machine gun; they marched as
if on parade into the trenches, recently dug behind the hangars; then
Jimmie, smoking an occasional cigarette, strolled up and down in front
during the three hours' bombardment.

So the men soon learned, under Jimmie, the value of discipline; it meant
their safety when under fire, and it meant freedom from military
punishments. They were quick to grasp the fact that any negligence on
their part might mean death to the aviator who flew in the neglected
aeroplane. Flagrant neglect they soon learned might cause other deaths
than those suffered by the unfortunate aviators.

II

There was Sammie, a prototype of the caricatured Englishman in our comic
papers. Every American theatre-goer has seen Sammie exaggerated on the
music-hall stage.

Sammie was a small boy with an eyebrow on his upper lip and an
apparently permanent window over his right eye. Before joining the
Flying Corps he had served seventeen months in the trenches as a
private; finally, driven mad with filth, rats, and other vermin, he
captured an enemy machine-gun emplacement single-handed, and was given a
commission. Shortly afterwards he joined the Flying Corps, probably
because he could not keep his new uniform clean while in the trenches.

Sammie was always immaculate, and as a uniform gives one very little
opportunity to express one's individuality in dress, Sammie carried his
handkerchief up his sleeve. Even Generals envied Sammie's field boots
and every one who met him wanted to know the name of his tailor.

In peace-time Sammie would have looked like a toy Pom with a ribbon
around its neck; but a more imperturbable man in the face of danger
never lived.

"My word" was the expression used by Sammie to denote every degree of
human emotion. If it was Sammie's lot to draw the occasional egg served
in the Bedouin mess, his only remark when it hopped out of reach would
be, "My word."

I remember one night when both of our machines were out of action,
Sammie and I, who slept in the same hut, went to bed at the early hour
of twelve o'clock; at about one in the morning the Huns dropped their
first bomb very close to us; a picture of Sammie's mother was on a stand
beside the head of his cot; a fragment of the bomb came through the wall
of the hut and shattered this picture; I landed, as far as I know
involuntarily, in the middle of the floor with a lighted torch in my
hand; Sammie saw the shattered remains of his mother's pi