. And then as I swerved the _Boche_ turned upward and let fly at us. He had been traveling faster than I thought, because my mind had been distracted by approaching too near him at Dorcieres's request, and he reached us with every shot from his machine gun. Our fuselage cracked and splintered as the leaden hail perforated the car and the choking gasps that I heard behind me were the positive indications that my gunner had been hit. I, too, turned upward, as my motor was undamaged and climbed with the German. Then we both planed and approached each other. I heard my mitrailleuse begin to spit at the exact fraction of a second that we came within range, and the enemy gun never once barked a reply. Dorcieres's first shot must have killed the enemy gunner. And his torrent of bullets ripped off the tail of the _Fokker_ and it dived into our lines like a stone, nose down.

"I landed within fifty yards of the broken _Boche_ car and its occupants. Two stretchers were waiting there for us, but I was unhurt, miraculously. We put Dorcieres in one, tenderly as a baby, and then started off. But he had seen the wreck of the _Fokker_ there and he begged that we stop beside it.

"Beside the German machine were the pilot and the gunner, both dead. By a superhuman effort my dying gunner raised himself on his elbow. He gazed at the face of the enemy machine-gunner.

"'It is he,' was all he said. And we carried him to the field-hospital.

"That afternoon I went to see him. He was pretty nearly gone. That is when he explained, and that is when he asked me to convey to you, messieurs, this message--that he had avenged his honor."

These stories of the aviators could be told indefinitely; how they met in mortal combats in the clouds; how they act as sky-pilots for the armies; how they raided the Krupp gun works; how they soar over the navies, but they must be left for future volumes for they are creating a history of their own--one of the most remarkable in the annals of war.

(The foregoing stories have been gathered by the _Literary Digest_ from various sources.)

FOUR AMERICAN PRISONERS ABOARD THE YARROWDALE

_Adventures With the German Raider "Moewe"_

_Told by Dr. Orville E. McKim, Survivor of the Sunken "Georgic"_

This is the dramatic story of the four American surgeons, starved
in German prisons, whose demand for release by President Wilson
nearly resulted in a declaration of war against Germany. Few more
dramatic tales have been brought forth than the story of adventure,
hardship and peril at sea, short commons on land and the new danger
from the sky which was related by four American professional
men. Snapped up by the German raider in mid-ocean, they cruised
around for days while the commerce destroyer was gathering in
further prizes. Then they made the voyage in the _Yarrowdale_ to
Swinemunde, under such conditions that they expected the ship's
seams to open and the vessel to sink beneath them at any moment.
They lived for more than two months in prison camps in Germany,
on the meagre prison fare provided by the German government.
This is the record of how the Americans of the _Yarrowdale_, by
enduring hunger, deprivation, cold, despair, and days of pitiless
imprisonment, wrote their names in the annals of the United States.
It is romantic, for the elements of daring naval adventure and
of international diplomacy are present. Ambassador Gerard, after
several communications to the Wilhelmstrasse, which were more
than energetic, was promised the release of the Americans, and
the threatened declaration of war on this issue was averted. Dr.
McKim, an American veterinarian, was aboard the White Star liner
_Georgic_, in charge of twelve hundred horses for the Allies, when
she was sunk by the German raider _Moewe_ during its romantic
exploits. He was taken to Germany, with the other prisoners, on the
_Yarrowdale_. Dr. Snyder was captured aboard the British steamship
_Voltaire_, the first vessel to be captured by the raider, while
he was returning to America from France. Mr. Zabriskie was the
veterinarian on the steamship _Mount Temple_, a Canadian horse
transport, which lost three men from shell fire. Dr. Davis and
Dr. McKim were on the White Star liner _Georgic_, the most
important bag of the German raider. Dr. McKim was the first of the
Americans to return and related his experiences in the New York
_World_--Copyright 1917 by the John N. Wheeler Syndicate. A few
episodes from his adventures are now retold.

I--"MY FIRST NIGHT ON GERMAN RAIDER"

The first night on board the German raider which had sunk the _Georgic_ (when we were hurled into a sea alive with swimming, drowning horses) was hell. That is the only way to describe it, if you will pardon the expression. At 9 o'clock all lights were put out. Even the tiny bulb that illuminated the compass on the navigating bridge was shielded and not so much as a match was allowed to be struck on the decks.

We were shut up in the forecastle, and we either had to go to bed or sit around in the dark. The ship rolled heavily and the propellers raced and pounded as her stern occasionally lifted out of the water because of the high speed at which she was constantly pushed. Nobody knew where we were nor where we were going.

With the others, I lay down on a hard, thin mattress, stuffed with excelsior, in the middle of the floor, and envied the men who had bunks or hammocks. Each of us had a shoddy blanket which was as damp as it was dirty and smelly. My bones ached from the cold when at last what seemed an endless night was over.

A sailor who had been detailed as a steward for us brought a mixture masquerading under the name of coffee and more of the black bread and beet jam. There seemed to be no end of bread, and Dr. Snider, who had been surgeon on the _Voltaire_, ate chunk after chunk of it.

"How can you swallow all that stuff?" I asked him.

"When you've been on this d---- ship as long as I have, you'll know," he said. And before I got out of Germany I did.

I had no sooner eaten a few scraps of breakfast than the coffee nauseated me as it had the night before, and my frugal meal and I promptly parted company. As I returned to the quarters where the other men were I started to "beef" about my troubles. Immediately they all broke into song. The tune was that of the hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy," and the words were:

"Growling, growling, growling!
You're always bally well growling.
When you're dead and in your grave
You'll bally well growl no more!"

I didn't quite sense the meaning of it at first, and when they were through singing I started to explain once more that I couldn't stand the coffee out of that infernal, sickening receptacle, looking very much like a wash basin. I hadn't got six words out of my mouth when the song broke out again, and this time the men in the adjacent forecastle room joined in, and I think every English-speaking voice on board the ship was roaring those words. I knew then what it meant, and never after that did I utter one word of complaint. If anybody did, the song was sure to drown his voice. That song might serve a purpose here.

At 10 o'clock in the morning we were led to a washroom, four men at a time. All we had was running salt water and no soap. It drove the dirt in further, but nevertheless it was refreshing.

Many of the men who had been on the raider for a long time were utterly despondent. The treatment to which they had been subjected in the vile-smelling compartments, the lack of decent food and the uncertainty of everything had broken their spirit. Little groups sat about the deck when we were up for our morning airing, their heads in their hands and their shoulders bent and hunched like those of aged men.

A few tried to keep up the spirits of the others. I will never forget Chief Officer Evans of the Voltaire. He had been very stout but he was losing weight at an alarming rate. His features were pinched and his skin hung in folds, yet he was always joking and singing and cheering up the men. It was enough to crack nerves of steel.

Picture us. Some of us have nothing to our backs but pajamas and overcoats in which we left the _Georgic_. Some of my horsemen have nothing but shirt and trousers, even their socks having been left behind because they were working on the main deck which was awash when the raider fired into us.

None of us expects to reach home! The raider is heavily armed and her officers are brave men. They will tackle anything. Sooner or later it is inevitable we will encounter a British or a French cruiser--and then we will die. We won't be fighting like men. Down there in those rat traps with steel doors bolted against us, we will drown while others are fighting. The fellows who sit around the deck with their heads in their hands moaning, sometimes even sobbing, are not cowards. All they would ask is a chance to die like men. A man doesn't want to go like a drowned rat.

After our little breath of fresh air in the mornings, it seemed worse than ever to go back to that hole--the forecastle. There was just one doubtful cause for thankfulness. We officers, as I was rated, were not in quite as bad a situation as were the men. About 430 of them in all were packed below decks in a hold that smelled to the high heavens with air so laden with soggy, stale tobacco smoke that you could cut it with a knife. The mattresses, which most of them spread on the floor for beds, were made of old cotton waste, and they absorbed filth and dampness like sponges. As for food, the men got sea biscuit for breakfast instead of the black bread--and they were some biscuits. They were as hard as the decks we slept on. For this noon-day meal they were given noodle soup, such as we received, only thinner, and more watery if possible, but they seldom got meat, although we had it nearly every day with a very tasty gravy poured over it.

For the first two days this noon-day meal was the only one I could retain, and I think it was because there was none of that abominable coffee with it. Our manner of eating was somewhat difficult too, for we were given spoons and forks but no knives.

"That's so, you can't file them down and make daggers," explained one of the German sailors. "We aren't taking any chances with neutrals or belligerents either." They weren't. We could readily see that. Of course one of the first things the Germans had done when we went aboard was to take away every firearm or weapon of any character and whatever might have been used to flash a signal to a vessel the raider might pursue or try to elude.

The commander's order was:

"Any man found with firearms or heliograph will be shot summarily." Nobody tried to hold anything out on him after that. The Germans mean what they say.

Every neutral was given a white band to wear around his left arm, and this allowed us more liberty than the other men and officers enjoyed. The belligerents were all obliged to take their air and exercise on the well deck aft, while we were allowed to go up on the head while on deck. I talked to many of the German sailors, and it was one of them who told me how the _Georgic_ had been taken.

II--"WHAT THE OFFICERS TOLD ME"

"We are sneaking along at night," he said in very fair English. He told me later he had once been on a Hamburg-American merchantman regularly out of New York. "We haven't a light showing. The ship's as black as the water around us, and there's not a pipe or a cigar lit on the deck.

"All of a sudden the lookout calls and we see your lights. Keeping them low on the horizon we steam along all night waiting for daylight to run in on you. After that it was simple. You know what happened then. (I certainly did know.) What fools you were to run with lights!"

One of the officers from the _Voltaire_, already taken and sunk, told me that afterward while the Germans were chasing us a sailor went below and informed the prisoners that the raider was overhauling the White Star steamship _Georgic_. The name had been chipped off the _Georgic's_ counter and lifeboats and the only conceivable way they could have identified us was by intercepting wireless messages. For that, they must have had the British code. The incident lends color to the story that the Germans had the code when the _Lusitania_ made her last trip and sent a message to the Captain to slow down to eighteen knots. There are many stories among seamen in England to-day that Capt. Turner of the _Lusitania_ punished at least one member of his crew for treachery before he abandoned his ship.

"When we came aboard the raider," the officer from the late _Voltaire_ continued, "one of the Germans said to me:

"'Where were you? You are twenty-four hours late.'

"And we were. It's a cinch those Fritzies never dreamt that. They pick code messages."

I had heard the raider was equipped with both coal and oil burning engines, so I managed to wander into the engine room to try to see how they were arranged while I was out for an airing one day. I hadn't had much time to look around when a heavy hand clutched my shoulder and a German sailor sent me spinning out of the doorway.

Nevertheless we neutrals were allowed a great deal of freedom, and I want to say that what I did discover showed me that the raider was about as cleverly arranged a ship as I have ever seen. While on the forecastle head for airings, I noticed that there were always six men on the bridge. This was an unusual circumstance, but it would be difficult to note it from a distance because the men on the bridge were partially concealed behind a canvas windshield.

There were always two lookouts in the crow's nest and sailors told me they only stood one hour watches each. This insured wide awake, alert men all the time. I noticed these scanners used telescopes most of the time, which gave them a longer range of vision than would binoculars.

There were always three operators in the wireless room--no chance of treachery there. One was continually listening to pick up messages and one was ready to "jam the air" should any vessel the raider was pursuing attempt to send out a message. Not a single ship ever got a message into the air because the raider jammed every one of them. This was accomplished by a noisy and continuous, disjointed sending, like a sputtering gossip of the sea.

Personally I saw seven guns and four torpedo tubes on the raider. She may have had more but I doubt it. They were quite sufficient for any merchant ship she might encounter.

III--"OUR TERRIBLE DAYS ON THE 'YARROWDALE'"

On Wednesday, Dec. 13, four hundred of us prisoners were transferred to the _Yarrowdale_ which had been cruising around in the wake of the raider ever since she was captured. A few provisions having been brought over from the raider, we parted company, and I was mighty glad to see the last of her. I didn't know then what was awaiting me in Germany.

On board the _Yarrowdale_ eighteen German guards under Lieut. Barowitz were responsible for four hundred and sixty-two men, many of whom were belligerents.

I have often heard people laugh at the idea of less than a score of men subduing and holding several hundred, and taking a ship into port under such conditions. Just listen to our predicament:

On the _Yarrowdale's_ bridge, one at either end, are two bombs, each of them large and powerful enough to sink the ship. Lanyards are arranged so that the commander can lower them over the side and explode them, almost with a single movement of the hand.

In the engine room, placed at the most vital points, are three bombs just as big and just as powerful. The German in command of the engine room has orders to explode all three the second he receives a signal from the bridge which has been agreed upon.

Beside the bombs, there are several boxes of hand grenades, always guarded by one of the German sailors who is heavily armed. There never are less than three Germans on the bridge--Barowitz, whom I believe to be crazy as a March hare, usually sleeps there, if he ever sleeps at all--and with these deadly weapons they could quickly quell any disturbance which might arise on the deck by literally blowing us to pieces. If we should succeed in overpowering the guards, Barowitz will blow the vessel up.

The food was a little better than on the raider. As soon as we were on board, Lieut. Barowitz "signed up" the Norwegian crew of the steamship _Hallbjourg_, and it was they who manned the vessel. He then informed us that we would be obliged to shift for ourselves so far as the commissary was concerned.

"There is enough food for twenty-six days," he said. "And it has got to last twenty-six days. And be careful that you don't skimp the German guards. If you try to hold out food on them you'll find yourselves with worse troubles than starvation."

And this cheerful admonition was carried out to the letter, you may be sure, for Barowitz was a devil in uniform. No matter how long I may live, I shall never forget the first two nights on this madman's ship. The German guards tell us that Barowitz never leaves the bridge. He doesn't sleep and he scarcely eats. He must be trying to get to a certain point by a certain time, or cross some imaginary line before a certain time. His German seamen don't know just what his idea is any more than we do.

IV--"I AM ON A CRAZY SHIP WITH A CRAZY SKIPPER"

I have seen terrific storms at sea. I have been on ships where the floor of the saloon was awash for days and nights at a time, but never before have I been frightened. I am on this crazy ship with a crazy skipper. Straight into the teeth of a ninety-mile gale we are driving ahead at a speed which must be at least nine knots. This is tremendous for a vessel like the _Yarrowdale_. Continually she sticks her nose down, and her tail comes out of the sea and quivers as the propellers spin. The boilers never got below 220. Barowitz meant what he said. He knocked his own men down just as cheerfully as he did his prisoners--frequently it seemed even more so.

After seemingly endless days on what had become a ship of terror, we sighted Iceland. It was so cold and rainy most of the time that we had not been able to take our airing on deck, but from the time we sighted Iceland we were not allowed above, anyway. For four or five days and nights we jockeyed around. Whenever we sighted a light at night or smoke in the day-time we turned and ran.

We were likely to be fired on at any moment by a British patrol boat or a submarine. We knew we were more than likely to bump a British mine, and as we could not display our colors a German submarine might sink us without warning--as they have been known to do. Finally, there were the German mine fields ahead of us. At last one morning Barowitz came down into our quarters. His face glowed all over and he rubbed his hands with glee, for all the world like a money lender who had just driven a hard bargain.

"We have got through the British patrol," he said. And it seemed to give him more satisfaction to taunt us with the information than it did to accomplish his purpose.

From that time on the attitude of Barowitz and his men changed toward all Americans on board. Until then he had acted with some restraint and the German sailors had been very friendly and courteous. Now that they were nearing the Fatherland, they treated us with the greatest disdain and superciliousness, heaped abuse on us and called us American "swinehunds," which meant dirty dogs.

Well, about 9 o'clock one night we passed Bergen Light, and, in the morning were lying in Ore-Sund which separates Denmark and Sweden. We were certainly in neutral waters, for the sound was only three miles wide, with Sweden on one side and Denmark on the other. Imagine, then, our amazement when a German patrol steamed alongside and made fast.

That night I did not sleep a wink. All night long we would go ahead a little distance then back off, then ahead once more, sometimes at full speed, sometimes very slowly. If I had known what awaited us I think I would have preferred to strike one of the German mines. But we didn't, and shortly after daybreak we slid into the harbor at Swinemunde, and the crew of the _Yarrowdale_ received one of the greatest naval ovations I have ever witnessed. Flags were dipped in salute, guns were fired and whistles shrieked. Barowitz went ashore and was feasted and feted. I saw later in a German paper he was decorated and promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.

What happened after we went ashore is subject for future stories. There had been blood curdling experiences on board the _Yarrowdale_. They were child's play compared to what we endured in Germany.

HUMORS OF THE EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN

_Told by "A. E. M. M."_

Here is an amusing account of the human side of the campaign that
ended the existence of German East Africa as a Hun colony. Told in
the _Wide World Magazine_.

I--WITH THE AFRICAN MOUNTED RIFLES

"Sahib," said a man of an Indian mountain battery, when we were in standing camp in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, "you are obviously not infantry, and you are as certainly not cavalry. What _are_ you?"

That was a question I had often asked myself since the day I enrolled as a signaller in the East African Mounted Rifles, locally known as "Bowker's Horse"--a deceptive nickname, for at that time we rode mules. We got horses later on, and uniforms and accoutrements all of a piece; but in the early days of the war we were an irregular corps of straight-shooting, cheery, undisciplined scallywags, wearing garments of our own devising, saluting or not as the notion occurred to us, and literally pawing the ground in our simple-minded anxiety to ride straight into "German East" and crumple up such slight resistance as we expected to meet. The corps was composed, for the most part, of settlers, a sprinkling of juniors from Government offices, an estate agent or two, and a leavening of those nondescripts who float round any new colony, to be inevitably washed up when any piece of adventure or devilry comes along.

That was how we looked at it then; we were booked for the great adventure, and were prepared to start on it out of hand with our own rifles and ammunition and a few scrag-ends of mule.

For some days after the declaration of war Nairobi looked as it does in race week, and I wonder someone didn't get killed in the crush at Mackinnon's Corner, where all the principal roads converge. White men, brown men, black men, motors, bicycles, and mules seethed about all over the crossing. Somalis would bring up a batch of mules to be passed by the vet., and those would kick and bite their way through the maelstrom, whilst our local scorchers, who had blossomed into motorcycle despatch-riders, added to the joy of things by coming down Sixth Avenue like streaks and jamming on both brakes when within a few feet of the crush. This pleased the mules, of course.

It was an education to watch some of our bar-room buck-jumpers at play on the lightsome blend of fiend and whirlwind called a mule. There was a man in my troop called Eccles, who wasn't a "Buffalo Bill" at the best of times, and they served him out a mustard-crossed white mule that looked like some kind of loathsome slug. It kicked you when you tried to mount, and promptly bucked you off if you succeeded in getting on--a _perfect_ brute, in short.

Eccles's first experience was at a parade in Government Road, when the mule took him out in front of the troop, deposited him on the hard road, and then capered about him, apparently undecided whether to trample on him or eat him. When we got out into camp the mule developed a habit of lying down in every stream or bit of water we crossed, and after a few days of this sort of thing Eccles decided to lead his mule. One morning, however, the animal disappeared into the blue, to the huge delight of Eccles, until a heliogram came through from the next camp to say that the mule had arrived there. Eccles scarcely spoke for two days. We sent a couple of Somali scouts over, and they, five Europeans, and a crowd of porters spent a futile morning in trying to catch the brute.

Then our regiment commandeered all the mules and horses from that camp. This one refused to be caught, but attached itself to the corps, and, as we could neither catch it nor get rid of it, both Eccles and the mule enjoyed complete happiness.

II--THE MULE AS A COMRADE

The study of the gentle mule, as a matter of fact, occupied most of the first part of our time with the regiment. We camped along the railway line, and the entraining of mules is one of the most exciting pastimes I know, although the procedure is simple enough. One man leads the mule up to the door of the horse-box, whilst two others link arms across its hindquarters and heave or push it on board before it has had time to realize their intention. Sometimes it realizes first, and then heartless spectators gather round and yell with joy at the stirring scene. The man who pulls at the bridle has a busy time, for if the box is nearly full when he packs his steed in he has to quit through a storm of hoofs and teeth, and I've caught fragments of conversation on these occasions that would turn a dock-laborer green with envy.

Mules are utter hypocrites. There is no animal living that can assume an expression of such injured innocence as a mule when he has "done you down" properly. When, at the end of the first round of that exciting bout miscalled "stables," you abandon currycomb and brush and pause to consider the possibilities of the situation, your mount gazes at you more in sorrow than in anger, suggesting that _he_ is the stranger in a pest-ridden country, and that he merely acted in self-defence. Of course, grooming is a painful process for both parties, for unless the beasts have been well sprayed with disinfectant beforehand, the clustered fauna of Africa display a desperate tenacity. The insect pests were, by the way, one of the chief features of the East African campaign; after patrol we used to feel as if we wanted spraying ourselves.

Pack-mules provide some exacting moments when you are moving camp in a hurry. On our forced march into Aruscha--a matter of some seventy-five miles, with short intervals for food and sleep--the dawn of one day found us enticing some of the dear things over plank bridges laid across a ravine. There was a nightmare suggestion about the scene that only Sime could have done justice to; for it was still too dark to see to the bottom of the ravine, and the swaying bridges seemed to stretch into eternity.

Our first camp was in a bit of the Southern Game Reserve--a lovely place. The signallers were perched on a rocky peak, surrounded by clumps of low hills, which merged into stretches of plain, covered with thorn scrub. After rain the hills used to turn to a heavenly blue, with shifting lights of mauve and purple as the cloud shadows slid over them, and we could see Meru, which we then looked upon as the first place we had to take, a jagged and formidable peak; and, sometimes, when the air was very clear, Kilimanjaro appeared like a big, flat-topped cake with powdered sugar dusted over it.

III--FIGHTING WITH LIONS AND RHINO IN JUNGLE LAND

At night a chill wind whooped down the valleys, and we were smothered in swirls of damp mist. Lions roared nightly, and it was possible to stumble on a sleeping rhino at any time of the day. They used to charge patrols and disorganize them, and one of our fellows who had strayed away from his troop met one face to face. His mule streaked one way, he another, and the rhino nearly broke his back in vamoosing in a third direction. The trooper was lucky to have found the beast in a timid mood, for the rhino's only amusement lies in chasing unoffending sons of empire through thick thorn scrub, though he's usually in too bad a temper to realize what fun it is.

There is something peculiarly terrifying about a rhino charge in the camp at night. You awake and jump to safety all in a moment, impelled by the nightmare terror that belongs to the time when fear ruled the world, and the rash ancestor who slept on the ground made a spring for the nearest branch on the approach of some primeval monster.

We all have our affectations, and that of the old hand was indifference to the game peril.

"You mustn't believe all the wild beasts stories you hear," he would observe to the tenderfoot. "They are mostly frightful exaggerations." Then the nervous one would look up and observe a rhino gazing morosely at these intruders on the privacy of his own special tract of forest. The next moment the tenderfoot would be in the arms of a peculiarly inhospitable tree, wondering what was going to happen next. Certainly life in what the kinema posters call "Nature's Zoo" holds excitements of a kind unknown to the army in any other quarter of the globe. I used to think out problems unprovided for by the Hague Convention, such as, if a small British patrol met a small enemy patrol in thick bush, and at the same time flushed an angry rhino, what would be the correct procedure? Should the combatants combine to blot out the rhino, and then proceed with their own quarrel, or should they hurriedly retire and fight somewhere else? I never heard of any such contingency arising, but it easily might have done so, and it is certain that once, just as one of our patrols sighted a German patrol, a rhino charged our rear, and two of our men had to fall out to tackle it, whilst the rest fired on the Germans.

Our first engagement was at Longido, in the first November of the war.

Our regiment had a tough day, and lay for many hours under fire without food or water, but I am not out to write the story of that skirmish. It doesn't come under the heading of the humors of the campaign, although there was a certain grim humor knocking about all the same. Our men were so new to that sort of thing that it took them some time to realize they were under heavy fire, and just when the firing was hottest one of them was waving a toothbrush and asking, "Any of you chaps lost a toothbrush?" whilst another shouted, "Come over here, you fellows. Lovely shooting!"

It was during the season that followed, when, as a correspondent of an English paper neatly put it, we "held the railway and shouted for help," that we realized the real, inner meaning of monotony. At first we expected to get going in a week, then we put the time forward to months, and finally we resigned ourselves. To live in standing camp for the rest of our natural lives, to do long patrol, short patrol, and "bait" patrol for ever and ever seemed the best we could hope of life. Letters arrived with some regularity, for we were then only some few miles over the border. Papers drifted through to us, and we knew more of the happenings in Europe than we did of our own campaign, though occasionally we gleaned some items of local interest from the English papers. It annoyed us to see an alleged illustration of one of our "scraps," in which smart-looking men on ramping horses were represented as fighting in open country at five hundred yards, whilst in reality it was done by untidy men on mules, in thick bush, at forty yards. The real thing was much better than the artist's conception of it.

There are, as I have implied, three kinds of patrol--the long patrol, on which you spend many days scouring the burning veldt for Germans, and hoping you won't find them; the short patrol, on which you spend one day doing the same thing; and the "bait" patrol, on which you spend the cold and cheerless hours before dawn wandering round the camp and hoping the Germans won't find _you_. On the latter it is the earnest desire of your King and country that the noise of your getting shot will alarm the camp before the attack takes place. If, on these occasions, you meet a lion, or any vermin of that kind, you must allow him to bash you on the head and dine off your limbs rather than raise a false alarm. One of our fellows met a lioness with cubs on one of these cheery rambles, and was only saved by the fact that he and his mule both froze stiff with terror, and baffled her by not running away. He moved off slowly at last, and she followed the patrol till dawn, obviously puzzled by these strange beings.

Of long patrol your first intimation of the joy in store for you usually is an excited clucking of the telephone buzzer at 2 a. m. on a particularly joyless morning. "Kaar-kuk-kuk! Kaar-kuk-kuk!" it observes, exactly like a hen that has laid an egg. Of course, the obvious thing to do is to fling a boot at the 'phone and go to sleep; but we signallers have a strong sense of duty, so we call the adjutant, who takes a mean revenge by telling us to be saddled up in fifteen minutes and go out for ten days to some "ticky" and waterless part of Africa which is, according to the 'phone, swarming with Germans.

The next ten minutes is spent in feverishly collecting gear, with which you stagger through the night to your disgusted steed, who, when he has realized what is in store for him, behaves as though he had never seen you, nor your saddle, nor the helio stand, nor anything that is yours in his life before, this being his habit in all moments of emergency. Then you take a few frantic tugs at your cigarette before the "No smoking" order is passed down, and ride out into the unknown.

IV--NIGHT RIDES OVER THE VELDT

Those night rides over the veldt were all alike. Your vision was limited to the man in front of you, who was a blurred shape that you, in a half-dream, were always chasing and never coming up with. It was a dream that seemed to go on for years and years, and then your mule would stumble and bring you to your senses with a jerk. In that light--for it is never very dark in Africa--men appear as trees, and thorn bushes dismount and take aim at you.

Dawn would find the whole patrol riding with eyes glued to the horizon and lips closed on unlit cigarettes. The order regarding smoking on those night-marches is strict. Once when we were escorting a captured German patrol, one of our men thoughtlessly lit up. One of the prisoners promptly leaned over and said, in English: "You mustn't do that; the enemy will see us."

The scenery was always the same there--rolling stretches of sun-browned veldt, kopje upon kopje, wonderfully shadowed, patches of thornscrub, and, clothing the banks of rivers and streams, strips of forest; the climate cold by night and hot by day. Africa is a queer, baffling, changeable country. Exactly the same scene can take on absolutely different aspects at different hours in the day. The thorn-tree flowers into a white brush with a sweet smell, and in the early morning, with a whitish haze hanging over and a cool wind blowing, the country seems beautiful and the trees appear as though laden with apple blossoms. Yet, in the hard, hot light of midday, with inky shadows outlined and the dust settling on the trees, the same place is ugly and repellent. On these patrols we moved by night, and failed to sleep by day, because the patch of shade that will remain shaded for even a few hours is non-existent. I usually woke to find my body too hot to touch and my water-bottle on the boil.

Later, when the South African forces came over and we got going, we had easier times, could travel by day, and lost that feeling of being little veldt-mice creeping out of our holes.

Once patrol was over and we were "home" in camp, we led a curious life, half soldier, half country gentleman. We lived in roomy _bandas_, or grass huts, a section in each, and as nearly every trooper had a "boy," or native servant, our meals were brought to the _banda_, and we clubbed together for luxuries. Also, we picked up our own sections, so that if four pals elected to go through the war together, they got the O. C. to fix it up.

Leave was the one thing that really mattered--those ten glorious days when you went back to your own life, and bathed daily and ate what you wanted to, instead of what you could get. No one minded night-rides across the veldt with that end in view, and I have slept very comfortably under the stars, with my saddle for a pillow, dreamily wondering if the lion in the distance was making that noise because he was hungry or because he had had too much to eat. Once in Nairobi, you bought a silk shirt, and could display the trousers with the crease in them and the socks that mother sent you. You wallowed in your bath, and walked down Government Road pretending that you had never shovelled damp earth out of a trench or groomed an accumulation of sticky African mud off a truculent mule. In the afternoon you sat in the fashionable tearoom and ate cakes and sweets and ices, and in the evening there was a dance, and you met the dearest girl. It was all like heaven!

When we really _did_ start--I was with the mounted column that came down from Longido, to sweep round and threaten the German rear--the people I was sorry for were the transport drivers. The rains broke soon after the advance began, and swamped us out at Kahe, where we had a three days' scrap in thick brush. What with weather and scrapping, and mud and broken bridges, we had a hard enough time ourselves--we had dropped the "country gentleman" part of it--but the wonder is that the transport ever got through at all. We used to curse at it sometimes. When you have been under fire all night and scrapping all day, when you have lost your pipe in the river and the cigarettes have run out, when you are very dirty and very hungry, and word is passed down that no one knows where the food-wagons are--that is the sort of happening that is calculated to make your spirits rise with a bound. Then they come along, like bearded and very dirty angels, dumping supplies of bully beef and potatoes, bread and jam, and dates and coffee, and all is forgiven.

It isn't always fun being a soldier in East Africa, but I think the transport driver who "gets there" every time deserves a Military Cross at the least.

STORIES OF HEROIC WOMEN IN THE GREAT WAR

_Tales of Feminine Deeds of Daring_

Thousands of stories from the battlefields tell of the heroism of
the women of France, Russia, England, Italy--and all the countries
involved in the war--women fighting as soldiers in every army;
women who act as spies; women who risk their lives on dangerous
missions. A few of these stories are told in these pages. The first
three are from the _New York World_, and the fourth from the _New
York American_.

I--STORY OF FRENCH WOMAN WHO DARED TO FIGHT IN A TANK

If Mlle. Gouraud were not the niece of Gen. Gouraud, whose right arm was blown off by a bursting Turkish shell at the Dardanelles, and who was in command of the contingent of Russian troops fighting in France, and who succeeded Gen. Lyautey as Military Governor of Moroccco, she probably would never have had a chance to suffer from "tank sickness." And it's because she came so close to proving her point--that men and women are equal in war work as well as peace pursuits--that Mlle. Gouraud is discouraged. For to-day she is engaged in the--for her--exceedingly tame occupation of driving a motor ambulance between the railroad stations and the various hospitals in Paris.

Mlle. Gouraud has always believed in equal rights for women. When she was sixteen years old and first interested herself in suffrage she was hooted and laughed at. Her first speech was delivered in the Place de la Concorde, in Paris, near the Seine. The crowd deserted her for the river bank to watch some boys' swimming races.

"I'll show them," said Mlle. Gouraud, and forthwith began swimming.

Eighteen months later she was the champion woman swimmer of France, and defeated many Belgian, Italian and German swimmers. Once interested in sports she speedily branched out and became a proficient amateur boxer. She put on the gloves with Frank Moran and Willie Lewis and Eugene Mattrot, and even Georges Carpentier, in exhibition bouts. Then motorcycling became popular, and after she learned the ways and habits of a gas engine she learned to fly and was brevetted.

The day all France was plastered with mobilization order notices Mlle. Gouraud gave up sports. She offered herself for the army, but even the influence of her uncle, Gen. Gouraud, was not enough to win her entree direct into active service. Instead she obtained the post of ambulance driver for a certain unit of aviators. But she was never satisfied with that and finally obtained permission to fly at the front but in a biplane machine, with a Frenchman as mitrailleuse operator.

And there came the rub. Machine gunners clamored for chances to go up with the men pilots, but all hung back at going up with Mlle. Gouraud. It was unlucky, they said, and beside they didn't want to be in on the deal if she persisted in risking her life when there were plenty of men for the job. Just as sailors of old were superstitious about women on board ship, so were the observers and machine gunners superstitious about having a woman in their airplane. And they tried to prove their point by citing the fact that in the burned wreckage of the first Zeppelin brought down inside the French lines were the feet of an incinerated body clad in filmy silk stockings and tiny black satin slippers.

But Mlle. Gouraud stuck to aviation, hoping eventually to persuade some machine gunner to be her team mate and at the same time trying to find another girl who would enter the service with her, until the French Army created its "tank" corps. Then she lost no time in setting to work for a transfer to that arm of the service.

The order for "V. Gouraud" to join the "tanks" was finally put through and she went off to their base, behind the Champagne front, between Soissons and Rheims, thankful at last that she had won a berth in the newest and most dangerous and most exciting and the least understood and most interesting department of the army.