Imperial Valley Press, Volume 2, Number 16, 18 April 1937 — They Called Him Sap – Two-Fisted "Fighting" O'Leary IF 7as You ng And Eager- He Al eant Well. But He Was Always Wrong! [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

They Called Him Sap -

Two-Fisted "Fighting" O'Leary IF 7 as You ng And Eager- He Al eant Well. But He Was Always Wrong!

FIVE STAR FICTION

By Don Casson

”D IVATE °' LEARY '" snarled p Captain Brent of the A.E.F. Special Court Martial, “you are a Sap. a blockhead and a disgrace as a soldier. I sentence you to six months’ hard labor and two-thirds of your pay!” O'Leary gasped in bewilderment. Yesterday he had been a proud member of a squadron of the United States Air Service, special guard at the flying field. Now he was a prisoner, standing rigidly before a hard-boiled Captain. Six months at hard labor! O'Leary forced back the lump in his throat, his fingers closed and opened in repressed despair. An immigrant, hardly a year in America. O'Leary had shown his patriotism for his new country by enlisting when the nations of the world seized each other's throats. Through no fault of his he had become a replacement in this squadron, a square peg in a round hole, inasmuch as he was neither mechanic, carpenter, electrician. nor flier. He was a guard. He had drawn himself erect, proud of his American uniform and the flag which he lowered gently from the parade ground at daily retreat This for a week—and now he was a prisoner of the country he loved so dearly! “But. Captain!” pleaded O'Leary, “it’s all a mistake. I didn't turn my gun over to a prisoner ... I just let him hold it!” Brent jumped to his feet. “You are a disgrace to the American Expeditionary Force!” he bellowed. “You are entrusted with the safety of a prisoner and then when you get out on a lonely road with him, you hand him your rifle! Soldier—bah! You're a Sap!” O'Leary flushed beneath the tirade, pathetically bewildered that the Captain—or anyone for that matter —could' not see the injustice of the situation. O'Leary had been ordered to take a prisoner. doing thirty days for drunkenness, and proceed to the cinder pile at a nearby factory. Here the prisoner was to shovel up a truckload of cinders which were needed at the field for road repairs. THE prisoner, finally completing his job of shoveling, was not strong enough to raise the endgate and clamp it fastened. O’Leary, anxious to hurry back to the field and complete his task before noon, saw the man’s predicament and moved over to help him. “Here,” he had said eagerly, “hold my gun—l'll pull up that gate.” The man took the rifle and held it while the guard lifted the gate. The completed. O'Leary turned to retrieve his weapon just as Second Lieutenant Buck stepped in upon the scene. Lieutenant Buck, who had decided after his first solo flight that he would be a better ground officer, was an important little busy-body, assigned as officer of the day and in charge of the special guard. “Captain. Sir,” Lieutenant Buck had whined to the Court Martial, "Private O'Leary was stand-

ing idling against the truck while his prisoner inspected O'Leary's rifle. O'Leary made no move to take it away from the man until he saw me approaching.” That was a lie. And O'Leary knew it was a lie. But they wouldn't believe the truth. It was just a friendly incident between two human beings, one who was in the guard-house for getting drunk, the other a loyal recruit who knew little about military technique. <★★ ♦ ★ O'LEARY started his six months’ in grim silence. He toiled from daybreak until nightfall. lifting heavy shells onto traveling platforms and counting the days until he would be free Then he would kill Second Lieutenant Buck. His viewpoint, his enthusiasm and his patriotism changed rapidly. This new country he had adopted was not just. A man tried his best and a sallow-faced officer, too yellow to fly a Spad, could frame him for six months! O'Leary cursed as other men cursed. Each day fanned the flames of hatred as the time approached when he should meet Buck. He pictured the cowardly officer shrinking as he gazed into the muzzle of a private's automatic; he could see him falling in agony as steel ripped through his body. Four more months! FROM the dark recesses of the projective shed there came a blinding flash of smoke and fire — thunder of bursting shells. Frantic prisoners and guards, duty now forgotten, ran for their lives. O'Leary dropped a projectile and turned to flee. But the passageway was narrow, and the terrified men pushed him backward against the tram which moved past him. He clung on desperately, pulled his body to the platform and wondered why the cars moved so fast. A protruding girder struck him on the head as the wheels of the heavy tram sped through the shed entrance and into the glaring sunlight. O’Leary lay very still, unconscious of the blood which spattered down over his temple. But the cool fresh air and the wind whipping about his face soon brought him to his senses. The tram was racing pell-mell down a valley and into an American transport camp which housed trucks, supplies and hundreds of replacement troops. O'Leary saw the control car ahead —saw it was empty —and realized that the tram, with fifteen cars of death, was plunging toward an unsuspecting camp! This would be rich! Tons of dynamite—dynamite sent to the front for a special mission—would burst like lightning into the most important supply center of the war sector! Around the curve, nearer the camp, he would leap to safety. He would watch the destruction of men who had sworn to fight for the Stars and Stripes! Two guards jumped aside as the tram, without warning signal, roared through the cantonment gates. In a moment there would be explosions and groans the groans of many second lieutenants! O'Leary hoped that all the second lieutenants of the army were encamped there so that they could all die the name death.

But the guards—he had been a guard!—what of them? There were many of them down there, men like himself, who hadn’t had a chance —who loved their country and who probably were misunderstood —by second lieutenants. . . . O'Leary leaped to his feet and went racing across the piled up boxes of dynamite. He must reach that control car! He tugged at the levers, applied the brakes. Slowly he felt steel bands gripping into wheels —cars coming to a grinding stop. Fifty feet ahead was the end of tram tracks. In another moment hundreds of men would have been blowm into eternity. O’Leary climbed from the control car. He was spent and exhausted, but exalted. He had done one decent thing for a country

which called him a Sap. Now he had one more little job. A stem voice brought him erect. "What do you mean by speeding into camp at fifty miles an hour?" O'Leary eyed his accuser. It was just as he thought. The voice was that of a second lieutenant. "Sir, you see it was this way “Shut up!” barked the officer. "You're a prisoner, aren't you? What are you doing running this tram ?” A fist shot out toward the lieutenant's chin. The officer staggered and a vicious right followed into his solar plexus. He doubled up and slumped to the ground. O’Leary dropped the officer behind a fence. Within a few moments a young Irishman, dressed as a second lieutenant whose clothes fit very badly strode nonchalantly through the barbed wire gates of a transport depot and into the open road. "No use tellin’ ’em anything," drawled O'Leary to himself. “They never let you explain.” O’LEARY’S flying field was two hundred miles to the southwest, but distance meant little to the escaped prisoner. In the pocket of the lieutenant’s borrowed blouse there nestled a wallet with two thousand francs and

travel orders to Tours. The Express would take him past Tours and on to his base. In Paris he had two hours to await his train. He wandered about the boulevards and felt a grpwing sense of importance as enlisted men saluted him. Getting out of Paris was not so easy. The M. P.'s scrutinized his travel orders closely. "You will please step in here, Lieutenant!” ordered a sergeant tersely. O’Leary didn’t like the softly sarcastic way he said it, and continued toward the train gate. A restraining hand held him. O'Leary shot out a fist and in a moment the atmosphere was filled with M. P.’s and drawn automatics. He sent a corporal sprawling to the hard stone floor. Two more M. P.’s lunged at him. He pushed one violently over the sprawling body and clipped the second on the chin. Screams of frantic French women, howls of joy from the motley array of onlookers Algerians, Australians, and native soldiers in blue —turned the depot into a storm of wild confusion. A Sergeant sprang at O’Leary, but the suddenly extended foot of a Britisher sent him crashing to the floor. A Private rushed in, holding an automatic menacingly. A fist, shooting out from the surging

mob back of them, landed square in the attacker’s neck. The gun discharged, sent a bullet crashing above the heads of the uniformed mob. Dimly, as he desperately fought off the M. P.’s, O’Leary understood, as does a ring challenger, that the throng was with him. Men like himself, men who had stood guard duty, who had tasted the bitter dregs of war and were in Paris for a breath of life —all of them were shouting for him, jeering his attackers, wanting him to win! Five feet away was the open gate to the train shed below. He crashed a fist into the jaw of a snarling Sergeant and dived for the opening. The mob surged behind him, blocking his pursuers. To the rear O’Leary could hear the curses of M. P.’s as they strived unsuccessfully to battle their way through. And beneath him he heard the shrill whistle of the Express as it began to get under way. He reached the platform and bounded upon the run-ning-board of a passenger car, pounding upon the window to attract the attention of the occupants. Someone unlatched the door and nimble hands drew him inside the compartment. Bewildered breathing heavily, he looked about at the grinning and bewhiskered faces of the French officers about him. O’Leary thrilled with pride at the respect these

men showed him. Or was it his uniform ? He began to understand why soldiers saluted officers even Second Lieutenants. It wasn't the men who wore the uniforms, but what the uniforms represented! Tonight, one of them told him, their train would draw up beside a dark siding and the regiment would load into trucks for the front. Dawn would find them in the trenches —exactly in the opposite direction from where O'Leary wanted to be. That would be O’Leary’s moment to escape and again start south for Buck . . . Buck whom he was going to kill. DAWN did find the French regiment in the trenches and fighting like wild demons. But O'Leary had not escaped. He ♦lad helped blue uniformed officers to transfer their men into trucks because enemy airmen were dropping bombs. Just as the truck with 50 men started off, a piece of shrapnel hit the driver, killing him instantly. O’Leary slipped into the dead man’s place and stepped on the gas. Now it was dawn, the gray streaking through a horizon of bursting shells, poison gas and screaming, cursing men. O’Leary gripped his automatic and pushed forward through barbed wire. Ahead of him, man after man was falling. Somewhere out there the enemy was using a machine gun to deadly advantage. The French fell away in disorder. O’Leary called those nearest him to wait. In the best vocabulary he could muster he told his plan to the handful of men. They nodded eagerly, surrendering to him four hand grenades. Like an insane animal he sprang toward the machine gun nest, leaping high into the aiu, zig-zagging and waving his arms grotesquely. The handful of men, following him toward the nest in a great arc, did likewise. The enemy gunner desperately attempted to center his fire first upon one, then the other. As O’Leary leaped before the nest, he felt a hot, burning sensation in his leg, but continued on. The gun swerved and swept down one of the Frenchmen. The bullets ripped into the earth and into the body of the dying man. O’Leary threw one of the grenades into the nest and heard the resounding explosion. He followed with two more. The gun became silent. Three Frenchmen lay dead, but the enemy gun and gunner were strafed. There came a blinding flash, a thundering blast. O’Leary fell flat into a gaping hole. He rose cautiously to peer over the edge and a man moved beside him—a man. whom he recognized. Buck—Lieutenant Buck—here! A single shot and Buck would die. No one would know that the sharp steel had spit from the muzzle of O’Leary’s gun. With an oath he whipped his weapon against the officer's body. "You remember, eh? snarled O'Leary as the man’s face went white. "You remember the Sap who gave his gun to a prisoner, and how you lied like a yellow dog?” “Yes, I remember,” said Buck slowly. “But you—why are you here?” O’Leary laughed wildly. “Fate!” he rasped. “I started south —to kill you. Got side-tracked to the front. And now—” he chuckled insanely. “ —I find you here!” Buck looked at him steadily, calmly. “You were a Sap, O’Leary, and you’re a Sap now. If you want to kill me, why do you stand there talking?” He drew erect. “Shoot. Sap!—you haven’t the nerve.” O’Leary lowered his weapon 11, bewilderment. He eyed his enemy

from heel to head. Wet nis dry. parched lips. | “You’re not afraid afraid to die?” he muttered at last. Now Buck laughed. Nervously. "Yes,” he replied, "I am afraid!” and that’s why I’m here. I was too yellow to fly. but I’m not too yellow to .die fighting—” A few feet ahead they saw the tops of many tin helmets. No time for words now. Together they leaped from the pit, and side by side fought toward the breastworks of an enemy trench. Buck waded into the seething mass, with O'Leary close on his heels. In the cyclone of fists and gun butts which rose up to meet him, Buck poured a constant stream of lead, and as he wormed his body against the back of the trench and looked upward he saw the Sap of the American army fighting toward him saw him fall and lurch forward. He lay very still, as thousands of bodies on No Man’s Land fell that morning of the Big Push. Buck hesitated a moment, and gazing at the fallen form with the admiration of one brave man for another, he squared his shoulders and pushed on pushed on into the open. Within ten yards he was mowed down by a sudden blast of gun fire—a brave Second Lieutenant who died with his face toward the enemy. FOUR weeks fled by and artillery no longer roared across the skies of France. Private O’Leary rose from his hospital bed and saw laid out before him a neatly pressed suit the uniform of a Second Lieutenant. “You are to report to the commanding officer this afternoon,” the nurse told him. He looked at the uniform with disdain. He didn’t remember the name of the officer from whom he had so ingloriously stolen it, but he had a firm hunch that within a few moments he would be asked to explain many things. He dressed and reported to the base commander, anticipating the worst as the scowling officer surveyed him. “Private O'Leary,” the Major shot out, “what are you doing in the uniform of a Second Lieutenant?” “Well, Sir—” sputtered O’Leary, “you see it was this way—” “Enough of these ‘well-sirs’!” roared the Major. “Do you not know the penalty for impersonating an officer in time of war?” He leaped to his feet and jerked the bars from O’Leary’s shoulder straps. “Stand at attention!” he bellowed. He glared at the convalescent young man for a moment, then turned to his desk and picked up a plush box. “As Private O’Leary. I bestow upon you the gratitude of the French Republic,” roared the Major. “Such a thing is unprecedented—a Buck Private appearing before a commanding officer in the uniform of a Second Lieutenant!” O'Leary stood rigid, as immobile as a wooden Indian. “And as Private O’Leary,” continued the Major, “it is my honor to pin upon your shoulders the silver bars of a First Lieutenant! . . . France honors you for strafing a machine gun nest; General Pershing for having kept an ammunition tram from blowing up a transport depot. And now, sir, at rest!” O'Leary's eyes met those of the Major and he saw the twinkle in them. And felt a strong hand grasping his own. "Young man,” said the Major, “you’re a Sap, a blithering idiotic Sap!” “Yes, sir," responded O’Leary meekly, “that’s what they’ve always told me.”

O'Leary Couldn't Believe They Would Do This To Him!