d, America, India, Canada, South Africa, and
Australia. Before becoming aviators many of them had fought in the
infantry on the western front, in Gallipoli, and in Egypt; some as
officers, some as privates, but for no general reason, unless the law
of nature which prevents squirrels from remaining on the ground also
applies to men, they one by one in divers ways drifted into the Flying
Corps, and flew different types of machines on different fronts until
brought together and formed, "willy-nilly," into the Bedouin Squadron.

I

There was "Jimmie," whose insides had been shot away in Gallipoli. He
was the envy of the officers' mess, because his newly acquired digestive
apparatus, composed principally of silver tubes, could assimilate more
wine without producing ill results than any other five members of the
mess. Jimmie was not a flying officer; by all the laws of nature he
should have been a corpse, but he had a heart which disregarded an
intestine designed by a surgeon who must have been a plumber in some
previous incarnation, and this great heart carried him through four
years of war, and made of him an energizing force to all who came in
contact with him. It was not until after the cessation of hostilities
that the soul of this hero was liberated from the poor maimed body with
its mechanical digestive system.

Jimmie was the First Lieutenant of the Station; it was his job to see to
the discipline of the two hundred and fifty mechanics, riggers,
carpenters, armorers, drivers, and officers' stewards. He did this in
such a way as to make all the men love him except the few, very few, who
were surly slackers, and these feared him worse than death itself.
Jimmie was always just, but he demanded results. To those who shirked he
was a just judge and an unsympathetic jury; so, under Jimmie, slackers
soon became demons for work, and later on learned like the others to
love him. To those who produced results, he was a father.

[Illustration: JIMMIE WALKS UP AND DOWN THE TRENCH]

I remember that shortly after the squadron took up its residence on the
Nancy front, the Huns came over and bombed us severely; many of the
mechanics were fresh from the factories in England and were quite
unaccustomed to seeing the damage that one hundred pounds of high
explosive can do to the delicate anatomy of the human being; panic
seized them; but a greater fear possessed them when Jimmie's orders
burst upon them like the rat-tat-tat of a