“How are they breaking, F.F.V?” Langdon asked. Mudd gazed through Langdon and went to his place at table. A quiver of anticipation went through the room. And that told Langdon that Lieutenant Mudd had not changed one whit. “You’ll remember, Lieutenant Langdon,” Mudd said, when he was seated, “my Army salutation is Lieutenant Mudd.” “The hell you tell!” Langdon smiled. “Where at is your F.F.V., Charles?” Mudd gave his attention to the meal. The table tried hard to smother its mirth, and Langdon explained-- “Lieutenant Mudd and I made our transport with the same outfit, attached to the 10th Aero--” “The swine!” Mudd snarled. “The best damn’ air unit in France,” Langdon said. “That is, with the exception of the Trente-Neuf.” “That’s the spirit, Lieutenant Langdon!” Major Mack cheered from his end of the long table. “The old outfit is always good, but the new outfit, to be an outfit, must always be _the_ outfit ... stand, devils-- To the Trente-Neuf!” “This Trente-Neuf,” a man at Langdon’s right said, after the toast, “is a jake outfit, Langdon. There’s only one thing wrong with it.” He stopped talking and stared at Mudd. “There was only one thing wrong with the 10th,” Langdon told the man, “and it was the same thing. An outfit’s mistakes are its own, and the unpardonable mistake is the mistake made when an outfit makes the mistake of not rectifying its mistakes. Am I right?” “No mistake,” the other agreed. Next morning, Langdon went out on his first mission behind Mudd. That is, because of seniority, F.F.V. was in the front plane of a three ship flight. Now, this thing of following F.F.V. Mudd was not the worst medicine on earth, and Langdon had no kick coming. Mudd was a flying man, and that seems strange. None, no matter what his idea of manhood, could ever deny Mudd his place in air, and for more than two months now, he had been taking missions out and, what was more important, he was bringing them back. Maybe that was why the Trente-Neuf had not taken steps to clean up this one mistake. Mudd was one of those conscientious flight leaders who gave flying orders like a pedagogue and then expected every man to do his duty. There was no fun to be found behind him. The objective was the objective, and not fun. His unit took no long chances. If enemy planes were above, Mudd toured all France on their four hour DH tanks, then came back. Came back, got the pictures or observations, and went hell bent for home. A pilot might just as well have been touring France with the “Y”. And on more than one occasion, he had been told so; but not by Major Mack. No matter what the major might have thought personally, he stood firmly behind Mudd because of results shown. The business of an observation squadron is observation. Let the pursuit groups do the combat stuff.