Deej Recommends: Johnny Guinn: Bugler
by Gordon Young
I wanted something USAian and patriotic for Independence Day, so I dug back into Boys’ Life and found a story by Gordon Young.
I’ve shared at least one story by Young before, “A Royal Flush of Hearts”, and that one is more typical of his work than this. He never published in Boys’ Life again that I could find (I didn’t keep searching into the thirties, however, so I could be wrong), and his usual market around this time was Adventure. Frankly, when you read this story, I think you’ll see why.
All the materials are there. But the writing is a strange combination of clumsy and condescending. Young makes sure that even his densest young readers know the words he uses, by telling them what they mean. There’s also a lurching quality to the telling of the tale which carries through to the last scene. It’s not that any part of the tale is bad, it’s that the whole thing feels a bit patched together.
Compare it to either of the tales I’ve posted that J. Allan Dunn had in Boys’ Life, “Billy of the Bayous” (which appeared in the same issue as this story) or “The Sextant”, and you’ll see why I hold Dunn in such high regard. Dunn’s style for boys is a little more simple and direct than his usual, but he doesn’t talk down to them.
Happy Independence Day, and may the George be with you!
Johnny Guinn: Bugler
by Gordon Young
Johnny Guinn was a bugler of the U. S. Marine Corps serving on the cruiser Dandy Dick, stationed in the Orient.
The Navy Department would probably say there was no such ship as the Dandy Dick on its records; but, anyway, that is what she was called by her ship’s company.
Johnny Guinn had gone into the Marine Corps because he had an adventurous heart, a musical ear and only few years on his shoulders. He was too young to be an apprentice seaman or a private Marine, so he did the only thing he could, and became a bugler, passing through the school at Marine Barracks, Washington, and volunteering for the Dandy Dick when he heard that she had been ordered to the Orient.
She had been out on the station some time when one day she hurried into Manila, a load of coal was tumbled on board, and before the decks were washed down she was steaming out to sea.
The ship’s company was excited and rumors flew. Everybody wondered what was up; and wild guesses leaped from lip to lip.
That night, after Johnny had sounded taps, he stood for a few minutes on the quarter-deck to look out across the ebony water that lay like a great black mirror across which the cruiser was rushing, leaving a phosphorescent, foamy wake.
A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and he was greeted by the Captain’s orderly.
“Well, kid, you’re a-goin’ t’ need some calls you ain’t used for a long time. We’re bound for Sulu to chase pirates. The Old Man just give orders for gun an’ small arm drill, night an’ day, till we get there. Lettin’ the crew sleep in tonight ’cause we just coaled ship, but after tonight—!” and he made a gesture suggestive of the hard drill that would keep all hands jumping.
Sulu, or Jolo as it was formerly called, is one of the very smallest of the Philippine Islands. It makes scarcely more than a speck on the map. But for three hundred years the Spaniards tried to conquer that little island and failed, Americans do not fully realize that it is only in very late years that our own armies have not had hard work there; and six battles, one of them perhaps the bloodiest ever fought in the Philippines, took place between the American soldiers and the Moros in 1913.
The natives are called Moros, their chiefs are Datos, and by religion they are Mohammedans. They are piratical and warlike, and believe themselves not only unconquerable, but sure of paradise if they die fighting “infidels,” as all non-Mohammedans are called.
Johnny ran forward to the Marine quarters and, shaking the hammock of his best friend, Sergeant Cary, told all that the orderly had said.
“Don’t get excited, son,” the Sergeant growled sleepily. “Probably be all quieted down ’fore we get there. And I hope so. I fought Moros before.”
The Sergeant called Johnny “son,” and though he extended his affection there was little danger of the boy being spoiled. The Sergeant made him work. He had taught him to shoot with a revolver because the revolver is the only weapon a bugler carries; and he had made him study signaling—not only study, but learn it well, so that the wigwag and dots and dashes were almost as familiar to him as the alphabet.
“They say them Moro women fight worser ’an men,” a fat Marine remarked the next morning as he sat on a ditty-box and wiped his rifle for inspection.
Everybody now knew that they were bound for Sulu to fight Moro pirates.
“That’s like you, Fatty,” Johnny teased, “always thinking about the girls!”
“Yes,” Sergeant Cary added, “Moro women like fat men. They give them marked attention—with a kriss!”
The kriss is a weapon terrible in the hands of the Moros, being a long blade, sharp on both edges, and curved like a snake crawling over the ground. The Moros are probably the worst shots in the world and the best knife-fighters.
“Ought to be a good chance to get sooveners,” Fatty suggested.
“Yes, like this,” the Sergeant answered grimly, and, pulling up his shirt, disclosed a long, rough scar just above his left hip. “The Moros sure can fight—if they get close enough. Great on ambushes. Sneak up and kill you before you know it, too.”
“Really, Sergeant?” Johnny asked.
“Really, son. The Moros are bad. They have bamboo ships and sail about raiding villages. Pirates. They’ll keep on making trouble, too, until the whole batch is cleaned out.”
The Dandy Dick continued night and day to race southward.
Late one afternoon the lookout sighted a craft. Captain McFarland, through the telescope, very clearly made out two prahus in a little while.
The prahu is a large boat built out of bamboo, lashed and woven. It may seem a rather leaky and slow-going craft, but it is practically unsinkable, and, drawing but little water, cat go far into shallows and up-stream. A hundred and more men may easily find footing on the deck, above which towers a great triangular sail made like a grass mat.
The Dandy Dick gave chase and the prahus headed for shore. The cruiser had to go slow as she turned toward land because the waters around Sulu were not very carefully charted; men to heave the lead were put into the chains. Captain McFarland’s sailing orders had been to find the pirate’s stronghold and destroy it. The rest of the American fleet stationed in the Orient had been in Chinese waters when the word came to sail; so the Dandy Dick went alone, although two or three little gunboats were supposed to be somewhere around Sulu, and the American soldiers at Jolo and Mindinao were waiting orders.
The forward turret, carrying eight-inch guns, fired a shot to test the range; but the prahus were nearly five miles away, and it was glowing red in the west, with that intense brilliancy that indicated that night was near. Darkness comes on in the tropics with the suddenness of snuffing a candle.
The shot fell short.
The men in the chains were shortening their lines. The water was getting shallow.
The second gun in the turret tipped its nose imperceptibly and fired. A little water spout rose a hundred yards beyond the furthest prahu. The first gun fired again. It struck the water short—the water splashed high. For the tenth part of a second to the eyes of the officers straining through their glasses it looked like a miss—then another splash from the same shell—another—and then squarely it struck the prahu. The shell had skimmed the water, as a rock often does, and smashed into the prahu.
Men were flung high from its deck, and the boat for a few seconds reeled and staggered as though floundering. But prahus do not sink readily.
Then night came on. The water was too shallow for further pursuit in the darkness. The Dandy Dick let go an anchor and waited for the next day.
The next morning she felt her way in carefully and got much closer to land, but reefs and shoals brought her to a stop some ten miles from the mouth of a deep bay that curved back and disappeared in masses of foliage. On the island rose high hills, densely covered with trees and undergrowth.
Captain McFarland sent the steam launch, towing a string of landing barges loaded with armed Marines and sailors, under cover of the ship’s guns to reconnoiter—that is, to see what they could see.
The officer in charge came back and told Captain McFarland that they had undoubtedly stumbled onto the pirate’s stronghold. There was a large village inside the bay, and the bay was crowded with prahus.
Then the Dandy Dick’s wireless hummed and buzzed most of the day and night; and she stood by to wait for reinforcements, keeping alert guard at the mouth of the bay.
In less than ten days a detachment of soldiers arrived from the town of Jolo, another from Zamboanga; and Colonel Peters determined to make a land attack as soon as possible. He had made his headquarters about five miles on the right hand side of the bay. The Marine guard was sent ashore and attached to Col. Peters’ command, and, of course, Johnny with his bugle went along.
Col. Peters found himself opposed by more Moros than he had expected; and native scouts reported that there was a great fortress back of the bay. But he was determined to clean them out; and he wanted to strike between the village and hill on top of which was the cotta, or fortress. To do this he had to pass through a rather narrow ravine.
After severe fighting the soldiers won control of the heights above the ravine, so the key to the route was in his hands, and he was ready to attack.
There was a company of soldiers stationed on the ravine heights, well fortified, and apparently able to hold them against great odds:
Now it happened that their bugler had been killed, and as the Marine guard had three buglers—and as a Marine is supposed to do anything, at any time at any place—Johnny, much against his wishes, had been detailed to the company of doughboys.
“Who ever heard of such a thing!” he wailed to Sergeant Cary.
“Nobody,” said the Sergeant. “But what’s that got to do with it?”
“I don’t want to go,” Johnny insisted. “I’m a Marine—”
“Then do what you’re told by your officers,” said the Sergeant. And he added more gently: “I don’t want to see you go any more than you want to, son, but it ain’t what we want in this world—it’s duty that we have to pay attention to.”
And Johnny had gone.
“This time tomorrow,” said the doughboy Sergeant on guard to Johnny as they stood together watching the threatening clouds banked in the eastern sky, “we’ll have it out with the Moros. And believe me, this little company right here has the key to the situation. If the army should march through down there and the Moros could drop trees and rocks from here and close up the gap, not a man would come back—alive.”
“Why didn’t the Colonel send more men up here to guard it then?” asked Johnny innocently.
“What you mean, more men? Guess you don’t know this outfit. We could keep off all three thousand Moros—” and he added, so as not to appear too boasting—“with these fortifications.”
Night and rain came. Johnny tried to find a dry place under a tall tree while waiting to sound taps. Double guards were stationed.
Suddenly a sentry called out, “Halt! Who’s there?”
“Amigo,” came a high piping voice.
The man advanced. He was one of the native scouts sent out by the Colonel, and he had the password. He spoke to the officer on duty for a few minutes.
Johnny blew taps. It was only a formality. All of the soldiers off watch were curled in their dog tents trying to get a bit of sleep. The sentries walked back and forth, soaked, with the rain in their faces.
Johnny was on the lee side of the tree. It was fairly dry. He knew the dog tent would be wet. He slid down sleepily and soon dozed off with his back against the tree, his bugle slung around his shoulder.
The sergeant looked at his watch and started off to arouse the relief. As he bent down to shake the first sleeping form, a figure rose out of the night—the swish of steel, unheard in the storm—and the sergeant’s severed head fell from the blow of a kriss at the foot of the native scout.
Suddenly—and before the sentries were aware—forms were rushing upon them, forms that did not heed the challenge, but came swiftly, silently.
Shots were fired, voices rang out, but it was too late. The Moros are the most terrible hand-to-hand fighters probably in the world, and the little company was massacred, men were cut down asleep and arousing from sleep. Some tried to flee, but the place was surrounded, and the Moros closed in.
The storm roared and the rain fell in wind-driven sheets. But the Moros did not yell. They could not have been heard at the camp two miles away if they had, but silence seemed a part of their plan.
Johnny, sleeping under the tree some yards away from the tent, awoke with a cry of fright. But in the noise of rifles and yelling soldiers his voice was unheard. He saw that the soldiers had been rushed by the swarm of black bodies that poured from the night like demons materialized out of the very darkness itself; and, scarcely knowing what he was doing—though he realized that fighting was useless—he scrambled up the tree under which he had been sleeping and, carefully feeling his way, pushed as far upwards as he could go.
The slaughter was over. He alone had escaped: and it came bitterly into his mind that he had run away. He had often wondered how he would act in a fight and had promised himself that no matter how badly frightened he was that he would not run—he would die first. He wished that he had emptied his revolver and then rushed in hand to hand to be cut down like a man; and tears came from his eyes and mingled with the rain that swept down on the tree and trickled from the leaves as from innumerable tiny gutters.
He could not tell what was going on below, but he knew that none of the soldiers were alive. They never are after Moros capture them. All through the long night he could hear them working, working. They were cutting down trees! Once they began to chop at the tree in which he was perched but after a few blows they stopped. He did not know, but fortunately it was an iron wood, and would take too long to chop down.
He wondered if they would be able to see him at dawn. He was chilled with fear, and bitterly ashamed of himself for that fear. But he could not help it. He was cramped and his arms and legs ached. He could not get in a restful position. He thought of dropping himself down into the midst of them and firing until his revolver was empty and then—well, he would die like a man anyway. Sergeant Cary would not be ashamed of him. He shuddered to think of what the Sergeant would say when he knew that he, Johnny, had climbed a tree and hid!
The rain stopped, but the Moros did not stop work. There were swarms of them. He thought of trying to slip down and escape—but that would be impossible. What on earth could they be doing? Then he remembered what the Sergeant on guard had said but a few hours before: “If the army should march through down there, not a man’d come back—alive!” They were building an ambush!
Then came the dawn—light all at once. The sun came up bright and warm, a beautiful day after the stormy night, and Johnny, trembling in every muscle, peered anxiously down at the horde of Moros. They had brought trees and rocks and heaped them at the edge of the ravine. And Johnny looked across and down into the valley through which the aymy was soon to pass. If it filed through that ravine it was lost—yet it could not be stopped—not unless—but how on earth could he warn it?
True, he had his bugle; but then he was supposed to be up there on the heights with his bugle, and when the army marched close enough to hear, the officers would probably be only puzzled by anything that he could sound on it. And at the first note he would be attacked by the Moros—and killed—killed! A cold sweat broke on him.
At day-break the army was ready to advance. A native scout came in and reported to the Colonel’s adjutant that he had just come from the ravine heights and all was secure and quiet. He was the same scout that had severed the sergeant’s head. Colonel Peters was confident and impatient. The advance guard went on, the army followed.
From his lofty perch Johnny could see the advance skirmishers come into the valley. They were Marines!
From the heights of the ravine the American flag had been hoisted as usual. The Moros were cunning.
The Marines came on, after them the solid companies of marching soldiers. And below him squatted the Moros, crowds of them, lying low, keeping their knots of hair from the sight of the glasses that might be turned on them from below, and peering between rocks.
The army would defile unsuspectingly through the ravine unless stopped and at once—and it would be death to all!
Johnny unslung his bugle. Carefully, not shaking a leaf, he leaned far out and swelling his lungs, puffed out his cheeks as though to burst them—then from the heights there rang the long piercing note of “Attention!”
The startled Moros leaped up and about, unable at first to locate the sound, and suspecting witchcraft.
The bugle’s voice carried far out and reached the ears of Marines and wafted on until it came faintly to Col. Peters himself.
Then suddenly it seemed the bugler had gone crazy. Such calls were never heard. The whole army listened, puzzled, wondering. The fellow must be insane:
Toot—toot toot—toot, toot toot—toot, toot toot—toot—toot, toot—toot!
Over and over those screaming notes were flung from the bugle onto the valley like a frantic warning.
Then shouted Sergeant Cary into the ears of the Marine Captain: “Moros! Moros! That’s Johnny’s bugle—I’d know it anywhere, and he’s signalling M-o-r-o-s!”
But all the army, though it had not caught the dots and dashes of sound as set down in the naval code book, caught the warning. The Moros, realizing that their ambush had been disclosed, leaped up in plain sight, yelling and brandishing their krisses.
Johnny blew on and on until he saw that the warning had been heard, and he heard the bugles in the valley below screaming their answers. The Marines turned from the valley and started scrambling up the sides of the ravine; after them came the soldiers and sailors. At the insistent shriek of a bugle and the harsh cries of officers that came faintly to Johnny’s ears, a troop of field artillery flung themselves forward through a cloud of dust, and shot and shrapnel began to burst on the heights. Branches and twigs were cut about him as the fragments whistled by his ears. Those below did not know he was in the tree—they had only heard his bugle; they had not seen him amid the foliage.
But Johnny did not care. He did not think of it. The Moros were shooting at him from below, but the Moros know little or nothing of guns, and only a lucky shot would fetch him. He did not think of that. Two Moros were scrambling up the tree after him, and their friends below ceased shooting for a moment.
Johnny drew his revolver and bent down. He was cool as though on the target range. He was no longer ashamed. He felt death was coming soon, but he had saved the army; and he was going to fight as long as he could. So he leaned down, sighted carefully, and pulled the trigger. One Moro tumbled from branch to branch and fell. He shot again. The other clutched unsteadily at a limb, then toppled and fell clear.
Yowls and howls of rage rose up at Johnny; and the firing started again. His shoulder suddenly felt as though some one had pushed something soft through it—no pain—but a sort of numbness. He knew he had been hit, and coolly loosening his belt, fastened it around the tip of the tree so that he could not fall, and saved his shells for the next tree climbers.
The artillery had got the range, and the shrapnel was bursting rapidly. Something smote him on the chest, knocking his breath out. It did not hurt. But it left him dazed, faint. And there was blood. He peered down. The world seemed swimming about him. But there was a man climbing up—climbing fast. Johnny leaned down and shot. He emptied his revolver, and it fell from his weak hand. Something else was falling, too—yes, the man.
And that noise—was it a buzzing in his ears? It was that, and something more—something familiar—it seemed so far away—like a dream, and yet it was clear—it must be close—and so familiar—ah! it was the voice of Sergeant Cary roaring, “At ’em, men, at ’em!” and the rattle of small arms, and the hoarse, defiant cry of American marines and soldiers and sailors on the charge!
Johnny closed his eyes and smiled—and when he awoke, twenty hours later, he seemed to be aching and burning in every part of his body. He moved and cried out in pain.
“Ho, there, son! Coming around all right, aren’t you?” said Sergeant Cary as he laid a rough hand tenderly on the boy’s head.
Johnny was in a clean, white bunk in the Dandy Dick’s sick bay, and an electric fan whirred close to his head.
“What’s happened?” Johnny weakly, puzzled.
“What’s happened! That’s what we all want to know, and have been waiting for you to come around and tell us. We didn’t do anything but clean out about three thousand gugus so thoroughly that they won’t move a little finger without special permission from Uncle Sam, and we burned all the prahus and the cotta—nice little scrap we had there, but nothing to that fight on the ravine head. But you—How on earth did you get up in that tree, and how on earth did you get nerve enough to blow that bugle with a horde of Moros under you? Colonel Peters says he is going to recommend you for a Medal of Honor, and Captain McFarland told him that his own recommendation for the same thing had already gone in by wireless. Everybody’s talking about you. You’ve done the biggest thing since the battle of Manila Bay.”
“Sergeant,” said Johnny softly, his eyes wide and frank, “I was scared stiff!”
“Huh,” said Sergeant O’Leary. “That is nothing. I don’t talk much about it, you know, but I was Dewey’s orderly on the Olympia. And after the battle’s over the old Admiral goes to his cabin, and pretty soon he calls for me and gives me a message for the officer of deck. As I starts out he said, with that smile of his, ‘Orderly, you were by me all through the fight. Did I show much nervousness?’
“And I ups and tells him the truth, that he looked as cool as a fish on ice. And I says to him that all through it I was shaking from my ears down.”
“Then he says—with that smile, you know—‘Orderly, while we are exchanging confidences, I might as well tell you that I felt more like a fish on a hot skillet.’
“So, son, I guess it’s a pretty good sign when a fellow’s scared a little—but does the brave thing anyhow!”
Some of the term definitions Young uses would have been put to better use as footnotes- the editor probably didn't see it that way.