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About Southern Oregon miner. (Ashland, Or.) 1935-1946 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1944)
Southern Oregon Miner, Thursday, September 14, 1944 GOD IS MY CO-PILOT C o l. R o b e rt L . S c o tt T k r story (but ta r: la IM * young Rob e rt Srolt m l M feel of ra a v a i from the aide « a ll of a Holy Rollers* tent la Ma eon, Ga.. and deride« to use It for the «tag roverlag of a gilder. He pulls off from a roof and rrasbea <1 feel to the ground. He fell Into a Cherokee rose bush. which probably saved his life. H r now goes la for building scale model planes and wins a Boy Scout avia tloa m erit badge. At an auction tale he buys his Brst plane for I7J. He plans on going to West Point but meets with many difflrultles. He goes to F t. Me Pherson and enlists In the regular arm y as a private. Three months la te r he be gins his training In the Fourth Corps Area, West Point prep school. CHAPTER II Scott put in six months of study there, for there were some eight hundred of us soldiers trying In com petition for about fourteen vacan cies. As luck would have it that year, these fourteen were cut to eight. Once again West Point seemed a long way off. I got down to business then; I would shut my self in my room and almost memo rize the lessons, especially every old West Point examination as fa r back as 1920. The study bore f r u it I kept at the top of the class and in March took the dreaded exam ina tion. One day, some weeks after the annual competition for entrance from the Regular A rm y. I was w a lk ing guard duty. I was called from Post Num ber One, around the guard-house; I had just heard the fa m ilia r call. ' ‘Num ber 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 best out through m y blouse. He smiled and spoke. "Son, you have won in the West Point competitive examination and I want to tell you you’re starting out on the same road I started out on a long tim e ago. It's the great est school in the world—but learn some common sense too. I ’m send ing you on furlough until you report for duty at the M ilita ry Academy. Congratulations.” The world was never so sweet. 1 gained two inches in the chest that day. Thus, in July of 1928, I walked through the sally port with m y suit case and began the routine that is fa m ilia r to nearly everyone. I had heard of the strict discipline of West Point and the difficulty of studies for one handicapped by a Southern accent. M y year of hard work had m ade 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 rem em ber m y father's ambition for me. He was of course proud of my appoint m ent, and used to wonder why I didn’t rank about number one in m y 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 w rite and tell me that while it wasn’t too disgraceful to be number fifty in a class of over three hundred, 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 and lower in a class that dwindled finally to some two hundred and sixty. During the last year, when I was very fa r down. Daddy would w rite: Zestes &reatAnytimt* W N U. R t L t A & t At that Instant the professor stood up and said he would wait five sec onds for me to begin the recitation correctly. I tried again and was ordered to sit down. ing 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 •b o u t me. F in ally the steak cam«, and got cold while my mouth w a tered, but I felt 1 had to w ait and ask the Am erican if he would eat with me. At last there was a com motion at the entrance, and I turned anxiously to see my Am erican friend. The zero I received dropped me from the first section to the last. Furtherm ore, I found im m ediately that in this last section the sub jects for monographs were not se lected by the cadet, but were as signed. The new instructor gave me the battle of Sandepu—some in significant engagement in an insig nificant war. I looked for days in the lib ra ry for data on the battle, and finally found about one p ara graph devoted to It in the Encyclo Through the door waddled a dark, paedia Britannica. It was Sandepu, dirty little man—evidently a form er H aikoutai, or Yen Kai-W an. fought fruit-vendor in New York. He saw during the Russo-Japanese W ar of me. stopped his Croatian talk, threw 1904-05. out his arms, and cried, “Son of a HIP ahoy—here comes the navy walking right into our doll fam A person with my imagination and beetch! Son of a bectchl” To my in itiative, I reasoned, would sim ply discomfiture, that was the only Eng ily and sure of captivating all But I hearts. He's a pal of younger and waste his talents on such a small lish he seemed to know. battle. I therefore decided to cre halved my steak with him and pat older. a o o ate a fictitious battle. This extra ted him on the back as he tried to A popular toy or mascot easily made. work mattered not. for I had noth talk, and in the end I guess his com Pattern 7O7fl contains a transfer pattern of ing but tim e, having been placed in patriots really thought their friend doll and clothes; directions; list of ma spoke Am erican anyway. I could confinement for getting the zero in terials. Due to an unusually large demand and history. I worked out an elaborate hear them calling me Americanski. “ I M firsla» 0 , , ‘ * foods'*- • Kellogg’. Corn nearly .11 th . pro of the whole grain declar to human nutrition. __ . I VERONICA LAKE co. •• . speaking: Co-Starring in "S O P R O U D L Y WS H A IL ," a Paramount Pkluroi S I continued on. keeping clear of plan for the battle and introduced the subject in a m anner that I knew the tourist routes, and finally, after would attract attention to even a | a forty-five-day trip from Cherbourg, last-section monograph. I dedicated I rode into Constantinople. Here 1 the work of art to the officer in came close to getting in a real jam . charge of Field A rtille ry . Lieut. Back through my life I had concen Pete Nuby— a contraband nickname trated on scouting, archery, and fly of a very tough officer. I illustrated ing—anything but girls. I could re the monograph with pictures of New m em ber crossing the street to keep York street cleaners and wrote un from having to talk to them. But der them that they were Japanese that real bashfulness was far behind soldiers waiting to go over the top me. Now I had about gone to the at the R iver Ho in 1905. Lastly 1 other extrem e; I had found dates in tied the book in red ribbon at least Paris, Venice, and other cities, and six inches wide, completed with a had had a fine time. Before reaching Turkey, I had been warned by the head of the Am erican 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 Ga- lata—the old Greek and Turkish sec tion. As luck ruled, however, my first acquaintance was from G alata, and that night I headed for the city of the veiled women. General Henry H. Arnold, chief of the United States A rm y A ir Forces, to whom this story is dedicated. bow larger than the monograph. I doomed m yself in the last p ara graph by saying that I had dreamed I had observed the battle, but had been awakened by reveille, which, as Napoleon declared at the battle of Maloyaroslavets, is a hideous noise in the middle of the night. All of which went to prove. I contended, that history could he made in sleep, and it therefore did not require an “ engineer” to be a historian. F o r the story of Sandepu, I im ag ined that I went down to a Southern city to inspect the A rm y's first a ir craft. This was a tree balloon—the latest invention of 1905. Becoming weary, I went to sleep in the basket of the balloon. But a storm must have tom the craft from its moor "You just stay there. Son, just ings, for when I looked down I was stay th ere.” being blown to the East across the Atlantic. F o r days we drifted over I still heard the planes flying over ocean and continents, until, coming and try as I would, I could concen close to the hilly ground, I used the tra te on nothing but the A ir Corps. first air-brakes ever known. They In 1930 I wrote an essay on fly were composed of one m ile of gov ing, and it almost got me kicked ernment red-tape and the anchor out. You see, in M ilita ry History worn by the captain of the "goat" you have to w rite a monograph on team of 1904. (This was readily in the strategy employed in one of the terpreted by the professors, for the m a jo r battles of the world. I had al traditional football game of the year ways liked m ilita ry history and had is one played between the first th ir been in the first section of that sub ject. (A t the Academy each stu ty men in the Second Class, called dent is in a section commensurate the “ engineers," and the last thirty with his scholastic standing.) M y men, known as the “ goats.” I was presence in that group permitted me of course in the last th irty ; I had to choose my battle. I had had a been Goat Captain, and had worn grandfather killed at Bull Run, and the anchor sewn on my football I therefore selected the first Battle jersey.) These improvised airbrakes worked, and the anchor caught on a of Manassas. hill which I identified from maps as There was, as usual, many a slip. the hill of Chan-tan Honan—the the Before I was able to write the story ater of the Russo-Japanese War. we were perm itted to travel to the From this vantage point, swinging West Coast to play Stanford in foot in the balloon, I watched the two ball. Coming back under the cha arm ies in battle. M erely rank face- grin of defeat, I did not bother to tiousnesi, I adm it, but even then open my books, believing that even I was completely air-minded. West Point would not expect a stu I was reported for submitting a dent to recite within one hour of his return from California. But I facetious monograph in m ilita ry art reckoned without the rigidity of the and for casting reflections on the Academ y. Our train arrived across Engineering D epartm ent. the Hudson at Garrison at 6:55, and In the sum m er of 1932, after being we marched into History at 7:55. 1 graduated and commissioned a sec was im m ediately assigned to recite ond Lieutenant of Infantry,- I went on the battle of Valm y. I did not to Europe. In Cherbourg, France, know what w ar it was in, and there I bought a motorcycle and set out to fore knew nothing concerning it. To ride to Constantinople. The one-cyl say that and get a zero, however, inder Soyer took me down through would be fatal and in fact could Paris, then Southeast into Switzer mean disciplinary action. 1 there land, and over the Simplon Pass to fore resorted to the time-worn West Ita ly . I spent some tim e in Venice; Point tactics of evasion—known as then I went up through the dust into "bugling.” Jugoslavia. Going to the blackboard with an One day I had ridden some four a ir of confidence, I stood at atten hundred miles into the town of Novo tion with pointer in hand and be Mesto. Tired and d irty from the gan, "Sir, my duty for today is to heavy dust of the roads, I went to explain the battle of Valm y. Napo the best-looking of the hotels, and leon declared after this engagement after some delay in m aking myself th a t the forces of an arm y must understood among Serbians and concentrated for battle . . Croatians, I ordered beefsteak. Dur- be Tins Sailor Bov Has Gal in Every Port Well, even with right ideas the men in that q uarter had the wrong idea. I saw the danger just in tim e, and even then I had to jum p through a window—glass and a ll— into an alley. I can hear the yells even these years afterwards as I ran through G alata back to Pera for m y motorcycle. Stopping at the ho tel 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 fem ale shortened my stay in Con stantinople. Even in my return to the West from A nkara, I found a way to dodge the city on the Helles pont by getting a Black Sea steam er and crossing North of Istanbul to land at Varna in Bulgaria. From here I crossed the Danube at Rust- chuk and went to Bucharest. My spirits had risen a little after missing the Turkish knives in G a lata, but here I found a cablegram awaiting me. The Comptroller Gen eral had ruled that the Economy Act of June, 1932, affected all offi cers on leave. He had decided that I, like many others, was on leave without pay. My orders were to report to the nearest American E m bassy for duty; 1 rem em ber that they were signed by McColl. I sent my champagne back and ordered beer, for the money for this trip had been borrowed 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, J hopped on my motorcycle that nigh* and headed for Texas by way of Budapest — Linz — Bingen-on-the- Rhine—and Paris. I sold the motor cycle ir, Cherbourg and boarded the Bremen for a quick trip home. I had used pay that I was expecting to get during leave, and I'd be pay ing the bank for a long time. But I resolved right then and there that I would pay that money back from the A ir Corps at Randolph Field and not from some desk in an Embassy. And so I came at last to the A ir Corps Training Center at Randolph Field, Texas. current war conditions, slightly more time Is required In filling orders for a few of the most popular pattern numbers. Send your order to: Sewing Circle N e rd le rra ft Depl. Bos 1Z17 San Francisco S, Calif. 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I t ’s hard to describe my feelings as I walked into the North gate of that field and down the nearly mile- long road to the Bachelor Officers Building, where I was to report. It seemed that all my life I had wait ed for this moment. Now at last the great day was at hand when I would begin my government flying training. There above me against the blue Texas sky I could see the roaring airplanes in their A rm y col ors. 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 a ll the days of my life !” In October, 1932, I was assigned to Lieut. Ted Landon for prim ary flying training. 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