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Page 9
LUCK
by "Toodle D. Doo" 
[Image of planes flying]

[In a text box in bold below picture]
Here's one if the "tales old-timers tell." The author, who at present is a newspaper man, prefers to remain anonymous, but he knows what he writes about and has several air victories to his credit during the recent and much re-fought ruckus in Europe. [end]

"HUH! I'm luck. Hell, yes. Sitting here with three aces and boosting the pot for you to run away with a six high straight. I'm glad the game's over. Put out the T, Johnny, we're all set from some ground flying. 
"And speaking of luck, it always has two sides--good and bad. Your good luck usually carries a reverse English for me or some other dodo. At least that's one of the glorious ideas absorbed by my bean during the well-known war. 
"Yes, there's a story back of the remark. Huh? I'll take mine the way Mr. Gordon made it. I intend to tell this story a nyhow." 
***
You remember the St. Mihiel push? Well, our squadron had come through that in excellent shape. We had lost only one man; he was Sandy MacDermott, who had been out with the French driving those broken-down camions before the U. S. was finally pushed into the best scrap we ever will have. Well, Sandy was last seen flopping down out of a dog fight over Thiacourt and we never heard just what happened until after that town was captured. Still, that's more or less another story. 
Anyhow, our record of Boche on the old, quiet Toul sector was about six or eight official and five unofficial. Not a bad record for rank beginners trained in the careful American style, especially when most of the Hun squadrons up on the British front were going hell-bent. We had just moved out of those luxurious quarters at the old Toul field and found ourselves in the mud up at Belrain.  Quartered with the peasants in the town, we had to truck it or else walk about a mile up-hill to the field every morning at sun-up. 'Twas hell after that soft life in the old French hospital building at Toul. Up there we had showers, eighteen-foot ceilings, special furniture bought at Nancy--everything but finger bowls. But down at Belrain everything went by the boards and it sure broke our hearts.  Still, what was hard luck from our squadron was good luck for somebody else. 
Even so, we ran a far better bar in our new mess hall up on the hill and stayed there more every night with the galloping dominoes and fifty-two tickets. The night before D day H hour of the now famous Argonne drive we staged a short but festive drinking bout 'ere we skidded down hill and slept it off in the Turkish baths of French feather beds. 
All the old songs were shouted--"Madamoiselle from Amentiers," "Down in the City of Booze" and it unded up with yours truly wobbling onto a pair of very unsteady field boots and trying to lead 

[italicized] "Here's to the dead already
             Three cheers for the next one who dies." 

It's a funny thing, but I can still remember that as we sang the last line of that old tune, the loudest voice came from Bill Rowland, another of the ex-ambulance musketeers. I could see his big broad grin across the smoke filled room and as I waved to him I had one of those things that women call premonitions. Somehow I knew that song was for Bill. 
Well, just before the party broke up, old Bad News, the Operations Officer, walked in. He carried the orders for morning flights. A and B caught the sunrise special job. C flight, with its usual luck, therefore had time for a decent breakfast and incidentally got two more hours of sleep before taking off at about 7.30. 
Somehow or other, A and B flights fathered their bleary-eyed gang together. Each man was assigned to his