OUR FIRST PATROL
We got down from the train late in
the afternoon at a village which reminded us, at first
glance, of a boom town in the Far West. Crude
shelters of corrugated iron and rough pine boards faced
each other down the length of one long street.
They looked sadly out of place in that landscape.
They did not have the cheery, buoyant ugliness of
pioneer homes in an unsettled country, for behind them
were the ruins of the old village, fragments of blackened
wall, stone chimneys filled with accumulations of
rubbish, garden-plots choked with weeds, reminding
us that here was no outpost of a new civilization,
but the desolation of an old one, fallen upon evil
days.
A large crowd of permissionnaires
had left the train with us. We were not at ease
among these men, many of them well along in middle
life, bent and streaming with perspiration under their
heavy packs. We were much better able than most
of them to carry our belongings, to endure the fatigue
of a long night march to billets or trenches; and
we were waiting for the motor in which we should ride
comfortably to our aerodrome. There we should
sleep in beds, well housed from the weather, and far
out of the range of shell fire.
“It isn’t fair,”
said J. B. “It is going to war de luxe.
These old poilus ought to be the aviators. But,
hang it all! Of course, they couldn’t be.
Aviation is a young man’s business. It has
to be that way. And you can’t have aérodromes
along the front-line trenches.”
Nevertheless, it did seem very unfair,
and we were uncomfortable among all those infantrymen.
The feeling increased when attention was called to
our branch of the service by the distant booming of
anti-aircraft guns. There were shouts in the
street, “A Boche!” We hurried to the door
of the cafe where we had been hiding. Officers
were ordering the crowds off the street. “Hurry
along there! Under cover! Oh, I know that
you’re brave enough, mon enfant.
It isn’t that. He’s not to see all
these soldiers here. That’s the reason.
Allez! Vite!”
Soldiers were going into dugouts and
cellars among the ruined houses. Some of them,
seeing us at the door of the cafe, made pointed remarks
as they passed, grumbling loudly at the laxity of the
air service.
“It’s up there you ought
to be, mon vieux, not here,” one of
them said, pointing to the white éclatements.
“You see that?” said another.
“He’s a Boche, not French, I can tell
you that. Where are your comrades?”
There was much good-natured chaffing
as well, but through it all I could detect a note
of resentment. I sympathized with their point
of view then as I do now, although I know that there
is no ground for the complaint of laxity. Here
is a German over French territory. Where are
the French aviators? Soldiers forget that aerial
frontiers must be guarded in two dimensions, and that
it is always possible for an airman to penetrate far
into enemy country. They do not see their own
pilots on their long raids into German territory.
Furthermore, while the outward journey is often accomplished
easily enough, the return home is a different matter.
Telephones are busy from the moment the lines are
crossed, and a hostile patrol, to say nothing of a
lone avion, will be fortunate if it returns
safely.
But infantrymen are to be forgiven
readily for their outbursts against the aviation service.
They have far more than their share of danger and
death while in the trenches. To have their brief
periods of rest behind the lines broken into by enemy
aircraft who would blame them for complaining?
And they are often generous enough with their praise.
On this occasion there was no bombing.
The German remained at a great height and quickly
turned northward again.
Dunham and Miller came to meet us.
We had all four been in the schools together, they
preceding us on active service only a couple of months.
Seeing them after this lapse of time, I was conscious
of a change. They were keen about life at the
front, but they talked of their experiences in a way
which gave one a feeling of tension, a tautness of
muscles, a kind of ache in the throat. It set
me to thinking of a conversation I had had with an
old French pilot, several months before. It came
apropos of nothing. Perhaps he thought that I
was sizing him up, wondering how he could be content
with an instructor’s job while the war is in
progress. He said: “I’ve had
five hundred hours over the lines. You don’t
know what that means, not yet. I’m no good
any more. It’s strain. Let me give
you some advice. Save your nervous energy.
You will need all you have and more. Above everything
else, don’t think at the front. The best
pilot is the best machine.”
Dunham was talking about patrols.
“Two a day of two hours each.
Occasionally you will have six hours’ flying,
but almost never more than that.”
“What about voluntary patrols?”
Drew asked. “I don’t suppose there
is any objection, is there?”
Miller pounded Dunham on the back,
singing, “Hi-doo-dedoo-dum-di. What
did I tell you! Do I win?” Then he explained.
“We asked the same question when we came out,
and every other new pilot before us. This voluntary
patrol business is a kind of standing joke. You
think, now, that four hours a day over the lines is
a light programme. For the first month or so
you will go out on your own between times. After
that, no. Of course, when they call for a voluntary
patrol for some necessary piece of work, you will
volunteer out of a sense of duty. As I say, you
may do as much flying as you like. But wait.
After a month, or we’ll give you six weeks,
that will be no more than you have to do.”
We were not at all convinced.
“What do you do with the rest of your time?”
“Sleep,” said Dunham.
“Read a good deal. Play some poker or bridge.
Walk. But sleep is the chief amusement. Eight
hours used to be enough for me. Now I can do
with ten or twelve.”
Drew said: “That’s
all rot. You fellows are having it too soft.
They ought to put you on the school regime again.”
“Let ’em talk, Dunham.
They know. J. B. says it’s laziness.
Let it go at that. Well, take it from me, it’s
contagious. You’ll soon be victims.”
I dropped out of the conversation
in order to look around me. Drew did all of the
questioning, and thanks to his interest, I got many
hints about our work which came back opportunely, afterward.
“Think down to the gunners.
That will help a lot. It’s a game after
that: your skill against theirs. I couldn’t
do it at first, and shell fire seemed absolutely damnable.”
“And you want to remember that
a châsse machine is almost never brought down
by anti-aircraft fire. You are too fast for them.
You can fool ’em in a thousand ways.”
“I had been flying for two weeks
before I saw a Boche. They are not scarce on
this sector, don’t worry. I simply couldn’t
see them. The others would have scraps.
I spent most of my time trying to keep track of them.”
“Take my tip, J. B., don’t
be too anxious to mix it with the first German you
see, because very likely he will be a Frenchman, and
if he isn’t, if he is a good Hun pilot, you’ll
simply be meat for him at first, I mean.”
“They say that all the Boche
aviators on this front have had several months’
experience in Russia or the Balkans. They train
them there before they send them to the Western Front.”
“Your best chance of being brought
down will come in the first two weeks.”
“That’s comforting.”
“No, sans blague. Honestly,
you’ll be almost helpless. You don’t
see anything, and you don’t know what it is
that you do see. Here’s an example.
On one of my first sorties I happened to look over
my shoulder and I saw five or six Germans in the most
beautiful alignment. And they were all slanting
up to dive on me. I was scared out of my life:
went down full motor, then cut and fell into a vrille.
Came out of that and had another look. There they
were in the same position, only farther away.
I didn’t tumble even then, except farther down.
Next time I looked, the five Boches, or six, whichever
it was, had all been raveled out by the wind.
Éclats d’obus.”
“You may have heard about Franklin’s
Boche. He got it during his first combat.
He didn’t know that there was a German in the
sky, until he saw the tracer bullets. Then the
machine passed him about thirty metres away.
And he kept going down: may have had motor trouble.
Franklin said that he had never had such a shock in
his life. He dived after him, spraying all space
with his Vickers, and he got him!”
“That all depends on the man.
In châsse, unless you are sent out on a
definite mission, protecting photographic machines
or avions de bombardement, you are
absolutely on your own. Your job is to patrol
the lines. If a man is built that way, he can
loaf on the job. He need never have a fight.
At two hundred kilometres an hour, it won’t take
him very long to get out of danger. He stays out
his two hours and comes in with some framed-up tale
to account for his disappearance: ’Got
lost. Went off by himself into Germany. Had
motor trouble; gun jammed, and went back to arm it.’
He may even spray a few bullets toward Germany and
call it a combat. Oh, he can find plenty of excuses,
and he can get away with them.”
“That’s spreading it,
Dunham. What about Huston? is he getting away
with it?”
“Now, don’t let’s
get personal. Very likely Huston can’t help
it. Anyway, it is a matter of temperament mostly.”
“Temperament, hell! There’s
Van, for example. I happen to know that he has
to take himself by his bootlaces every time he crosses
into Germany. But he sticks it. He has never
played a yellow trick. I hand it to him for pluck
above every other man in the squadron.”
“What about Talbott and Barry?”
“Lord! They haven’t
any nerves. It’s no job for them to do their
work well.”
This conversation continued during
the rest of the journey. The life of a military
pilot offers exceptional opportunities for research
in the matter of personal bravery. Dunham and
Miller agreed that it is a varying quality. Sometimes
one is really without fear; at others only a sense
of shame prevents one from making a very sad display.
“Huston is no worse than some
of the rest of us, only he hasn’t a sense of
shame.”
“Well, he has the courage to
be a coward, and that is more than you have, son,
or I either.”
Our fellow pilots of the Lafayette
Corps were lounging outside the barracks on our arrival.
They gave us a welcome which did much to remove our
feelings of strangeness; but we knew that they were
only mildly interested in the news from the schools
and were glad when they let us drop into the background
of conversation. By a happy chance mention was
made of a recent newspaper article of some of the exploits
of the Escadrille, written evidently by a very
imaginative journalist; and from this the talk passed
to the reputation of the Squadron in America, and
the almost fabulous deeds credited to it by some newspaper
correspondents. One pilot said that he had kept
record of the number of German machines actually reported
as having been brought down by members of the Corps.
I don’t remember the number he gave, but it
was an astonishing total. The daily average was
so high, that, granting it to be correct, America
might safely have abandoned her far-reaching aerial
programme. Long before her first pursuit squadron
could be ready for service, the last of the imperial
German air-fleet would, to quote from the article,
have “crashed in smouldering ruin on the war-devastated
plains of northern France.”
In this connection I can’t forbear
quoting from another, one of the brightest pages in
the journalistic history of the legendary Escadrille
Lafayette. It is an account of a sortie said to
have taken place on the receipt of news of America’s
declaration of war.
“Uncle Sam is with us, boys!
Come on! Let’s get those fellows!”
These were the stirring words of Captain Georges Thenault,
the valiant leader of the Escadrille Lafayette, upon
the morning when news was received that the United
States of America had declared war upon the rulers
of Potsdam. For the first time in history,
the Stars and Stripes of Old Glory were flung
to the breeze over the camp, in France, of American
fighting men. Inspired by the sight, and
spurred to instant action by the ringing call of their
French captain, this band of aviators from the
U.S.A. sprang into their trim little biplanes.
There was a deafening roar of motors, and soon
the last airman had disappeared in the smoky
haze which hung over the distant battle-lines.
We cannot follow them on that journey.
We cannot see them as they mount higher and higher
into the morning sky, on their way to meet their
prey. But we may await their return. We
may watch them as they descend to their flying-field,
dropping down to earth, one by one. We may
learn, then, of their adventures on that flight
of death: how, far back of the German lines,
they encountered a formidable battle-squadron
of the enemy, vastly superior to their own in
numbers. Heedless of the risk they swooped down
upon their foe. Lieutenant A
was attacked by four enemy planes at the same
time. One he sent hurtling to the ground fifteen
thousand feet below. He caused a second to retire
disabled. Sergeant B
accounted for another in a running fight which
lasted for more than a quarter of an hour. Adjutant
C , although his biplane was riddled
with bullets, succeeded, by a clever ruse, in
decoying two pursuers, bent on his destruction,
to the vicinity of a cloud where several of his
comrades were lying in wait for further victims.
A moment later both Germans were seen to fall
earthward, spinning like leaves in that last terrible
dive of death. “These boys are Yankee
aviators. They form the vanguard of America’s
aerial forces. We need thousands of others
just like them,” etc.
Stories of this kind have, without
doubt, a certain imaginative appeal. J. B. and
I had often read them, never wholly credulous, of
course, but with feelings of uneasiness. Discounting
them by more than half, we still had serious doubts
of our ability to measure up to the standard set by
our fellow Americans who had preceded us on active
service. We were in part reassured during our
first afternoon at the front. If these men were
the demons on wings of the newspapers, they took great
pains to give us a different impression.
Many of the questions which had long
been accumulating in our minds got themselves answered
during the next few days, while we were waiting for
machines. We knew, in a general way, what the
nature of our work would be. We knew that the
Escadrille Lafayette was one of four pursuit squadrons
occupying hangars on the same field, and that, together,
these formed what is called a groupe de combat,
with a definite sector of front to cover. We
had been told that combat pilots are “the police
of the air,” whose duty it is to patrol the lines,
harass the enemy, attacking whenever possible, thus
giving protection to their own corps-d’armee
aircraft which are only incidentally fighting
machines in their work of reconnaissance,
photography, artillery direction, and the like.
But we did not know how this general theory of combat
is given practical application. When I think
of the depths of our ignorance, to be filled in, day
by day, with a little additional experience; of our
self-confidence, despite warnings; of our willingness
to leave so much for our “godfather” Chance
to decide, it is with feelings nearly akin to awe.
We awaited our first patrol almost ready to believe
that it would be our first victorious combat.
We had no realization of the conditions under which
aerial battles are fought. Given good-will, average
ability, and the opportunity, we believed that the
results must be decisive, one way or the other.
Much of our enforced leisure was spent
at the bureau of the group, where the pilots gathered
after each sortie to make out their reports.
There we heard accounts of exciting combats, of victories
and narrow escapes, which sounded like impossible
fictions. A few of them may have been, but not
many. They were told simply, briefly, as a part
of the day’s work, by men who no longer thought
of their adventures as being either very remarkable
or very interesting. What, I thought, will seem
interesting or remarkable to them after the war, after
such a life as this? Once an American gave me
a hint: “I’m going to apply for a
job as attendant in a natural-history museum.”
Only a few minutes before, these men
had been taking part in aerial battles, attacking
infantry in trenches, or enemy transport on roads
fifteen or twenty kilometres away. And while they
were talking of these things the drone of motors overhead
announced the departure of other patrols to battle-lines
which were only five minutes distant by the route
of the air. For when weather permitted there was
an interlapping series of patrols flying over the
sector from daylight till dark. The number of
these, and the number of avions in each patrol,
varied as circumstances demanded.
On one wall of the bureau hung a large-scale
map of the sector, which we examined square by square
with that delight which only the study of maps can
give. Trench-systems, both French and German,
were outlined upon it in minute detail. It contained
other features of a very interesting nature.
On another wall there was a yet larger map, made of
aeroplane photographs taken at a uniform altitude and
so pieced together that the whole was a complete picture
of our sector of front. We spent hours over this
one. Every trench, every shell hole, every splintered
tree or fragment of farmhouse wall stood out clearly.
We could identify machine-gun posts and battery positions.
We could see at a glance the result of months of fighting;
how terribly men had suffered under a rain of high
explosives at this point, how lightly they had escaped
at another; and so we could follow, with a certain
degree of accuracy, what must have been the infantry
actions at various parts of the line.
The history of these trench campaigns
will have a forbidding interest to the student of
the future; for, as he reads of the battles on the
Aisne, the Somme, of Verdun and Flanders, he will have
spread out before him photographs of the battlefields
themselves, just as they were at different phases
of the struggle. With a series of these pictorial
records, men will be able to find the trenches from
which their fathers or grandfathers scrambled with
their regiments to the attack, the wire entanglements
which held up the advance at one point, the shell
holes where they lay under machine-gun fire. And
often they will see the men themselves as they advanced
through the barrage fire, the sun glinting on their
helmets. It will be a fascinating study, in a
ghastly way; and while such records exist, the outward
meanings, at least, of modern warfare will not be
forgotten.
Tiffin, the messroom steward, was
standing by my cot with a lighted candle in his hand.
The furrows in his kindly old face were outlined in
shadow. His bald head gleamed like the bottom
of a yellow bowl. He said, “Beau temps,
monsieur,” put the candle on my table, and
went out, closing the door softly. I looked at
the window square, which was covered with oiled cloth
for want of glass. It was a black patch showing
not a glimmer of light.
The other pilots were gathering in
the messroom, where a fire was going. Some one
started the phonograph. Fritz Kreisler was playing
the “Chansons sans Paroles.”
This was followed by a song, “Oh, movin’
man, don’t take ma baby grand.” It
was a strange combination, and to hear them, at that
hour of the morning, before going out for a first sortie
over the lines, gave me a “mixed-up” feeling,
which it was impossible to analyze.
Two patrols were to leave the field
at the same time, one to cover the sector at an altitude
of from two thousand to three thousand metres, the
other, thirty-five hundred to five thousand metres.
J. B. and I were on high patrol. Owing to our
inexperience, it was to be a purely defensive one
between our observation balloons and the lines.
We had still many questions to ask, but having been
so persistently inquisitive for three days running,
we thought it best to wait for Talbott, who was leading
our patrol, to volunteer his instructions.
He went to the door to look at the
weather. There were clouds at about three thousand
metres, but the stars were shining through gaps in
them. On the horizon, in the direction of the
lines, there was a broad belt of blue sky. The
wind was blowing into Germany. He came back yawning.
“We’ll go up ho, hum!” tremendous
yawn “through a hole before we reach
the river. It’s going to be clear presently,
so the higher we go the better.”
The others yawned sympathetically.
“I don’t feel very pugnastic this morning.”
“It’s a crime to send men out at this
time of day night, rather.”
More yawns of assent, of protest.
J. B. and I were the only ones fully awake. We
had finished our chocolate and were watching the clock
uneasily, afraid that we should be late getting started.
Ten minutes before patrol time we went out to the
field. The canvas hangars billowed and flapped,
and the wooden supports creaked with the quiet sound
made by ships at sea. And there was almost the
peace of the sea there, intensified, if anything,
by the distant rumble of heavy cannonading.
Our Spad biplanes were drawn up in
two long rows, outside the hangars. They were
in exact alignment, wing to wing. Some of them
were clean and new, others discolored with smoke and
oil; among these latter were the ones which J. B.
and I were to fly. Being new pilots we were given
used machines to begin with, and ours had already seen
much service. Fuselage and wings had many patches
over the scars of old battles, but new motors had
been installed, the bodies overhauled, and they were
ready for further adventures.
It mattered little to us that they
were old. They were to carry us out to our first
air battles; they were the first avions which
we could call our own, and we loved them in an almost
personal way. Each machine had an Indian head,
the symbol of the Lafayette Corps, painted on the
sides of the fuselage. In addition, it
bore the personal mark of its pilot, a
triangle, a diamond, a straight band, or an initial, painted
large so that it could be easily seen and recognized
in the air.
The mechanicians were getting the
motors en route, arming the machine guns, and
giving a final polish to the glass of the wind-shields.
In a moment every machine was turning over ralenti,
with the purring sound of powerful engines which gives
a voice to one’s feeling of excitement just
before patrol time. There was no more yawning,
no languid movement.
Rodman was buttoning himself into
a combination suit which appeared to add another six
inches to his six feet two. Barry, who was leading
the low patrol, wore a woolen helmet which left only
his eyes uncovered. I had not before noticed
how they blazed and snapped. All his energy seemed
to be concentrated in them. Porter wore a leather
face-mask, with a lozenge-shaped breathing-hole, and
slanted openings covered with yellow glass for eyes.
He was the most fiendish-looking demon of them all.
I was glad to turn from him to the Duke, who wore a
passe-montagne of white silk which fitted him
like a bonnet. As he sat in his machine, adjusting
his goggles, he might have passed for a dear old lady
preparing to read a chapter from the Book of Daniel.
The fur of Dunham’s helmet had frayed out, so
that it fitted around the sides of his face and under
the chin like a beard, the kind worn by old-fashioned
sailors.
The strain of waiting patiently for
the start was trying. The sudden transformation
of a group of typical-looking Americans into monsters
and devotional old ladies gave a moment of diversion
which helped to relieve it.
I heard Talbott shouting his parting
instructions and remembered that I did not know the
rendezvous. I was already strapped in my machine
and was about to loosen the fastenings, when he came
over and climbed on the step of the car.
“Rendezvous two thousand over field!”
he yelled.
I nodded.
“Know me Big T wings fuselage.
I’ll turning right. You and others
left. When see me start lines,
fall in behind left. Remember stick
close patrol. If get lost,
better home. Compass southwest.
Look carefully landmarks going out.
Got straight?”
I nodded again to show that I understood.
Machines of both patrols were rolling across the field,
a mechanician running along beside each one.
I joined the long line, and taxied over to the starting-point,
where the captain was superintending the send-off,
and turned into the wind in my turn. As though
conscious of his critical eye, my old veteran Spad
lifted its tail and gathered flying speed with all
the vigor of its youth, and we were soon high above
the hangars, climbing to the rendezvous.
When we had all assembled, Talbott
headed northeast, the rest of us falling into our
places behind him. Then I found that, despite
the new motor, my machine was not a rapid climber.
Talbott noticed this and kept me well in the group,
he and the others losing height in renversements
and retournements, diving under me and climbing
up again. It was fascinating to watch them doing
stunts, to observe the constant changing of positions.
Sometimes we seemed, all of us, to be hanging motionless,
then rising and falling like small boats riding a
heavy swell. Another glance would show one of
them suspended bottom up, falling sidewise, tipped
vertically on a wing, standing on its tail, as though
being blown about by the wind, out of all control.
It is only in the air, when moving with them, that
one can really appreciate the variety and grace of
movement of a flock of high-powered avions de châsse.
I was close to Talbott as we reached
the cloud-bank. I saw him in dim silhouette as
the mist, sunlight-filtered, closed around us.
Emerging into the clear, fine air above it, we might
have been looking at early morning from the casement
“opening
on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery
lands forlorn.”
The sun was just rising, and the floor
of cloud glowed with delicate shades of rose and amethyst
and gold. I saw the others rising through it
at widely scattered points. It was a glorious
sight.
Then, forming up and turning northward
again, just as we passed over the receding edge of
the cloud-bank, I saw the lines. It was still
dusk on the ground and my first view was that of thousands
of winking lights, the flashes of guns and of bursting
shells. At that time the Germans were making
trials of the French positions along the Chemin
des Dames, and the artillery fire was unusually
heavy.
The lights soon faded and the long,
winding battle-front emerged from the shadow, a broad
strip of desert land through a fair, green country.
We turned westward along the sector, several kilometres
within the French lines, for J. B. and I were to have
a general view of it all before we crossed to the
other side. The fort of Malmaison was a minute
square, not as large as a postage-stamp. With
thumb and forefinger I could have spanned the distance
between Soissons and Laon. Clouds of smoke were
rising from Allemant to Craonne, and these were constantly
added to by infinitesimal puffs in black and white.
I knew that shells of enormous calibre were wrecking
trenches, blasting out huge craters; and yet not a
sound, not the faintest reverberation of a gun.
Here was a sight almost to make one laugh at man’s
idea of the importance of his pygmy wars.
But the Olympian mood is a fleeting
one. I think of Paradis rising on one elbow out
of the slime where he and his comrades were lying,
waving his hand toward the wide, unspeakable landscape.
“What are we, we chaps?
And what’s all this here? Nothing at all.
All we can see is only a speck. When one speaks
of the whole war, it’s as if you said nothing
at all the words are strangled. We’re
here, and we look at it like blind men.”
To look down from a height of more
than two miles, on an endless panorama of suffering
and horror, is to have the sense of one’s littleness
even more painfully quickened. The best that the
airman can do is to repeat, “We’re here,
and we look at it like blind men.”
We passed on to the point where the
line bends northward, then turned back. I tried
to concentrate my attention on the work of identifying
landmarks. It was useless. One might as well
attempt to study Latin grammar at his first visit
to the Grand Canon. My thoughts went wool-gathering.
Looking up suddenly, I found that I was alone.
To the new pilot the sudden appearance
or disappearance of other avions is a weird
thing. He turns his head for a moment. When
he looks again, his patrol has vanished. Combats
are matters of a few seconds’ duration, rarely
of more than two or three minutes. The opportunity
for attack comes almost with the swiftness of thought
and has passed as quickly. Looking behind me,
I was in time to see one machine tip and dive.
Then it, too, vanished as though it had melted into
the air. Shutting my motor, I started down, swiftly,
I thought; but I had not yet learned to fall vertically,
and the others I can say almost with truth were
miles below me. I passed long streamers of white
smoke, crossing and recrossing in the air. I knew
the meaning of these, machine-gun tracer bullets.
The delicately penciled lines had not yet frayed out
in the wind. I went on down in a steep spiral,
guiding myself by them, and seeing nothing. At
the point where they ended, I redressed and put on
my motor. My altimeter registered two thousand
metres. By a curious chance, while searching the
empty sky, I saw a live shell passing through the
air. It was just at the second when it reached
the top of its trajectory and started to fall.
“Lord!” I thought, “I have seen
a shell, and yet I can’t find my patrol!”
While coming down I had given no attention
to my direction. I had lost twenty-five hundred
metres in height. The trenches were now plainly
visible, and the brown strip of sterile country where
they lay was vastly broader. Several times I
felt the concussion of shell explosions, my machine
being lifted and then dropped gently with an uneasy
motion. Constantly searching the air, I gave no
thought to my position with reference to the lines,
nor to the possibility of anti-aircraft fire.
Talbott had said: “Never fly in a straight
line for more than fifteen seconds. Keep changing
your direction constantly, but be careful not to fly
in a regularly irregular fashion. The German
gunners may let you alone at first, hoping that you
will become careless, or they may be plotting out your
style of flight. Then they make their calculations
and they let you have it. If you have been careless,
they’ll put ’em so close, there’ll
be no question about the kind of a scare you will
have.”
There wasn’t in my case.
I was looking for my patrol to the exclusion of thought
of anything else. The first shell burst so close
that I lost control of my machine for a moment.
Three others followed, two in front, and one behind,
which I believed had wrecked my tail. They burst
with a terrific rending sound in clouds of coal-black
smoke. A few days before I had been watching
without emotion the bombardment of a German plane.
I had seen it twisting and turning through the éclatements,
and had heard the shells popping faintly, with a sound
like the bursting of seed-pods in the sun.
My feeling was not that of fear, exactly.
It was more like despair. Every airman must have
known it at one time or another, a sudden overwhelming
realization of the pitilessness of the forces which
men let loose in war. In that moment one doesn’t
remember that men have loosed them. He is alone,
and he sees the face of an utterly evil thing.
Miller’s advice was, “Think down to the
gunners”; but this is impossible at first.
Once a French captain told me that he talked to the
shells. “I say, ’Bonjour, mon
vieux! Tiens! Comment ca va,
toi! Ah, non! je suis presse!’
or something like that. It amuses one.”
This need of some means of humanizing
shell fire is common. Aviators know little of
modern warfare as it touches the infantryman; but in
one respect, at least, they are less fortunate.
They miss the human companionship which helps a little
to mask its ugliness.
However, it is seldom that one is
quite alone, without the sight of friendly planes
near at hand, and there is a language of signs which,
in a way, fills this need. One may “waggle
his flippers,” or “flap his wings,”
to use the common expressions, and thus communicate
with his comrades. Unfortunately for my ease
of mind, there were no comrades present with whom
I could have conversed in this way. Miller was
within five hundred metres and saw me all the time,
although I didn’t know this until later.
Talbott’s instructions were,
“If you get lost, go home” somewhat
ambiguous. I knew that my course to the aerodrome
was southwest. At any rate, by flying in that
direction I was certain to land in France. But
with German gunners so keen on the baptism-of-fire
business, I had been turning in every direction, and
the floating disk of my compass was revolving first
to the right, then to the left. In order to let
it settle, I should have to fly straight for some
fixed point for at least half a minute. Under
the circumstances I was not willing to do this.
A compass which would point north immediately and always
would be a heaven-sent blessing to the inexperienced
pilot during his first few weeks at the front.
Mine was saying North northwest west
southwest south southeast east and
after a moment of hesitation reading off the points
in the reverse order. The wind was blowing into
Germany, and unconsciously, in trying to find a way
out of the éclatements, I was getting farther
and farther away from home and coming within range
of additional batteries of hostile anti-aircraft guns.
I might have landed at Karlsruhe or
Cologne, had it not been for Miller. My love
for concentric circles of red, white, and blue dates
from the moment when I saw the French cocarde
on his Spad.
“And if I had been a Hun!”
he said, when we landed at the aerodrome. “Oh,
man! you were fruit salad! Fruit salad, I tell
you! I could have speared you with my eyes shut.”
I resented the implication of defenselessness.
I said that I was keeping my eyes open, and if he
had been a Hun, the fruit salad might not have been
so palatable as it looked.
“Tell me this: Did you see me?”
I thought for a moment, and then said, “Yes.”
“When?”
“When you passed over my head.”
“And twenty seconds before that
you would have been a sieve, if either of us had been
a Boche.”
I yielded the point to save further argument.
He had come swooping down fairly suddenly.
When I saw him making his way so saucily among the
éclatements I felt my confidence returning
in increasing waves. I began to use my head, and
found that it was possible to make the German gunners
guess badly. There was no menace in the sound
of shells barking at a distance, and we were soon clear
of all of them.
J. B. took me aside the moment I landed.
He had one of his fur boots in his hand and was wearing
the other. He had also lighted the cork end of
his cigarette. To one acquainted with his magisterial
orderliness of mind and habit, these signs were eloquent.
“Now, keep this quiet!”
he said. “I don’t want the others
to know it, but I’ve just had the adventure
of my life. I attacked a German. Great Scott!
what an opportunity! and I bungled it through being
too eager!”
“When was this?”
“Just after the others dove. You remember ”
I told him, briefly, of my experience,
adding, “And I didn’t know there was a
German in sight until I saw the smoke of the tracer
bullets.”
“Neither did I, only I didn’t see even
the smoke.”
This cheered me immensely. “What! you didn’t ”
“No. I saw nothing but
sky where the others had disappeared. I was looking
for them when I saw the German. He was about four
hundred metres below me. He couldn’t have
seen me, I think, because he kept straight on.
I dove, but didn’t open fire until I could have
a nearer view of his black crosses. I wanted
to be sure. I had no idea that I was going so
much faster. The first thing I knew I was right
on him. Had to pull back on my stick to keep
from crashing into him. Up I went and fell into
a nose-dive. When I came out of it there was no
sign of the German, and I hadn’t fired a shot!”
“Did you come home alone?”
“No; I had the luck to meet
the others just afterward. Now, not a word of
this to any one!”
But there was no need for secrecy.
The near combat had been seen by both Talbott and
Porter. At luncheon we both came in for our share
of ragging.
“You should have seen them following
us down!” said Porter; “like two old rheumatics
going into the subway. We saw them both when we
were taking height again. The scrap was all over
hours before, and they were still a thousand metres
away.”
“You want to dive vertically.
Needn’t worry about your old ’bus.
She’ll stand it.”
“Well, the Lord has certainly
protected the innocent to-day!”
“One of them was wandering off
into Germany. Bill had to waggle Miller to page
him.”
“And there was Drew, going down
on that biplane we were chasing. I’ve been
trying to think of one wrong thing he might have done
which he didn’t do. First he dove with
the sun in his face, when he might have had it at
his back. Then he came all the way in full view,
instead of getting under his tail. Good thing
the mitrailleur was firing at us. After that,
when he had the chance of a lifetime, he fell into
a vrille and scared the life out of the rest
of us. I thought the gunner had turned on him.
And while we were following him down to see where
he was going to splash, the Boche got away.”
All this happened months ago, but
every trifling incident connected with our first patrol
is still fresh in mind. And twenty years from
now, if I chance to hear the “Chansons sans
Paroles,” or if I hum to myself a few bars
of a ballad, then sure to be long forgotten by the
world at large, “Oh, movin’ man, don’t
take ma baby grand!” I shall have only to close
my eyes, and wait passively. First Tiffin will
come with the lighted candle: “Beau
temps, monsieur.” I shall hear
Talbott shouting, “Rendezvous two thousand over
field. If get lost better home.”
J. B. will rush up smoking the cork end of a cigarette.
“I’ve just had the adventure of my life!”
And Miller, sitting on an essence-case, will have
lost none of his old conviction. “Oh, man!
you were fruit salad! Fruit salad, I tell you!
I could have speared you with my eyes shut!”
And in those days, happily still far
off, there will be many another old gray-beard with
such memories; unless they are all to wear out their
days uselessly regretting that they are no longer young,
there must be clubs where they may exchange reminiscences.
These need not be pretentious affairs. Let there
be a strong odor of burnt castor oil and gasoline
as you enter the door; a wide view from the verandas
of earth and sky; maps on the walls; and on the roof
a canvas “pantaloon-leg” to catch the
wind. Nothing else matters very much. There
they will be as happy as any old airman can expect
to be, arguing about the winds and disputing one another’s
judgment about the height of the clouds.
If you say to one of them, “Tell
us something about the Great War,” as likely
as not he will tell you a pleasant story enough.
And the pity of it will be that, hearing the tale,
a young man will long for another war. Then you
must say to him, “But what about the shell fire?
Tell us something of machines falling in flames.”
Then, if he is an honest old airman whose memory is
still unimpaired, the young one who has been listening
will have sober second thoughts.