Spots

A draft-dodger finds his war in the engine room

Tam dodged enlistment by every trick he could invent, until an aerodrome repair job showed him an engine worth mastering; within a week he was in the Flying Corps. Now a sergeant-pilot, he narrates his own fights in the purple prose of six hundred penny dreadfuls, cadging officers' cigars between stories. Behind the clowning he kills the German who mocked him, spots raiders hiding inside a cumulus cloud, and climbs to twenty-eight thousand feet. Young Lasky dies in that cloud fight, and Tam mourns him.

CHAPTER II → CHAPTER III

Tam beats Müller with a straw-stuffed decoy observer

The German ace Müller reaches thirty kills, and Tam, a born mechanic who tests every bolt and every round himself, plans his answer. He builds a dummy observer from Galbraith's old suit, wire and plaster, so his fast scout passes for a two-seat spotter. Müller climbs to swat it, and Tam dives on him; the dying German waves a salute, and Tam prays over him. Later a mobile anti-aircraft gun, "Archie's little sister," stalks raiders at exactly their altitude.

CHAPTER IV → CHAPTER VI

Fear, not bullets, breaks the Hun who made it personal

Tam drops rhymed death threats on von Mahl, a financier-turned-airman, promising to follow him even to his mother's house. The warnings work: Mahl's nerve collapses, his train is strafed on leave, and he finally steals Craig's captured British plane to fly to England and surrender at an internment camp. Tam's theory is that the Germans practise frightfulness because they dread it. Then a bad run of jammed guns ends with a puzzle: Lille and Douai ringed by fighters, hiding something.

CHAPTER VII

A rank rule exiles Tam; an American driver sees him

The hidden concentration was the Kaiser's staff, and Tam nearly bombed it. Then headquarters frowns on a sergeant mixing with officers, and Tam, once a socialist who scorned the gentry, finds he has come to love those boys and feels shut out. On leave he crashes his motorbike into Vera Laramore, a wealthy American Red Cross driver, who first mistakes him for an officer. He answers her snobbery with a verse dropped from his plane, and she invites him to lunch.

CHAPTER VIII → CHAPTER IX

A pilot's hunch saves him; love saves him twice

Vera is leaving France, and Tam, sure a rich woman is beyond him, writes a farewell poem he means her to open only in America. A new "pup" fighter feels wrong to him; the confident maker's representative takes it up and it breaks apart in midair. Defending the aerodrome against the circus, Tam downs his opponent but lands with three bullets in his chest. Vera reaches him first and tells him they are going to be married, and he lives.

CHAPTER X

Book

Tam o' the Scoots

A Clydeside mechanic-turned-ace whose comic boasting hides chivalry, nerve and a mechanic's genius for machines.

@spots #aviation #wwi #adventure #scotland
Read Tam o' the Scoots in full
Discuss
See more like this