Carrick, Good to you are still causing havoc to the enemy with your bombs and stopped playing with them around the mechanics shed.
Wolfe, I do hope you are keeping your writings to make a book. Shoot, I would buy it. Great stories.
Lou, I hope your new machine has a better engine than your last.
Fullofit, You lucky dog you! A real fighting airplane! Good luck with your new squad!
Raine, you rally are the ringmaster! Maybe I should try making the Major ill what with the big battle coming our way. Need more scout pilots, hint, hint. Seriously, I am enjoying the Morane. I would never had flown it if not for this campaign and it is not a bad machine.

Lt. Mark Jericho
Auchell Aerodrome
Feb.4, 1916

"How is the leg, Mark?" Swany asked.

"Oh, she's fine. You know, I have never been so embarrassed in my life. We get to the aid station and I can feel the blood pooling in my boot. Hurt like blazes too! When the doc starts to take my boot off I'm thinking the foot might come off with it. Well, he gets the boot off and rolls up my trouser leg and there is blood pouring all over the floor. I'm wondering if I'll ever walk again!"

Swany leans over in his chair toward Jericho totally absorbed in the story.

"So then the doc starts washing my calf off and low and behold, it ain't nothing! A pretty good gash for sure but I've seen men with a lot worse throw a little Kerosine on it and never look back. He told me I was lucky and would be back in the air in a few days."

"Its good to have you back." Swany said. After a few minutes of silence Swany asked Jericho, "How did you end up flying coming from out west."

"Well that's a long story Pard. After I left Mississippi, I ended up working on a ranch outside of San Antonio Texas. There was this girl there. Marjorie Stinson. She had a Wright model B. It was tail heavy and prone to stall"

"Wait, Marjorie, a woman!?" Swany asked in surprise.

""You bet, and easy on the eyes too!" Jericho replied. "Anyway, she gave lessons for a dollar a minute and I thought that was just about the most wonderful thing I had seen in my life.I didn't have much else to spend money on and was making $30 dollars and found per month at the time so whenever I could, I would ride down to her place and she would give me lessons. After that me, and another went to Montana and then Canada to see the country. I had saved up a good bit of money by then and not being wise to the world lost it all to a swindler selling stock in an oil company. Really didn't know what to do at that point and ran into a recruiting Sargent who promised me I could see the world and save it to boot. When he asked if I could drive a motor car I told him "no but I can fly an airplane" his eyes lit up like the fourth of July."Jericho stopped suddenly looking away at nothing in particular then back at Swany. "Now I'm in France sitting in a wooden shack talking to a Northerner I don't even understand half the time.... Heck of a world ain't it Pard." Jericho said with a grin.

"What does your family back in Mississippi think about you being in France" Swany asked.

"I'm glad you brought that up Swany" Jericho said as he reached under the mattress and pulled out a letter addressed to Deemer Jericho, Tupelo Mississippi. "If something ever happens to me would you see that she gets this? It's to my mother."

Swany had been with Jericho long enough to know that this was the end of the conversation but decided to pursue it. "Has your father passed?"

Jericho rolled the letter over in his hands looking at it. "He don't enter into the equation Pard" Jericho said matter of fact. "You hungry."


Note:In 1914, Marjorie and Katherine Stinson opened a flying school in San Antonio Tx.
"$30 dollars and found" meant $30 plus droom and board. $30/month was average pay for a cowhand at the turn of the century
Kerosine was used as a cure all for cuts, mange on animals and everything in between. I remember it being used many times in the rural south in my childhood








Last edited by MFair; 02/04/19 09:52 PM.

Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from either end.
BOC Member since....I can't remember!