Some Red Cross Weaklings
Captain Bobo and His Buddies Weren’t Good Enough for the Doctors
There is a reminder of the stone which the builders rejected in the story breezily told by Frank Ward O’Malley in the Red Cross Magazine for July, 1919. It records the heroism of Bobo—Captain Stephen N. Bobo, whose ancestors long ago undoubtedly spelled their name Beaubeaux. Steve was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and began early to react against southern ease. Anyway, as soon as he was graduated from college he made straight for Honduras. “Thence,” says O’Malley, “Steve went to Chile, where he started for Sidney on a trading schooner, but liked the little ship so well that he bought a controlling interest in her en route. At the Christmas Islands, Skipper Steve Bobo converted his schooner into a trader instanter—and made a little money on her. He was wrecked off Easter Island and, with five companions, had to swim seven miles to land. Skipper Bobo and four of his friends were compelled during that swim to help keep afloat betimes a sixth, whose swimming technique was poor.
“He returned to Chile aboard a passing convict ship. He made a short visit home, then was off to the interior of China, where he made a little money. In turn he went to India; to the Philippines; to Hawaii, where he bought swamp lands, parceled the property and sold it to the Chinese tara farmers, and made a little money on that; to the State of Washington on a hydro-electric venture and made a little money on that; to the San Joaquín Valley of California, and made a little money at ranching.”
Captain Bobo was resting up in April, 1917, and contemplating his next venture when Uncle Sam decided that this world had not been made for Germany and advised the Kaiser of our intention to prove it. Bobo hurried to the first recruiting station. And then the San Francisco army doctors played their trick.
They turned him down.