More than a quarter of a century in the service of Uncle Sam had placed Sergeant Dad Benton in a position where lieutenants, and even higher rankers, were of no more importance than the most lowly 10th Aero buck. With the ever expanding bubble that was the war of T7, wise heads of Dad’s caliber were only too few. Newly made captains, suddenly advanced majors and dizzy colonels came hurriedly into the old man’s council to ascertain just what gentlemen of their rank should do under this, that and the other condition. And they got their answers. “You’ll find the answer to that, sir,” the old man would say, after twisting his long mustaches for maybe as much as ten seconds, “on page so and so, paragraph this or that in your Blue Book.” And how any man, even in twenty-seven years, could memorize--page and paragraph--as large a volume as Army Regulations, is beyond the understanding of one who could never remember which of two was the right foot. So you can see, First Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd’s report, if made, caused no ripple on the already troubled waters of Mitchel Field. And Mudd’s report, very likely, was turned in because, in the several weeks of his stay with the 10th, the lieutenant was hard to get along with. He wanted salutes from the enlisted men. Enlisted men, though, seldom salute those who fail to command their spontaneous respect; and Mudd was out of luck. Shortly after the 10th’s arrival upon an active field in France, a plane crew sent Mudd into the air with an almost empty gasoline tank, two flying-wire turnbuckles unsafetied and a landing gear wheel loosed and ready to fall off. When the motor died at five thousand feet, Mudd came down for a landing. When he hit the ground, the right wheel bounced through his lower off-side wing and went places. The small pursuit plane, a Nieuport 27, with one wheel missing, somersaulted three times, by the count, and Mudd came up from the wreckage like an angry hen from a messed up nest. Shades of Southern hospitality and gentility! What a yell went up! However, the 10th Aero was a good outfit. It was also a mighty useful outfit and had an important top sergeant in its orderly room. “The whole damn’ affair must have been just an accident,” Dad Benton convinced the benzine board appointed to smell into Mudd’s rotten charges. “Why, these 10th boys are worked to death. Sixty-odd pursuit planes in the air for five periods a day. Of course now and then something is going to go wrong.” The benzine board made its report. Headquarters made a move. Mudd was the pawn. And because the 10th gang ran with every other gang at Issoudun’s many fields, headquarters made the move big enough to put Mudd out of danger for all time. He, First Lieutenant Charles Surry Mudd, F.F.V., was sent to observation, away from Issoudun. * * * * * Now, with the Trente-Neuf, Langdon and Mudd were in the same outfit once again.