Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants: or, Handling Their First Real Commands

CHAPTER I

"TIPPED OFF" BY WIG-WAG

LIEUTENANT POPE, battalion adjutant of the first battalion of the Thirty-fourth United States Infantry, looked up from his office desk as the door swung open and a smart, trim-looking young corporal strode in.

Pausing before the desk, the young corporal came to a precise, formal salute. Then, dropping his right hand to his side, the soldier stood at attention.

"Good morning, Corporal Overton."

"Good morning, sir."

"What do you wish?"

"I have been making inquiries, sir," continued Corporal Hal Overton, "and I am informed that you have some signaling flags among the quartermaster's stores."

"I believe I have," nodded Lieutenant Pope.

"I have come to ask, sir, if I may borrow a couple of the flags."

"Borrow? Then, Corporal, I take it that you do not want the flags for duty purposes?"

"Not immediately for duty purposes, sir. Corporal Terry and myself would like to practise at wig-wagging until we become reasonably expert. Sergeant Hupner is an expert at wig-wagging, I understand."

"Yes, indeed," agreed Lieutenant Pope heartily. "Even in the Signal Corps of the Army there are few better signalmen than the sergeant."

"So I understand, sir. Corporal Terry and I are delighted at the idea of having the sergeant instruct us."

"But what do you want to do, especially, with flag signaling?" inquired the quartermaster.

"It is simply, sir, that we want to make ourselves better soldiers."

"It is rarely that we find better soldiers than Terry and yourself," replied the quartermaster, with a friendly smile. "But you are quite right, none the less. A soldier can never know too much of military duties. I see no objection whatever to your having the flags, but as they are not a matter of ordinary issue, I think it better for me to seek Major Silsbee's authority for issuing them."

"Would it have been better if I had gone to the battalion commander in the first place, sir?"

"No; whenever you wish anything in the Army it is usually better to go direct to the officer who has that thing in charge in his department, save when it is something that you are expected to draw through your company officers."

"It was Captain Cortland who sent me to you, sir, but he said he had no authority to draw a requisition for signal flags."

"You have taken the right course, Corporal. If Major Silsbee is in his office it will take but a moment more."

While the young corporal remained at attention Lieutenant Pope turned to his telephone and called for the battalion commander.

"It's all right, Corporal," nodded the lieutenant, hanging up the receiver. Then he wrote on a slip of official paper. "Here is an order on which the quartermaster sergeant will issue you two signal flags. You are, of course, responsible for the flags, or for the value."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

Five minutes later Corporal Hal Overton stepped briskly from the building in which the quartermaster's stores were kept. Under his left arm he carried two signal flags, rolled and attached to short staffs.

"Noll hasn't shown up yet. I hope he won't be long," murmured Hal, gazing across the parade grounds in the direction of the barracks of enlisted men. "Bunkie and I have a lot to do to-day."

Readers of the preceding volumes in this series will need no introduction to Corporals Hal Overton and Noll Terry, of the Thirty-fourth United States Infantry.

The headquarters battalion to which these two earnest young soldiers were attached was still stationed at Fort Clowdry. Readers of "Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks" are familiar with the circumstances under which Overton and Terry first enlisted at a recruiting office in New York City. These same readers also know how the two young soldiers put in several weeks of steady drilling at a recruit rendezvous near New York, where they learned the first steps in the soldier's strenuous calling. Our readers are also familiar with all the many things that happened during that period of recruit instruction, and how Hal and Noll, while traveling through the Rockies on their way to join their regiment, aided in resisting an attempt by robbers to hold up the United States mail train. Our readers are well aware of all the exciting episodes of that first garrison life, including the life and death fight that Hal Overton had with thieves while he was on sentry duty in officers' row, and of the efforts of one worthless character in the battalion to discredit and disgrace the service of both splendid but new young soldiers.

In the second volume, "Uncle Sam's Boys on Field Duty," our readers were admitted to equally exciting scenes of a wholly different nature. This volume dealt largely with the troops while away in rough country, under practical instruction in the actual duties of soldiers in the field in war time. Just how soldiers learn the grim business of war was most fully set forth in this volume. Among other hosts of entertaining incidents our readers will recall how Hal, on scouting duty, robbed the "enemy's" outpost of rifles, canteens and secured even the corporal's shoes. Some of Hal's and Noll's other brilliant scouting successes are therein told, and it is described how Hal and Noll finally gained the information that resulted in their own side gaining the victory in the mimic campaign. That volume also told how Lieutenant Prescott, aided by Soldiers Hal and Noll, succeeded at very nearly the cost of their lives in arresting a notorious and desperate criminal for the civil authorities, and how all this was done in the most soldier-like manner. It was such deeds as the scouting and the clever arrest that resulted in the appointment of the two chums as corporals. Then there was the affair, while the regulars were on duty in summer encampment with the Colorado National Guard, in which Hal and Noll, acting under impulses of the highest chivalry, got themselves into trouble that came very near to driving them out of the service.

Since the last rousing scenes in and near Denver, something more than a year had passed. It was now the beginning of the fall of the year following when Corporal Hal Overton, with the signal flags under his arm, waited near the parade ground for that other fine young soldier, Corporal Noll Terry.

A year of busy life it had been, though in the main uneventful. Our two young corporals had spent most of their time since in perfecting themselves in the soldier's grim game. They were now looked upon as two of the very finest and staunchest young soldiers in the service.

"Oh, there comes Noll at last," muttered Corporal Overton some minutes later. "And it's high time, too, if he has any regard for the sacredness of a soldier's punctuality. But he's leaving the telegraph office. I wonder if the dear old fellow has been getting any bad news from the home town?"

Corporal Terry, as he came briskly along the smooth, hard walk of a well-kept military post, looked every inch as fine a soldier as his chum. By this time Noll was just as thoroughly in love with all that pertained to the soldier's spirited life as was Overton.

"Think I was never coming?" hailed Noll gayly.

"I began to wonder if you weren't losing sight of the sacredness that is supposed to be attached to a soldier's appointment," said Hal dryly.

"I am afraid I have been so carried away with a new chance that I've treated you just a bit shabbily," Corporal Noll admitted.

"Think no more of it," begged Hal. "I got the flags."

"So my eyes tell me."

"And what have you been up to, Noll?"

"Oh, the greatest chance!" glowed Terry. "You know how hard I have been plugging away at telegraphy in spare time during the last few months?"

"Of course."

"Well, Lieutenant Ray is through with his tour of duty as officer in charge of our telegraph station, and Lieutenant Prescott has succeeded him for the next tour."

"Yes."

"I've been over to the telegraph office to interview Lieutenant Prescott, whom I saw going in there. Prescott is a grand young officer, isn't he?"

"Every man in the battalion knows that," Hal agreed heartily, for, indeed, there were no two more popular young officers in the service than Lieutenants Prescott and Holmes, of B and C Companies, respectively.

Readers of our "High School Boys' Series" and of the "West Point Series" know all about Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes, once leaders among High School athletes and afterwards among the brightest and finest of West Point cadets. Prescott and Holmes were now fully launched in their careers as Army officers.

"Lieutenant Prescott has given me a really bully chance," Noll went on happily.

"Did you ask him for it?" suspected Corporal Hal shrewdly.

"Well, I – er – er – hinted some, I guess," responded Noll, with a quiet grin. "But if you want things in this world aren't you a heap more likely to get them by asking than by keeping quiet?"

"Surely. But go on and tell me what it is that you got."

"I haven't exactly got it yet," Noll continued. "But Lieutenant Prescott is going to recommend me for it, and ask Captain Cortland's permission."

"I guess you'll get it, then," nodded Hal Overton. "Mr. Prescott's superior officers think so highly of him that he usually doesn't have to beg very hard to get what he wants. And – what is it?"

"Why, old fellow, I'm to be relieved from most other duties and placed in charge of the telegraph office. You know, there are two soldiers stationed there as day operators, and one as night operator. And I'm to be there in charge night and day."

"Good business," nodded Hal, "if you don't have to keep up night and day as well."

"Oh, no; I'm to be merely responsible to the lieutenant for the proper management of the office. I'm not to be tied down so very closely, after all, and I'm to have the proper amount of leave for recreation and all that sort of thing."

"When do you begin?"

"Day after to-morrow, at nine in the morning."

"You won't be on guard duty while this other detail lasts?"

"No."

"Too bad," muttered Hal. "Of course I may be wrong, but to me the thorough study of real guard duty is one of the most important things in a soldier's profession."

"Oh, I've mastered guard duty pretty well," broke in Corporal Noll.

"Then I congratulate you," was Hal Overton's dry rejoinder. "I feel that I'm only beginning to see the real niceties of the work of the guard."

"We've an hour left before the next drill," resumed young Corporal Terry, after glancing at his watch. "Shall we go over and see if Sergeant Hupner is ready to start breaking us in at wig-wagging?"

"That's what I've been waiting to do," Hal Overton rejoined.

"You don't seem to be a bit glad over my success in getting into telegraphy," complained Noll.

"If it seemed that way, then it's because our tongues were too busy otherwise," Hal answered. "Noll, I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart, for you're plumb wild to know all about telegraphing."

"Only because it's of use in the military world," explained Corporal Terry. "I wouldn't care a straw about being a telegraph operator in civil life."

"You wouldn't care about being anything else in civil life, would you?"

"No," Corporal Noll admitted promptly. "After a taste of real soldiering in the regular Army I don't see how on earth a fellow can be satisfied with any other kind of life. That is, if a fellow has life, spirit and red blood in him."

Sergeant Hupner proved not only to be disengaged, but ready to begin the instruction of the aspiring young wig-waggers immediately.

It is really no part of an infantry soldier's duty to learn telegraphy, but he is trained at times in the use of the wig-wag signal flags. In the Army both telegraphy and signaling are work usually performed by members of the Signal Corps. In the case of telegraphy, however, at an infantry post where there is no detachment of Signal Corps men, then the work at the telegraph instruments must necessarily fall upon infantry soldiers, since some of the messages sent and received at a military post cannot be intrusted to men who have not taken the oath.

"You take one of the flags, Corporal Overton," began Sergeant Hupner, after stepping from barracks out into the open, "and I'll take the other at the outset. Corporal Terry can look on at first. Now, a signalman, at the beginning of his work, holds the flag straight up before him – so. Each letter in the alphabet has its own series of numbers to stand for it. These numbers are made by dropping the flag so many times to the right or left of your body. Thus – "

Sergeant Hupner described some rapid sweeps with the flag to right and left.

"A, B, C, D, E," he spelled along, as he signaled the letters.

"We know that part of it already, Sergeant," replied Corporal Hal. "We've been studying the alphabet and the punctuation points in the book."1

"Oh, I'll warrant that you've been studying the alphabet and everything connected with it," replied Sergeant Hupner, with a smile. "And I don't believe you'll need many points from me in order to become first-class signalmen. Take this flag, Terry. Now, Overton, stand off there and signal your full name to me. Spell out the letters slowly, so that I can criticize you when necessary."

Despite his knowledge of the alphabet Hal naturally made a few blunders at first.

"Your work lacks snap," remarked Sergeant Hupner. "Even when you spell slowly you should bring the flag down smartly to either side. Like this."

Sergeant Hupner illustrated briskly with his arms.

"Now send me the name of your regiment."

Hal did better this time.

"You'll soon have the hang of it," declared the sergeant encouragingly. "Now, send me the same thing over again, but with more speed."

"Fine!" added Hupner when Hal had obeyed. "Now, Terry, we'll try you for a few moments. What is your full name?"

Noll signaled it, making each letter carefully with the flag.

"Now tell me – with the flag – what you think of to-day's weather."

"Fine and cool," signaled back Noll.

Thus the instruction continued. Each young soldier improved a good deal during that hour.

"Now, we'll call it off until to-morrow," remarked the sergeant at last, and turned to re-enter barracks.

"How do you like it, Noll?" asked Overton.

"Oh, it's all right," admitted boyish Corporal Terry. "But I'd rather have telegraphy. I don't see why you've been so wild over the wig-wag flags."

"For just one reason," responded Hal promptly. "Because it's all a part of the soldier's life and duty. I mean to know every phase and detail of the soldier's business that I can possibly pick up. And I hope you won't back out, Noll."

"Oh, no; I'll stick," agreed Corporal Terry, though it sounded as if he promised almost reluctantly.

Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta! The bugler was sounding the first call for drill. That sent the two boyish young corporals quickly into barracks with their signal flags, which they exchanged for their rifles.

Their old friend Hyman – no longer Private Hyman, but now, for three months, Corporal Hyman – regarded them with indulgent eyes.

"You kids been out learning how to wave the shirt?" he queried.

"Yes," nodded Hal. Then, with pretended severity, he demanded: "Do you think, Corporal Hyman, you have chosen a respectful enough manner in addressing other corporals who rank you by virtue of prior appointment to the grade?"

"Oh, nobody takes a corporal seriously except the corporal himself," drawled Hyman. "A corporal in the Army is only a small-fry boss. He's handy to lay the blame on for things, and he doesn't dare to 'sass' back. Neither does the corporal dare to 'take it out of' the private soldiers in his squad, for, if he did, the privates would report him and have him court-martialed. Kids, I'm growing rather tired of being a corporal. I think I'll go to the colonel and – "

But whatever Hyman was going to do he did not explain, for the notes of assembly rang out and all the men in the squad room hastened outside, yet did it with that dignity and seeming deliberation that the soldier soon acquires.

Drill was over in something like an hour. Hal and Noll returned to squad room, where they spent some little time going over their equipment. Then they sauntered outside, for there was still some time before the noon meal at company mess.

"Look at Hyman, in that tree over yonder," said Hal, nodding in the direction.

Corporal Hyman was sitting on one of the lower limbs of a tree some four hundred yards away. It was close to the wall that ran along the front of the reservation, and overlooked the road that came up from the town of Clowdry.

"Yes," grinned Noll. "It's a favorite trick with old Hyman to get up in a tree like that. Says he can think better that way than when he's touching common earth. Hello, he has jumped down to the wall. There he goes into the road outside."

"There was a cloud of dust along the road. I guess he's talking to some one in a carriage or an automobile," guessed Hal.

"Well, it's of no interest to us," mused Noll.

But in that Corporal Terry was wrong.

"There's Hyman up on the wall again," reported Hal.

"So I see, and he's making motions this way."

"He's signaling," muttered Hal, watching the motions of Corporal Hyman's right arm. He had started with that arm held up before his face. Now the arm was falling rhythmically to left and right. "Why, Hyman is asking, 'Can you read this?'"

Then, raising his own arm, Hal signaled back:

"Yes."

Again Hyman's right arm was moving. Hal watched closely, spelling out the wig-wagged signal:

"Pipe – off – what's – coming. Greatest – ever happened – in the – Army. Don't – miss – it."

"Now, what on earth can that be?" queried Noll.

"It must be something unusual to rouse enthusiasm in a man like Hyman," laughed Hal.

And indeed it was something great that was coming. Corporal Hyman's wig-wagging arm was moving again.

"Hustle – over – to – main – road."

Hal and Noll were instantly in motion. It must be confessed that they were eager.

Little did they guess that the coming event was of a nature destined soon to have the whole post at Fort Clowdry by the ears!

CHAPTER II

LIEUTENANT "ALGY" JOINS THE ARMY

IN at the gate down by post number one – in other words, at the guard house – turned an extremely large and costly-looking seven-passenger touring car.

At the driver's post sat an undersized, shrewd-looking little Frenchman.

Behind him, in one of the five seats of the tonneau sat a dapper-looking young man of medium height, with a soft, curly little moustache and dressed in the height of masculine fashion.

At post number one the car was halted, apparently much to the surprise of the solitary passenger, who leaned indolently forward and exchanged some words with the sentry.

"Gracious!" gasped Noll. "He must be a person of some importance, after all. There's the sentry presenting arms."

"And there comes the corporal of the guard, making a rifle salute," added Hal. "It must be a new officer joining the regiment."

"That – an officer?" gasped Noll, in unfeigned disgust. "Don't libel the good old Army, Hal."

Of a sudden the big car shot forward again, and came up the main road to officers' row at a smashing clip.

Then, just as suddenly, it halted beside the two young corporals.

"Hello, boys!" greeted the dapper, smiling little fellow in the tonneau. "Say, I'm afraid I'm all at sea. I've come to live with you fellows, but I'm blessed if I haven't already forgotten what that fellow with the gun told me down at the porter's lodge."

"Porter's lodge? Do you mean the guard house, sir?" Hal asked respectfully.

"Why, yes – if that's what you call it – of course. Names don't matter much to me. Never did. Some one over in Washington – the secretary of something or other – sent me over here. I'm a new lieutenant, and I believe I'm to stay at this beastly place."

At the mention of the word "lieutenant" both Hal and Noll came to a very formal salute.

"Now, what do you mean by that?" smiled the new-comer affably. "Sign of some lodge on the post? I haven't had time to get into any of your secret societies yet, of course."

"We offered you the officer's salute, sir," explained Corporal Hal.

"Oh, then you're officers? I guessed as much," beamed the pleasant young stranger.

"No; we're corporals, sir," Hal informed him.

"Oh, yes; seems to me I've heard about corporals. I'll know more about them later, I dare say. How are you, anyway, boys?"

The stranger leaned out over the side of the car, extending his hand to Corporal Overton, who could not very well refuse it. Then Noll came in for a handshake.

"Of course you understand sir, that we're below the grade of officers," Hal continued.

"Oh, pshaw!" replied the still smiling stranger. "Such things as that don't count. And I've been warned that the Army is one of the most democratic places in the world. I haven't brought any of my 'lugs' here with me – 'pon my word I haven't. I'm Lieutenant Algernon Ferrers. I hope all of you fellows will soon like me well enough to call me Algy."

Though Mr. Ferrers was certainly the biggest joke in the way of an officer that either of the young soldiers had ever seen, it was impossible not to like this pleasant young man.

"Jump in – won't you, boys?" invited Lieutenant Ferrers, throwing the nearer door of the tonneau open. "I'll be tremendously obliged if you'll pilot me to the right place. Where do I ring the bell? Of course I've got to give some one here the glad hand before I can be shown to my rooms."

Though they did so with some misgivings Hal and Noll both stepped into the tonneau.

"Sit right down, boys," urged Lieutenant Ferrers amiably.

"Pardon me, sir," explained Hal Overton. "It would be a bad breach of discipline in this regiment for any enlisted man to sit in the company of his officers."

"Oh, you're enlisted men, eh?" queried the new lieutenant, showing no signs whatever of feeling taken aback. "I'm glad to say I didn't have to enlist. My guv'nor has some good friends at Washington, and I was appointed from civil life."

Hal and Noll had already guessed that much without difficulty. No officer quite like Lieutenant Ferrers had ever been turned out at West Point, and surely such a man had never risen from the ranks. Now, when all the West Point graduates have been commissioned into the Army, and all meritorious enlisted men have been promoted to second lieutenancies, then, if there be any vacancies left, the President fills these vacancies in the rank of second lieutenant, by appointing young men from civil life.

Generally these appointments from civil life go to the honor graduates of colleges where military drill is conducted by an officer of the Army detailed as instructor. But, occasionally, there are more vacancies than these honor graduates can or will fill – and then political influence very often plays a part in the appointment of some young men as lieutenants in the Army.

"Tell François where to drive, will you?" begged Lieutenant Ferrers.

"I don't believe, sir, that Colonel North is at his office so late in the forenoon," Corporal Hal replied. "But I think, sir, that Captain Hale, the regimental adjutant, will be found there."

"Does Hale assign a fellow's rooms to him?" queried Lieutenant Ferrers innocently.

"If you are under orders to join, sir, you will be expected to report to Colonel North, or else to the regimental adjutant, who represents the colonel."

"I – see," nodded the new lieutenant slowly. "Will you do me the extreme favor to tell François where to leave us?"

Hal leaned forward, indicating the headquarters building.

In another moment the big car stopped before headquarters.

"Come right on in, fellows, and introduce me, won't you?" urged Lieutenant Ferrers.

"I – I am afraid we'd better not," replied Hal, flushing.

"Oh, I see – you've a luncheon appointment, or something of the sort, eh? Well, never mind; glad to have met you. Expect to have many a good time with you later on. Good fellows, both of you, I'll wager."

"Come away from here, Noll," begged Hal, as soon as Mr. Ferrers had run up the steps and into the building. "I'm suffocating."