The Man Without a Memory

It was a glorious scrap, and Dick Gunter and I had the best of it right up to the last moment. We were about 6,000 feet up and a mile or so inside the German lines when their two machines came out to drive us away. "We'll take 'em on, Jack," shouted Dick, chortling like the rare old sport he was, and we began our usual manœuvre for position. Our dodge was to let them believe we were novices at the game, and I messed about with the old bus as if we were undecided and in a deuce of a funk. They fell in, all right, and at the proper moment I swung round and gave Dick a chance which he promptly took, pouring in a broadside which sent one of the machines hurtling nose first to earth. This put the fear of God into the others, who tried to bolt; but we were too fast for them and, after a short running fight, Dick got them. The pilot crumpled up and down went the machine like a stone to prevent the other from feeling lonely. We were jubilating righteously over this, when the luck turned. A third machine, which, in the excitement of the scrap, we hadn't seen, swooped out of the clouds and gave us a broadside at close range, which messed us up pretty badly. We were both hit, the petrol poured out of the riddled tank, the engine stopped, and I realized that we could put up the shutters, as we were absolutely at the beggar's mercy. I was wrong, however. Dick had managed to let the other chap have a dose of lead, and either because we had had enough of it or his bus was damaged, he didn't stop to finish us off but scuttled off home to mother. I was hit somewhere in the shoulder, but it wasn't bad enough to prevent my working the controls, and I pointed for home on a long glissade. There was a "certain liveliness," as the communiqués say, during that joy ride. The Archies barked continuously as we crossed the lines, the shrapnel was all over us, Dick was hit again, and the poor old bus fairly riddled; but we got through it somehow, although my pal was nearly done in by the time we reached the ground. Some pretty things were said about it and we each got the M.C. I was very little hurt, and came out of the base hospital a week or two later feeling as fit as a fiddle again, but as the chief decided I had earned a good spell of leave, I went off to old Blighty to convalesce. Then it was that for the first time I heard of the trouble about Nessa Caldicott. Both my parents had died when I was a kid, and Mrs. Caldicott, the dearest and sweetest woman in the world, had been like a mother to me, had taken me into her home, and thus I had grown up with Nessa and her sister. Nessa and I had been to school in Germany; had travelled out and home together; I had spent my holidays in their home; and I can't remember the time when I wasn't in love with her. Mrs. Caldicott was keen that we should marry, and a year or two after I came back to England for good from Göttingen University we had been engaged. But there was a "nigger in the fence." I had plenty of money and preferred being a sort of "nut" to working; and Nessa didn't like it. She urged me to "do something and make a career for myself"; but I was a swollen-headed young ass, and shied at it; so at last the engagement was broken off until, as she put it, I "had given up the idea of lounging and loafing through life." She was right, of course; but like a fool I wouldn't see it; so we quarrelled, and she went off to Germany to stay with an old school friend. She was still there when the war broke out, and thus did not know that I had found my chance and had joined up. There was nothing "nutty" about the army training and work, and when I went home, of course, my first thoughts were of her and what she would say when she knew I had taken her advice.