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Updated: May 6, 2025
V., my pilot and flight-commander, was given to a quick dive at the enemy, a swerve aside, a recul pour mieux sauter, a vertical turn or two, and another dash to close grips from an unexpected direction, while I guarded the tail-end. But writing reminiscences of Umpty Squadron's early days is a melancholy business.
We ran into soldiers and guns, aeroplanes, and more guns of all calibres; there must have been two miles of them in one batch that we passed on the way to Arras, as well as 'umpty' parks of lorries.
"Well; Billy says to me: 'Mr. Camperdown don't want no hinformation; he wants the diamonds. Them diamonds is like 'Umpty Dumpty, Mr. Bunfit. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put 'Umpty Dumpty up again." "Billy was about right there," said the younger officer, rising from his seat.
Cynically, he recalled some lines of poetry which he had had to write out a hundred times on one occasion at school as a punishment for having introduced a white mouse into chapel. "Oh, woman, in our hours of ease, Un-something, something, something, please. When tiddly-umpty umpty brow, A something something something thou!"
"Oh, woman in our hours of ease, Un-something, something, something, please. When tiddly-umpty umpty brow, A something, something, something, thou!" He had forgotten the exact words, but the gist of it had been that woman, however she might treat a man in times of prosperity, could be relied on to rally round and do the right thing when he was in trouble. How little the poet had known women.
However, towards late afternoon the clouds were blown from the trench region, and artillery machines snatched a few hours' work from the fag-end of daylight. The wind was too strong for offensive patrols or long reconnaissance, so that we of Umpty Squadron did not expect a call to flight. But the powers that control our outgoings and incomings thought otherwise.
The ferry-pilot who had brought me left for Rafborough almost immediately on a much-flown "quirk." The machine he had delivered at Saint Gregoire was handed over to a pilot from Umpty Squadron when the latter reported, and we took to the air soon after lunch. The puppy travelled by road over the last lap of his long journey, in the company of a lorry driver.
"Eh?" says I. "Is it a woman-eatin' mouse, or did you grab a hatpin by the business end?" "Silly!" says she. "Look what I ran across, Torchy." And she flips an engraved card at me. I picks it on the fly, reads the neat script on it, and then hunches my shoulders. "Well, well!" says I. "At home after September 15, 309 West Hundred and Umpty Umpt street. How interestin'! But who is this Mr. and Mrs.
The number is Waterville, 2 3 umpty eleven." So the little rabbit called up the number and when the doctor heard what was the matter, he said, "You had better come to see me. "You have the automobile right there, and it's a dangerous thing to have so large a splinter as that. Tell Mr. Bear he'll have a dreadful corn if it isn't taken out at once."
And without the aid of a guide we located this Umpty Umpt street. The number is about half way down the block that runs from upper Broadway to Riverside Drive. It's one of the narrow streets, you know, and the scenery is just as cheerful as a section of the Hudson River tube on a foggy night.
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