Part 13 (2/2)
”And d.i.c.k Byrd certainly wanted badly to go to the Pole. Even when he was a kid in school, it was his ambition to be the first man to reach the North Pole. Somebody beat him to it. Peary got there first, but it took him a long time, and he had to go on foot. Byrd flew, and accomplished in a few hours what had taken days and weeks to do before.
”Not only did he want to go to the Pole-he wanted to go to all sorts of places, and he did, too. Before he was fourteen years old, Richard Byrd traveled alone around the world! That took nerve. And not only nerve on Richard Byrd's part, but on the part of his mother! The trip wasn't a regular round-the-world tour that anybody can make today on a boat that's like a little palace, but it was a rough, adventurous voyage on an army transport, and a British tramp.
”It was like this. You see, d.i.c.k had struck up a friends.h.i.+p with Captain Kit Carson. After the Spanish American War, Carson went to the Philippines as a Circuit Court Judge. But he didn't forget his friend d.i.c.k. They exchanged letters. In one letter the Captain mentioned that it would be a fine idea if d.i.c.k Byrd came down to the Philippines to see the exciting time that they were having down there. d.i.c.k took him up on the idea, and made plans to go. At first his mother was horrified at the idea, since d.i.c.k was not a strong boy. But with unusual intelligence, she decided to let him go, since the trip would be an educational one, and would do the boy more good than any possible harm that could come to him. The very fact that he wanted so badly to go, and planned his trip so carefully, made her feel that he had reached an age where he must be allowed to decide for himself. This was a very wise decision on her part, since it was probably this trip, with its adventures in self-reliance that made Richard into the successful adventurer that he is.”
”The trip to Manila was made exciting by a typhoon that stuck the transport-something that the boy would not have wanted to miss, although the Captain of the transport could have done very well without it-he said it was the worst that he'd ever been through.
”They got to Manila, though, safe and sound, and d.i.c.k was greeted by his friend Carson. Manila was intensely amusing for a boy of fourteen.
Amusing, and mighty exciting. The excitement included a lone combat with a gang of angry rebels armed with knives-from which the young d.i.c.k escaped only by the fleetness of his pony's heels. That's the sort of adventure young boys dream of, and that's the sort they should have to look back on, if they are to live the full sort of life that Richard Byrd did.
”From Manila, d.i.c.k went visiting to Darim Island. On the island the cholera plague was raging, and d.i.c.k got exposed to the disease. They put him into quarantine. He didn't get the cholera, but all around him men were dying in terrible agony. Finally the doctor managed to get d.i.c.k to the seaport, and he got a boat for Manila. They were glad to see him back, and he was glad to be back.
”After Manila, d.i.c.k went on his merry way around the world by way of Ceylon and the Red Sea to Port Said, where he res.h.i.+pped for the last lap of his cruise. It was a wonderful trip for a boy, and there's no doubt that it had a great influence on all that he did later.
”When Richard got back, and had settled down more or less, his parents decided that he should go to Virginia Military Inst.i.tute. He was popular at the Inst.i.tute, as he was popular wherever he went, for his spirit-that old spirit that carried him around the world, and later across both of the earth's poles. It was the same spirit that made him try out for the football team at V.M.I.-and carried him to the position of end on the first team. It was at that time that an incident occurred which was to be very significant in his later life. In one game of the season he broke his ankle. This was not important in itself-but it happened to be the first break of an ankle that was going to bother d.i.c.k again and again-and almost at one time defeat him entirely.
”But I'm getting ahead of my story. After being graduated from the Military Inst.i.tute, d.i.c.k Byrd went quite naturally to Annapolis. He entered in 1908. He carried his popularity and his success with him to this place. His grades were not of the highest, but he excelled in athletics, going out for football again, besides track, boxing, and wrestling.
”In his last year at Annapolis, d.i.c.k's ankle made itself felt again.
d.i.c.k was Captain of his gym squad, which was competing in the big exhibition of the year. d.i.c.k, as Captain, wanted to make a spectacular showing, and cinch the meet for his team. To do this, he invented an intricate, complicated series of tricks on the bars, calculated to stir up the most lethargic members of the audience. It would have been a great trick-if it had succeeded-but it didn't. d.i.c.k slipped, somehow, and his hands failed to connect with the bars. Down he went-on the same ankle, breaking it once more.
”In 1912 he got his commission, and became an ensign. And he also began to formulate plans for his great adventures. Connected with the Navy-there was no telling what opportunity for adventure would come to him. But he reckoned without his ankle. It gave way a third time-this time while he was going down a gangway, so that he was pitched headfirst down. They tried to fix up the ankle-in fact, they joined the bones together with a silver nail. That is, Byrd thought that they had used a silver nail-and when he discovered that just a plain, ordinary nail had been used, he felt very much deflated. Nail and all, Byrd walked with a limp, and an ensign with a limp was just useless, so far as the Navy was concerned. So Byrd was retired.
”That must have been an awful blow to him. Not only was the only career open to him cut short, but he had been married the year before, to Marie Ames, a childhood sweetheart from Winchester. So that his retirement affected not just himself, but another as well.
”It might have floored a lesser man. But not d.i.c.k Byrd. In 1917 the United States went into the World War, And Byrd, who had been rejected by the Navy, and who doubtless could not have found a place in the army, decided to go into the branch of the service that wouldn't ask questions about his bad leg-because it didn't matter whether he had a bad leg or not-in aviation. So to aviation he turned.
”He entered the Naval flying school at Pensacola, Florida. It was a lucky day for Byrd and for aviation that he took to the air. It seems that the air was where he belonged. He was a Byrd by birth, and might have been born with wings, for the ease with which he took to flying.
”He became a.s.sistant superintendent of the school, and was on the commission to investigate accidents. There were a lot of them, then. The planes were not so highly developed as they are now-and the green youngsters who were entering the service could not handle them. You can imagine how horrible it was to see some friend's plane come cras.h.i.+ng down into the ocean, and have to be the first to go out in the rescue boat, in order to do what was possible to rescue him, and to discover what had caused the accident. A warning from the observation tower-somebody was in tailspin. A deafening cras.h.!.+ And the rescue boat would be put out before the waves from the great splash had subsided. At this work Byrd learned that more than half of the accidents could have been avoided with care-either in inspecting the machine before going up, or in handling it up in the air.
”d.i.c.k Byrd was just too good. That was his tough luck at this point in his career. He was too good to be sent over to France, where he wanted to go. He was sent instead to Canada, where he was chief of the American air forces in Canada. At this job, as well as at any other that he undertook, Byrd acquitted himself admirably. And even though he chafed at being kept in America, he did his job well.
”But his mind was soaring across the ocean. As early as 1917 Byrd wanted to fly the Atlantic. But there was always something that interfered.
After the war, he pet.i.tioned the Navy again about a cross-Atlantic voyage, and was given permission to go over to England and sail the ZR-2 back to America. How tragically this may have ended for Byrd you can see. The ZR-2, on a trial flight suddenly burst into flames and crashed into the Humber river. Forty-four of the pa.s.sengers were killed, among them friends of Byrd. It was Richard Byrd's task to investigate the wreck that might very easily have claimed him for one of its victims.
”In 1924 his hopes seemed about to be realized at last. He was a.s.signed to the dirigible Shenandoah, and was to fly it across Alaska and the North Pole. But the Shenandoah, too, met with disaster, and Byrd's hopes were again dashed. The Navy rejected his pet.i.tion to go with Amundsen on the trip that he planned over the Pole, and all hope seemed gone. In fact, as a final blow, Byrd was retired from the aviation service altogether.
”But he was as undaunted by this setback as he had been by his retirement from the Navy. He set about immediately to organize his own Polar expedition, which was to be climaxed by his flight over the Pole in 1926.
”Floyd Bennett, whom Byrd often said was the best man in the world to fly with, helped him plan his expedition which was to be the realization of all his boyhood dreams and visions. It wasn't easy to plan, and the foresighted planning, they knew, would mean the success or failure of their project.
”They chose a three-motored Fokker monoplane, with 200 horsepower Wright air-cooled motors. It was 42 feet 9 inches long, with a wing spread of over 63 feet. It was capable of a high speed of 120 miles an hour.
”That was the plane, the Josephine Ford. Their s.h.i.+p was the Chantier, given him by the s.h.i.+pping Board. The crew was made up of picked men, and Byrd knows how to pick them. Not one of them failed to live up to his expectations on that trip.
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