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Show the anchor sewn on my football jersey. These improvised airbrakes worked, and the anchor caught on a hill which I identified from maps as the hill of Chan-tan Ho-nan Ho-nan the theater of the Russo-Japanese Russo-Japanese War. From this vantage point, swinging in the balloon, I watched the two armies In battle. Merely rank facetlousness, I admit, ad-mit, but even then I was completely com-pletely air-minded. ' I was reported for submitting a facetious monograph in military art and for casting reflections on the Engineering Department. For this offense, I was brought before a board of four officers, known as the Battalion Board or, as we .; JCo. Robert L.ScnU w.N.y. RtLEASE This story is sponsored by the Eddington Canning Company for ih. J fnj0.vmcnt of our men and women in the armed forces and their frienSs v here at home. 1111 at v Croation talk, threw out his arms and cried, "Son of a beetch! Son of a beetch!" To my discomfiture, that was the only English he seemed to know.' But I halved my steak with him and patted him on the back as he tried to talk, and in the end I guess his compatriots really thought their friend spoke American anyway. I could hear them calling me Americanski. I continued on, keeping clear of the tourist routes, and finally, after af-ter a 45-day trip from Cherbourgh I rode into Constantinople. Here I came close to getting in a real jam. Back through my life I had concentrated on scouting, archery, and flying anything but girls. I could remember crossing the street to keep from having to talk to them. But that real bashfulness was far behind me. Now I had about gone to the other extreme, I had dates in Paris, Venice, and other cities, and had had a fine time. Before reaching Turkey, I had hppn warned hv the head nf the American Embassy for duty; li remember that they were signed by McColl. I sent my champagne back and ordered beer, for the money for this trip had been borrowed bor-rowed against my three months' leave pay. Here I was, thousands of miles from home and Randolph Field, where my flying training would start. If I reported to some ground officer in Europe, I would probably never get to fly. Anyway, just to make sure, I hopped on my . motorcycle that night and headed for Texas by way of Budapest Linz Bingen-on-the-Rhine and Paris. I sold the motorcycle in Cherbourg and trip home. I had used pay that I boarded the Bremen for a quick was expecting to get during leave, and I'd be paying the bank for a long time. But I resolved right then and there that I would pay that money back from the Air Corps at Randolph Field and not from some desk in an Embassy. It's hard to describe my feel- ings as I walked into the North gate of that field and down the nearly mile-long road to the Bachelor Bach-elor Officers Building where I was to report. It seemed that all my life I had waited for this moment. Now at last the great day was at hand when I would begin my government gov-ernment flying training. There above me against the blue Texas sky I could see the roaring planes in their Army colors. As my feet carried me into the field I could hear the rhythm of the steps seeming to say in cadence, "This is it! This is what I've waited for all the days of my life!" In October, 1932, I was assigned to Lieut. Ted Landon for primary flying training. I imagine this assignment as-signment was about as momentous momen-tous for him as it was for me for after all I -must have been quite a problem, with all I thought I knew about flying and the eagerness with which I approached military aviation. (TO BE CONTINUED) tried again and was ordered to sit down. The zero I received dropped me from the first section to the last. Furthermore, I found immediately immediate-ly that in this last section the sub-ects sub-ects for mpnograps were not selected se-lected by the cadet, but were assigned. as-signed. The new instructor gave me the battle of Sandepu some insignificant engagement in an insignificant war. I looked for days in the library for data on the battle, and finally found about one paragraph devoted to it in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was Sandepu, Haikoutai, or Yen Kai-Wan, fought during the Russo-Japanese War or 1904-05. A person with my imagination and initiative, I reasoned, would simply waste his talents on such a small battle. I therefore decided to create a fictitious battle. This extra work mattered not, for I had nothing but time, having been placed in confinement for getting the zero in history. I worked out an elaborate plan for the battle and introduced the subect in a manner that I knew would attract attention to even a last-section monograph. I dedicated the work of art to the officer in -charge of Field Artillery, Lieut. Pete Nuby, a contraband nickname of a very tought officer. I illustrated the monograph with pictures of New York street cleaners and wrote under them that they were Japanese Japa-nese soldiers waiting to go over the' top at the River Ho in 1905. Lastly I tied the book in red ribbon rib-bon at least six inches wide, completed com-pleted with a bow larger than the monograph. I doomed myself in the last paragraph by saying that I had dreamed I had observed the battle but had been awakened by reveille w.hich as Napoleon declared de-clared at the battle of Maloyaro-slavetz, Maloyaro-slavetz, is a hideous noise in the middle of the nirtit. All nf nrViicTi SYNOPSIS S fH PTER I: Scott's early ex-: ex-: ' s with gliders and air- Ce" Heg'oestoFt.McPherson ; enlists in the regular army as a private. CHAPTER II Scott put in six months of study there for there were some SOO of . ,7 soldiers trying in competition Z about fourteen vacancies. As L would have it that year, these ourteen were cut to eight. Once " -sin West Point seemed a long 1 off I S0- down to business tt I would shut myself in my room and almost memorize the lessons, especially every old West point examination as far back as 1990. The study bore fruit. I kept at' the top of the class and in jlarch took the dreaded examina- b0ne day, some weeks after the annual competition for entrance from the Regular Army, I was walking: giard duty. I was called from Post Number One .around the guard-house; I had just heard the familiar call, "Number One two prisoners," and had replied, "Turn 'em in." The General had sent for me. As I stood before him my heart felt as though it would beat out through my blouse. He smiled and spoke. "Son, you have won in the West Point competitive examination examina-tion and I want to tell you you're starting out on the same road I started out on a long time ago. It's the greatest school in the world but learn some common sense too. I'm sending you on furlough fur-lough until you report for duty at the Military Academy. Congratulations." Congratu-lations." The world was never so sweet. I gained two inches in the chest that day. Thus, in July of 1928, I walked through the sally port with my 'suitcase and began the routine1 that is familiar to nearly everyone. every-one. I had heard of the strict discipline dis-cipline of West Point and the difficulty dif-ficulty of studies for one handicapped handi-capped by a Southern accent. My year of hard work had made me hate books again, but I resolved that after the work I had gone to I most certainly would not be kicked out or "found", as we say in Kaydet slang. I remember my father's ambition for me. He was of course proud of my appointment, appoint-ment, and used to wonder why I didn't rank about number one in my class. During my Plebe year, which was easy because I had just about learned the first year's work at the prep school, he used to write and tell me that while it wasn't too disgraceful to be number num-ber fifty in a class of over 300, he couldn't see why I didn't study a little more and get up into the first twenty. Well, as the first year went by and I got into the more difficult studies, I went lower low-er and lower in a class that dwindled dwin-dled finally to some 260. During the last year, when I was very far down, Daddy would write: "You just stay there, Son, just stay there." I still heard the planes flying over and try as I would, I could concentrate on nothing but the Air Corps. In 1930 I wrote an essay on flying, fly-ing, and it anost got me kicked out. You see, in Military History you have to write a monograph on the strategy employed in one of the major battles of the world. I had always liked military history and had been in the first section of that subect. (At the Academy each student is in a section commensurate com-mensurate with his scholastic standing.) My presence in that group permitted me to choose my battle. I had had a grandfather killed at Bull Run, and I therefore called it, the "Batt Board." My explanation ex-planation was that I knew, after being dropped from the first section sec-tion to the last in one recitation, that I must have inferior intelligence. intelli-gence. I therefore had no chance of writing an interesting and worthy wor-thy monograph on the material of the actual battle, and accordingly accord-ingly I had decided to make my battle fiction, and so interesting that it would be read completely instead of merely being graded according ac-cording to the tradition of the last section that is, either barely passing or below. I argued that I had evidently accomplished that purpose, for my grade was perfect. per-fect. This explanation had just about won the Batt Board around to my side when one of the Board members mem-bers a stumpy little officer noted for his preciseness, called behind his back "Fanny" Macon asked me: "Mr Scott, I see your point about making the monograph interesting. in-teresting. But what is the red ribbon for, what does it represent?" repre-sent?" I looked at him almost with pity. "Sir, how long have you been in the Army?" "For 17 years," he said, intimating that it was none of my business. Even then I think I could have saved the battle, but the opportunity was too imposing. "Well, Sir," I said, "in that time you certainly should know about military red tape." The Batt Board agreed unanimously unani-mously that I should walk the Area for one year.- For all that, I finally graduated even if it was ust about as the anchor man. In the summer of 1932, after being be-ing graduated and commissioned a second Lieutenant of Infantry, I went to Europe. In Cherbourg, France, I bought a motorcycle ang set out to ride to Constantinople. The one-cylinder Soyer took me down through Paris, then Southeast South-east into Switzerland and over the Simplon Pass to Italy. I spent some time .in Venice; then I went American Express in Sofia that I should be very careful In Istanbul and should confine myself to the Americanized Turks in and around the Pera part of the city. They told me above all to stay clear of Galata the old Greek and Turkish Turk-ish section. As luck ruled, however, how-ever, my first acquaintance was from Galata, and that night I headed for the city of the veiled women. Well, even with right ideas the men in that quarter had the wrong idea. I saw the danger just in time and even then I had to jump through a window glass and all into an alley. I can hear the yells even these years afterwards as I ran through Galata back to Pera for my motorcycle. Stopping at the hotel just long enough to check out. I was off in more dust for Scutari and East in Asia to Ankara. So raising the veil of a Moslem female shortened my stay in Constantinople. Con-stantinople. Even in my return to the West from Ankara, I found a way to dodge the city on the Hellespont Hel-lespont by getting a Black Sea steamer and crossing North' of Istanbul to land at Varna vin Bulgaria. Bul-garia. From here I crossed the Danube at Rustchuk and went to Bucharest. My spirits had risen a little after af-ter missing the Turkish knives in Galata, but here I found a cablegram cable-gram awaiting me. The Comptroller Comptrol-ler General had ruled that the Economy Act of June, 1932, affected af-fected all officers on leave. He had decided that I, like many others, was on leave without pay. My orders or-ders were to report to the nearest went to prove, I contended, that history could be made in sleep, and it therefore did not require an "engineer" to be a historian. For the story of Sandepu, I imagined that I went down to a Southern city to inspect the Army's Ar-my's first aircraft. This was a free balloon the latest invention of 1905. Becoming weary, I went to sleep in the basket 'of the balloon. bal-loon. But a storm must have torn the craft from its moorings, for when I looked down I was being blown to the East across the Atlantic. At-lantic. For days we drifted over ocean and continents, until, coming com-ing close to the hilly ground, I used the first air-brakes ever known. They were composed of one mile of government red-tape and the anchor worn by the captain cap-tain of the "goat" team of 1904. (This was readily interpreted by the professors, for the traditional football game of the year is the one played between the first 30 men in the Second Class, called the "engineers," and the last 30 men, known as the "goats." I was of course in the last thirty. I had been Goat Captain, and had worn up through the dust into Jugoslavia. Jugo-slavia. One day I had ridden some 400 miles into the town of Novo Mes-to. Mes-to. Tired and dirty from the heavy dust of the roads, I went to the best-looking of the hotels, and after some delay in making myself my-self understood among Serbians and Croatians I ordered beefsteak. During the explanation I gathered that someone who lived there in the town spoke English. This of course was pleasant news for I was after all, a lonely tourist in a very foreign land. They now sent a small boy to bring back this connecting link between us. I waited and waited, while they all pointed and jabbered about me. Finally the steak came, and got cold while my mouth watered, but I felt I had to wait and ask the American if he would eat with me. At last there was a commotion at the entrance and I turned anxiously anxious-ly to see my American friend. Through the door waddled a dark, dirty little man evidently a former fruit-vendor in New i York. He saw me, stopped his seiectea tne nrst .tsarae or. Manassas. Manas-sas. There was, as usual, many a slip. Before I was able to write the story we were permitted to travel to the West Coast to play Stanford in football. Coming back under the chagrin of defeat, I did not bother to open my books, believing be-lieving that even West Point would not expect a student to recite re-cite within one hour of his return from California. But I reckoned without the rigidity of the Academy. Acade-my. Our train arrived across the Hudson at Garrison at 6:55, and we marched into History at 7:55. I was immediately assigned to recite re-cite on the battle of Valmy. I did not know what war it was in, and therefore knew nothing concerning con-cerning it To say that and get a zero, however, would be fatal and in fact could mean disciplinary discipli-nary action. I therefore resorted to the time-worn West Point tactics tac-tics of evasion known as "bugling." "bug-ling." Going to the blackboard with an air of confidence, I stood at attention with pointer in hand and began "Sir, my duty for today is to explain the battle of Valmy: Napoleon declared after this engagement en-gagement that the forces of an army must be concentrated for battle . . ." At that instant the professor stood up and said he would wait five seconds for me to begin the recitation correctly. I |