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Title: Flying for France

Author: James R. McConnell

Posting Date: September 11, 2012 [EBook #6977]
Release Date: November, 2004
First Posted: February 19, 2003

Language: English

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FLYING FOR FRANCE

With the American Escadrille at Verdun




BY

JAMES R. McCONNELL

Sergeant-Pilot in the French Flying Corps




Illustrated from photographs through the kindness
of Mr. Paul Rockwell




To

MRS. ALICE S. WEEKS

Who having lost a splendid son in the French Army has given to a great
number of us other Americans in the war the tender sympathy and help
of a mother.




CONTENTS

Introduction
 By F. C. P.

CHAPTER

  I. Verdun
 II. From Verdun to the Somme
III. Personal Letters from Sergeant McConnell
 IV. How France Trains Pilot Aviators
  V. Against Odds




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


James R. McConnell _Frontispiece_

Some of the Americans Who are Flying for France

Two Members of the American Escadrille, of the French Flying Service,
Who Were Killed Flying For France

"Whiskey." The Lion and Mascot of the American Flying Squadron in
France

Kiffin Rockwell, of Asheville, N.C., Who Was Killed in an Air Duel
Over Verdun

Sergeant Lufbery in one of the New Nieuports in Which He Convoyed the
Bombardment Fleet Which Attacked Oberndorf




INTRODUCTION


One day in January, 1915, I saw Jim McConnell in front of the Court
House at Carthage, North Carolina. "Well," he said, "I'm all fixed up
and am leaving on Wednesday." "Where for?" I asked. "I've got a job to
drive an ambulance in France," was his answer.

And then he went on to tell me, first, that as he saw it the greatest
event in history was going on right at hand and that he would be
missing the opportunity of a lifetime if he did not see it. "These
Sand Hills," he said "will be here forever, but the war won't; and so
I'm going." Then, as an afterthought, he added: "And I'll be of some
use, too, not just a sight-seer looking on; that wouldn't be fair."

So he went. He joined the American ambulance service in the Vosges,
was mentioned more than once in the orders of the day for conspicuous
bravery in saving wounded under fire, and received the much-coveted
Croix de Guerre.

Meanwhile, he wrote interesting letters home. And his point of view
changed, even as does the point of view of all Americans who visit
Europe. From the attitude of an adventurous spirit anxious to see the
excitement, his letters showed a new belief that any one who goes to
France and is not able and willing to do more than his share--to give
everything in him toward helping the wounded and suffering--has no
business there.

And as time went on, still a new note crept into his letters; the
first admiration for France was strengthened and almost replaced by a
new feeling--a profound conviction that France and the French people
were fighting the fight of liberty against enormous odds. The new
spirit of France--the spirit of the "Marseillaise," strengthened by a
grim determination and absolute certainty of being right--pervades
every line he writes. So he gave up the ambulance service and enlisted
in the French flying corps along with an ever-increasing number of
other Americans.

The spirit which pervades them is something above the spirit of
adventure that draws many to war; it is the spirit of a man who has
found an inspiring duty toward the advancement of liberty and humanity
and is glad and proud to contribute what he can.

His last letters bring out a new point--the assurance of victory of a
just cause. "Of late," he writes, "things are much brighter and one
can feel a certain elation in the air. Victory, before, was a sort of
academic certainty; now, it is felt."

F. C. P.

November 10, 1916.




FLYING FOR FRANCE




CHAPTER I

VERDUN


Beneath the canvas of a huge hangar mechanicians are at work on the
motor of an airplane. Outside, on the borders of an aviation field,
others loiter awaiting their aërial charge's return from the sky. Near
the hangar stands a hut-shaped tent. In front of it several
short-winged biplanes are lined up; inside it three or four young men
are lolling in wicker chairs.

They wear the uniform of French army aviators. These uniforms, and the
grim-looking machine guns mounted on the upper planes of the little
aircraft, are the only warlike note in a pleasantly peaceful scene.
The war seems very remote. It is hard to believe that the greatest of
all battles--Verdun--rages only twenty-five miles to the north, and
that the field and hangars and mechanicians and aviators and airplanes
are all playing a part therein.

Suddenly there is the distant hum of a motor. One of the pilots
emerges from the tent and gazes fixedly up into the blue sky. He
points, and one glimpses a black speck against the blue, high
overhead. The sound of the motor ceases, and the speck grows larger.
It moves earthward in steep dives and circles, and as it swoops
closer, takes on the shape of an airplane. Now one can make out the
red, white, and blue circles under the wings which mark a French
war-plane, and the distinctive insignia of the pilot on its sides.

"_Ton patron arrive!_" one mechanician cries to another. "Your boss is
coming!"

The machine dips sharply over the top of a hangar, straightens out
again near the earth at a dizzy speed a few feet above it and, losing
momentum in a surprisingly short time, hits the ground with tail and
wheels. It bumps along a score of yards and then, its motor whirring
again, turns, rolls toward the hangar, and stops. A human form,
enveloped in a species of garment for all the world like a diver's
suit, and further adorned with goggles and a leather hood, rises
unsteadily in the cockpit, clambers awkwardly overboard and slides
down to terra firma.

A group of soldiers, enjoying a brief holiday from the trenches in a
cantonment near the field, straggle forward and gather timidly about
the airplane, listening open-mouthed for what its rider is about to
say.

"Hell!" mumbles that gentleman, as he starts divesting himself of his
flying garb.

"What's wrong now?" inquires one of the tenants of the tent.

"Everything, or else I've gone nutty," is the indignant reply,
delivered while disengaging a leg from its Teddy Bear trousering.
"Why, I emptied my whole roller on a Boche this morning, point blank
at not fifteen metres off. His machine gun quit firing and his
propeller wasn't turning and yet the darn fool just hung up there as
if he were tied to a cloud. Say, I was so sure I had him it made me
sore--felt like running into him and yelling, 'Now, you fall, you
bum!'"

The eyes of the _poilus_ register surprise. Not a word of this
dialogue, delivered in purest American, is intelligible to them. Why
is an aviator in a French uniform speaking a foreign tongue, they
mutually ask themselves. Finally one of them, a little chap in a
uniform long since bleached of its horizon-blue colour by the mud of
the firing line, whisperingly interrogates a mechanician as to the
identity of these strange air folk.

"But they are the Americans, my old one," the latter explains with
noticeable condescension.

Marvelling afresh, the infantrymen demand further details. They learn
that they are witnessing the return of the American Escadrille--composed
of Americans who have volunteered to fly for France for the duration
of the war--to their station near Bar-le-Duc, twenty-five miles south
of Verdun, from a flight over the battle front of the Meuse. They have
barely had time to digest this knowledge when other dots appear in the
sky, and one by one turn into airplanes as they wheel downward.
Finally all six of the machines that have been aloft are back on the
ground and the American Escadrille has one more sortie over the German
lines to its credit.


PERSONNEL OF THE ESCADRILLE

Like all worth-while institutions, the American Escadrille, of which I
have the honour of being a member, was of gradual growth. When the war
began, it is doubtful whether anybody anywhere envisaged the
possibility of an American entering the French aviation service. Yet,
by the fall of 1915, scarcely more than a year later, there were six
Americans serving as full-fledged pilots, and now, in the summer of
1916, the list numbers fifteen or more, with twice that number
training for their pilot's license in the military aviation schools.

The pioneer of them all was William Thaw, of Pittsburg, who is to-day
the only American holding a commission in the French flying corps.
Lieutenant Thaw, a flyer of considerable reputation in America before
the war, had enlisted in the Foreign Legion in August, 1914. With
considerable difficulty he had himself transferred, in the early part
of 1915, into aviation, and the autumn of that year found him piloting
a Caudron biplane, and doing excellent observation work. At the same
time, Sergeants Norman Prince, of Boston, and Elliot Cowdin, of New
York--who were the first to enter the aviation service coming directly
from the United States--were at the front on Voisin planes with a
cannon mounted in the bow.

Sergeant Bert Hall, who signs from the Lone Star State and had got
himself shifted from the Foreign Legion to aviation soon after Thaw,
was flying a Nieuport fighting machine, and, a little later,
instructing less-advanced students of the air in the Avord Training
School. His particular chum in the Foreign Legion, James Bach, who
also had become an aviator, had the distressing distinction soon after
he reached the front of becoming the first American to fall into the
hands of the enemy. Going to the assistance of a companion who had
broken down in landing a spy in the German lines, Bach smashed his
machine against a tree. Both he and his French comrade were captured,
and Bach was twice court-martialed by the Germans on suspicion of
being an American _franc-tireur_--the penalty for which is death! He
was acquitted but of course still languishes in a prison camp
"somewhere in Germany." The sixth of the original sextet was Adjutant
Didier Masson, who did exhibition flying in the States until--Carranza
having grown ambitious in Mexico--he turned his talents to spotting
_los Federales_ for General Obregon. When the real war broke out,
Masson answered the call of his French blood and was soon flying and
fighting for the land of his ancestors.

Of the other members of the escadrille Sergeant Givas Lufbery,
American citizen and soldier, but dweller in the world at large, was
among the earliest to wear the French airman's wings. Exhibition work
with a French pilot in the Far East prepared him efficiently for the
task of patiently unloading explosives on to German military centres
from a slow-moving Voisin which was his first mount. Upon the heels
of Lufbery came two more graduates of the Foreign Legion--Kiffin
Rockwell, of Asheville, N.C., who had been wounded at Carency; Victor
Chapman, of New York, who after recovering from his wounds became an
airplane bomb-dropper and so caught the craving to become a pilot. At
about this time one Paul Pavelka, whose birthplace was Madison, Conn.,
and who from the age of fifteen had sailed the seven seas, managed to
slip out of the Foreign Legion into aviation and joined the other
Americans at Pau.

There seems to be a fascination to aviation, particularly when it is
coupled with fighting. Perhaps it's because the game is new, but more
probably because as a rule nobody knows anything about it. Whatever be
the reason, adventurous young Americans were attracted by it in
rapidly increasing numbers. Many of them, of course, never got
fascinated beyond the stage of talking about joining. Among the chaps
serving with the American ambulance field sections a good many
imaginations were stirred, and a few actually did enlist, when, toward
the end of the summer of 1915, the Ministry of War, finding that the
original American pilots had made good, grew more liberal in
considering applications.

Chouteau Johnson, of New York; Lawrence Rumsey, of Buffalo; Dudley
Hill, of Peekskill, N.Y.; and Clyde Balsley, of El Paso; one after
another doffed the ambulance driver's khaki for the horizon-blue of
the French flying corps. All of them had seen plenty of action,
collecting the wounded under fire, but they were all tired of being
non-combatant spectators. More or less the same feeling actuated me,
I suppose. I had come over from Carthage, N.C., in January, 1915, and
worked with an American ambulance section in the Bois-le-Prêtre. All
along I had been convinced that the United States ought to aid in the
struggle against Germany. With that conviction, it was plainly up to
me to do more than drive an ambulance. The more I saw the splendour of
the fight the French were fighting, the more I felt like an
_embusqué_--what the British call a "shirker." So I made up my mind to
go into aviation.

A special channel had been created for the reception of applications
from Americans, and my own was favourably replied to within a few
days. It took four days more to pass through all the various
departments, sign one's name to a few hundred papers, and undergo the
physical examinations. Then I was sent to the aviation depot at Dijon
and fitted out with a uniform and personal equipment. The next stop
was the school at Pau, where I was to be taught to fly. My elation at
arriving there was second only to my satisfaction at being a French
soldier. It was a vast improvement, I thought, in the American
Ambulance.

Talk about forming an all-American flying unit, or escadrille, was
rife while I was at Pau. What with the pilots already breveted, and
the élèves, or pupils in the training-schools, there were quite enough
of our compatriots to man the dozen airplanes in one escadrille. Every
day somebody "had it absolutely straight" that we were to become a
unit at the front, and every other day the report turned out to be
untrue. But at last, in the month of February, our dream came true. We
learned that a captain had actually been assigned to command an
American escadrille and that the Americans at the front had been
recalled and placed under his orders. Soon afterward we élèves got
another delightful thrill.


THREE TYPES OF FRENCH AIR SERVICE

Thaw, Prince, Cowdin, and the other veterans were training on the
Nieuport! That meant the American Escadrille was to fly the
Nieuport--the best type of _avion de chasse_--and hence would be a
fighting unit. It is necessary to explain parenthetically here that
French military aviation, generally speaking, is divided into three
groups--the _avions de chasse_ or airplanes of pursuit, which are used
to hunt down enemy aircraft or to fight them off; _avions de
bombardement_, big, unwieldy monsters for use in bombarding raids; and
_avions de réglage_, cumbersome creatures designed to regulate
artillery fire, take photographs, and do scout duty. The Nieuport is
the smallest, fastest-rising, fastest-moving biplane in the French
service. It can travel 110 miles an hour, and is a one-man apparatus
with a machine gun mounted on its roof and fired by the pilot with one
hand while with the other and his feet he operates his controls. The
French call their Nieuport pilots the "aces" of the air. No wonder we
were tickled to be included in that august brotherhood!

Before the American Escadrille became an established fact, Thaw and
Cowdin, who had mastered the Nieuport, managed to be sent to the
Verdun front. While there Cowdin was credited with having brought down
a German machine and was proposed for the _Médaille Militaire_, the
highest decoration that can be awarded a non-commissioned officer or
private.

After completing his training, receiving his military pilot's brevet,
and being perfected on the type of plane he is to use at the front, an
aviator is ordered to the reserve headquarters near Paris to await his
call. Kiffin Rockwell and Victor Chapman had been there for months,
and I had just arrived, when on the 16th of April orders came for the
Americans to join their escadrille at Luxeuil, in the Vosges.

The rush was breathless! Never were flying clothes and fur coats drawn
from the quartermaster, belongings packed, and red tape in the various
administrative bureaux unfurled, with such headlong haste. In a few
hours we were aboard the train, panting, but happy. Our party
consisted of Sergeant Prince, and Rockwell, Chapman, and myself, who
were only corporals at that time. We were joined at Luxeuil by
Lieutenant Thaw and Sergeants Hall and Cowdin.

For the veterans our arrival at the front was devoid of excitement;
for the three neophytes--Rockwell, Chapman, and myself--it was the
beginning of a new existence, the entry into an unknown world. Of
course Rockwell and Chapman had seen plenty of warfare on the ground,
but warfare in the air was as novel to them as to me. For us all it
contained unlimited possibilities for initiative and service to
France, and for them it must have meant, too, the restoration of
personality lost during those months in the trenches with the Foreign
Legion. Rockwell summed it up characteristically.

"Well, we're off for the races," he remarked.


PILOT LIFE AT THE FRONT

There is a considerable change in the life of a pilot when he arrives
on the front. During the training period he is subject to rules and
regulations as stringent as those of the barracks. But once assigned
to duty over the firing line he receives the treatment accorded an
officer, no matter what his grade. Save when he is flying or on guard,
his time is his own. There are no roll calls or other military
frills, and in place of the bunk he slept upon as an élève, he finds a
regular bed in a room to himself, and the services of an orderly. Even
men of higher rank who although connected with his escadrille are not
pilots, treat him with respect. His two mechanicians are under his
orders. Being volunteers, we Americans are shown more than the
ordinary consideration by the ever-generous French Government, which
sees to it that we have the best of everything.

On our arrival at Luxeuil we were met by Captain Thénault, the French
commander of the American Escadrille--officially known as No. 124, by
the way--and motored to the aviation field in one of the staff cars
assigned to us. I enjoyed that ride. Lolling back against the soft
leather cushions, I recalled how in my apprenticeship days at Pau I
had had to walk six miles for my laundry.

The equipment awaiting us at the field was even more impressive than
our automobile. Everything was brand new, from the fifteen Fiat trucks
to the office, magazine, and rest tents. And the men attached to the
escadrille! At first sight they seemed to outnumber the Nicaraguan
army--mechanicians, chauffeurs, armourers, motorcyclists,
telephonists, wireless operators, Red Cross stretcher bearers, clerks!
Afterward I learned they totalled seventy-odd, and that all of them
were glad to be connected with the American Escadrille.

In their hangars stood our trim little Nieuports. I looked mine over
with a new feeling of importance and gave orders to my mechanicians
for the mere satisfaction of being able to. To find oneself the sole
proprietor of a fighting airplane is quite a treat, let me tell you.
One gets accustomed to it, though, after one has used up two or three
of them--at the French Government's expense.

Rooms were assigned to us in a villa adjoining the famous hot baths of
Luxeuil, where Cæsar's cohorts were wont to besport themselves. We
messed with our officers, Captain Thénault and Lieutenant de Laage de
Mieux, at the best hotel in town. An automobile was always on hand to
carry us to the field. I began to wonder whether I was a summer
resorter instead of a soldier.

Among the pilots who had welcomed us with open arms, we discovered the
famous Captain Happe, commander of the Luxeuil bombardment group. The
doughty bomb-dispenser, upon whose head the Germans have set a price,
was in his quarters. After we had been introduced, he pointed to eight
little boxes arranged on a table.

"They contain _Croix de Guerre_ for the families of the men I lost on
my last trip," he explained, and he added: "It's a good thing you're
here to go along with us for protection. There are lots of Boches in
this sector."

I thought of the luxury we were enjoying: our comfortable beds, baths,
and motor cars, and then I recalled the ancient custom of giving a man
selected for the sacrifice a royal time of it before the appointed
day.

To acquaint us with the few places where a safe landing was possible
we were motored through the Vosges Mountains and on into Alsace. It
was a delightful opportunity to see that glorious countryside, and we
appreciated it the more because we knew its charm would be lost when
we surveyed it from the sky. From the air the ground presents no
scenic effects. The ravishing beauty of the Val d'Ajol, the steep
mountain sides bristling with a solid mass of giant pines, the myriads
of glittering cascades tumbling downward through fairylike avenues of
verdure, the roaring, tossing torrent at the foot of the slope--all
this loveliness, seen from an airplane at 12,000 feet, fades into flat
splotches of green traced with a tiny ribbon of silver.

The American Escadrille was sent to Luxeuil primarily to acquire the
team work necessary to a flying unit. Then, too, the new pilots
needed a taste of anti-aircraft artillery to familiarize them with the
business of aviation over a battlefield. They shot well in that
sector, too. Thaw's machine was hit at an altitude of 13,000 feet.


THE ESCADRILLE'S FIRST SORTIE

The memory of the first sortie we made as an escadrille will always
remain fresh in my mind because it was also my first trip over the
lines. We were to leave at six in the morning. Captain Thénault
pointed out on his aërial map the route we were to follow. Never
having flown over this region before, I was afraid of losing myself.
Therefore, as it is easier to keep other airplanes in sight when one
is above them, I began climbing as rapidly as possible, meaning to
trail along in the wake of my companions. Unless one has had practice
in flying in formation, however, it is hard to keep in contact. The
diminutive _avions de chasse_ are the merest pinpoints against the
great sweep of landscape below and the limitless heavens above. The
air was misty and clouds were gathering. Ahead there seemed a barrier
of them. Although as I looked down the ground showed plainly, in the
distance everything was hazy. Forging up above the mist, at 7,000
feet, I lost the others altogether. Even when they are not closely
joined, the clouds, seen from immediately above, appear as a solid
bank of white. The spaces between are indistinguishable. It is like
being in an Arctic ice field.

To the south I made out the Alps. Their glittering peaks projected up
through the white sea about me like majestic icebergs. Not a single
plane was visible anywhere, and I was growing very uncertain about my
position. My splendid isolation had become oppressive, when, one by
one, the others began bobbing up above the cloud level, and I had
company again.

We were over Belfort and headed for the trench lines. The cloud banks
dropped behind, and below us we saw the smiling plain of Alsace
stretching eastward to the Rhine. It was distinctly pleasurable,
flying over this conquered land. Following the course of the canal
that runs to the Rhine, I sighted, from a height of 13,000 feet over
Dannemarie, a series of brown, woodworm-like tracings on the
ground--the trenches!


SHRAPNEL THAT COULDN'T BE HEARD

My attention was drawn elsewhere almost immediately, however. Two
balls of black smoke had suddenly appeared close to one of the
machines ahead of me, and with the same disconcerting abruptness
similar balls began to dot the sky above, below, and on all sides of
us. We were being shot at with shrapnel. It was interesting to watch
the flash of the bursting shells, and the attendant smoke
puffs--black, white, or yellow, depending on the kind of shrapnel
used. The roar of the motor drowned the noise of the explosions.
Strangely enough, my feelings about it were wholly impersonal.

We turned north after crossing the lines. Mulhouse seemed just below
us, and I noted with a keen sense of satisfaction our invasion of real
German territory. The Rhine, too, looked delightfully accessible. As
we continued northward I distinguished the twin lakes of Gérardmer
sparkling in their emerald setting. Where the lines crossed the
Hartmannsweilerkopf there were little spurts of brown smoke as shells
burst in the trenches. One could scarcely pick out the old city of
Thann from among the numerous neighbouring villages, so tiny it seemed
in the valley's mouth. I had never been higher than 7,000 feet and was
unaccustomed to reading country from a great altitude. It was also
bitterly cold, and even in my fur-lined combination I was shivering.
I noticed, too, that I had to take long, deep breaths in the rarefied
atmosphere. Looking downward at a certain angle, I saw what at first
I took to be a round, shimmering pool of water. It was simply the
effect of the sunlight on the congealing mist. We had been keeping an
eye out for German machines since leaving our lines, but none had
shown up. It wasn't surprising, for we were too many.

Only four days later, however, Rockwell brought down the escadrille's
first plane in his initial aërial combat. He was flying alone when,
over Thann, he came upon a German on reconnaissance. He dived and the
German turned toward his own lines, opening fire from a long distance.
Rockwell kept straight after him. Then, closing to within thirty
yards, he pressed on the release of his machine gun, and saw the enemy
gunner fall backward and the pilot crumple up sideways in his seat.
The plane flopped downward and crashed to earth just behind the German
trenches. Swooping close to the ground Rockwell saw its débris burning
away brightly. He had turned the trick with but four shots and only
one German bullet had struck his Nieuport. An observation post
telephoned the news before Rockwell's return, and he got a great
welcome. All Luxeuil smiled upon him--particularly the girls. But he
couldn't stay to enjoy his popularity. The escadrille was ordered to
the sector of Verdun.

While in a way we were sorry to leave Luxeuil, we naturally didn't
regret the chance to take part in the aërial activity of the world's
greatest battle. The night before our departure some German aircraft
destroyed four of our tractors and killed six men with bombs, but even
that caused little excitement compared with going to Verdun. We would
get square with the Boches over Verdun, we thought--it is impossible
to chase airplanes at night, so the raiders made a safe getaway.


OFF TO VERDUN

As soon as we pilots had left in our machines, the trucks and tractors
set out in convoy, carrying the men and equipment. The Nieuports
carried us to our new post in a little more than an hour. We stowed
them away in the hangars and went to have a look at our sleeping
quarters. A commodious villa half way between the town of Bar-le-Duc
and the aviation field had been assigned to us, and comforts were as
plentiful as at Luxeuil.

Our really serious work had begun, however, and we knew it. Even as
far behind the actual fighting as Bar-le-Duc one could sense one's
proximity to a vast military operation. The endless convoys of motor
trucks, the fast-flowing stream of troops, and the distressing number
of ambulances brought realization of the near presence of a gigantic
battle.

Within a twenty-mile radius of the Verdun front aviation camps abound.
Our escadrille was listed on the schedule with the other fighting
units, each of which has its specified flying hours, rotating so there
is always an _escadrille de chasse_ over the lines. A field wireless
to enable us to keep track of the movements of enemy planes became
part of our equipment.

Lufbery joined us a few days after our arrival. He was followed by
Johnson and Balsley, who had been on the air guard over Paris. Hill
and Rumsey came next, and after them Masson and Pavelka. Nieuports
were supplied them from the nearest depot, and as soon as they had
mounted their instruments and machine guns, they were on the job with
the rest of us. Fifteen Americans are or have been members of the
American Escadrille, but there have never been so many as that on duty
at any one time.


BATTLES IN THE AIR

Before we were fairly settled at Bar-le-Duc, Hall brought down a
German observation craft and Thaw a Fokker. Fights occurred on almost
every sortie. The Germans seldom cross into our territory, unless on a
bombarding jaunt, and thus practically all the fighting takes place on
their side of the line. Thaw dropped his Fokker in the morning, and on
the afternoon of the same day there was a big combat far behind the
German trenches. Thaw was wounded in the arm, and an explosive bullet
detonating on Rockwell's wind-shield tore several gashes in his face.
Despite the blood which was blinding him Rockwell managed to reach an
aviation field and land. Thaw, whose wound bled profusely, landed in a
dazed condition just within our lines. He was too weak to walk, and
French soldiers carried him to a field dressing-station, whence he was
sent to Paris for further treatment. Rockwell's wounds were less
serious and he insisted on flying again almost immediately.

A week or so later Chapman was wounded. Considering the number of
fights he had been in and the courage with which he attacked it was a
miracle he had not been hit before. He always fought against odds and
far within the enemy's country. He flew more than any of us, never
missing an opportunity to go up, and never coming down until his
gasolene was giving out. His machine was a sieve of patched-up bullet
holes. His nerve was almost superhuman and his devotion to the cause
for which he fought sublime. The day he was wounded he attacked four
machines. Swooping down from behind, one of them, a Fokker, riddled
Chapman's plane. One bullet cut deep into his scalp, but Chapman, a
master pilot, escaped from the trap, and fired several shots to show
he was still safe. A stability control had been severed by a bullet.
Chapman held the broken rod in one hand, managed his machine with the
other, and succeeded in landing on a near-by aviation field. His wound
was dressed, his machine repaired, and he immediately took the air in
pursuit of some more enemies. He would take no rest, and with bandaged
head continued to fly and fight.

The escadrille's next serious encounter with the foe took place a few
days later. Rockwell, Balsley, Prince, and Captain Thénault were
surrounded by a large number of Germans, who, circling about them,
commenced firing at long range. Realizing their numerical inferiority,
the Americans and their commander sought the safest way out by
attacking the enemy machines nearest the French lines. Rockwell,
Prince, and the captain broke through successfully, but Balsley found
himself hemmed in. He attacked the German nearest him, only to receive
an explosive bullet in his thigh. In trying to get away by a vertical
dive his machine went into a corkscrew and swung over on its back.
Extra cartridge rollers dislodged from their case hit his arms. He was
tumbling straight toward the trenches, but by a supreme effort he
regained control, righted the plane, and landed without disaster in a
meadow just behind the firing line.

Soldiers carried him to the shelter of a near-by fort, and later he
was taken to a field hospital, where he lingered for days between life
and death. Ten fragments of the explosive bullet were removed from his
stomach. He bore up bravely, and became the favourite of the wounded
officers in whose ward he lay. When we flew over to see him they would
say: _Il est un brave petit gars, l'aviateur américain_. [He's a brave
little fellow, the American aviator.] On a shelf by his bed, done up
in a handkerchief, he kept the pieces of bullet taken out of him, and
under them some sheets of paper on which he was trying to write to his
mother, back in El Paso.

Balsley was awarded the _Médaille Militaire_ and the _Croix de
Guerre_, but the honours scared him. He had seen them decorate
officers in the ward before they died.


CHAPMAN'S LAST FIGHT

Then came Chapman's last fight. Before leaving, he had put two bags
of oranges in his machine to take to Balsley, who liked to suck them
to relieve his terrible thirst, after the day's flying was over. There
was an aërial struggle against odds, far within the German lines, and
Chapman, to divert their fire from his comrades, engaged several enemy
airmen at once. He sent one tumbling to earth, and had forced the
others off when two more swooped down upon him. Such a fight is a
matter of seconds, and one cannot clearly see what passes. Lufbery and
Prince, whom Chapman had defended so gallantly, regained the French
lines. They told us of the combat, and we waited on the field for
Chapman's return. He was always the last in, so we were not much
worried. Then a pilot from another fighting escadrille telephoned us
that he had seen a Nieuport falling. A little later the observer of a
reconnaissance airplane called up and told us how he had witnessed
Chapman's fall. The wings of the plane had buckled, and it had dropped
like a stone he said.

We talked in lowered voices after that; we could read the pain in one
another's eyes. If only it could have been some one else, was what we
all thought, I suppose. To lose Victor was not an irreparable loss to
us merely, but to France, and to the world as well. I kept thinking of
him lying over there, and of the oranges he was taking to Balsley. As
I left the field I caught sight of Victor's mechanician leaning
against the end of our hangar. He was looking northward into the sky
where his _patron_ had vanished, and his face was very sad.


PROMOTIONS AND DECORATIONS

By this time Prince and Hall had been made adjutants, and we corporals
transformed into sergeants. I frankly confess to a feeling of marked
satisfaction at receiving that grade in the world's finest army. I was
a far more important person, in my own estimation, than I had been as
a second lieutenant in the militia at home. The next impressive event
was the awarding of decorations. We had assisted at that ceremony for
Cowdin at Luxeuil, but this time three of our messmates were to be
honoured for the Germans they had brought down. Rockwell and Hall
received the _Médaille Militaire_ and the _Croix de Guerre_, and Thaw,
being a lieutenant, the _Légion d'honneur_ and another "palm" for the
ribbon of the _Croix de Guerre_ he had won previously. Thaw, who came
up from Paris specially for the presentation, still carried his arm in
a sling.

There were also decorations for Chapman, but poor Victor, who so often
had been cited in the Orders of the Day, was not on hand to receive
them.


THE MORNING SORTIE

Our daily routine goes on with little change. Whenever the weather
permits--that is, when it isn't raining, and the clouds aren't too
low--we fly over the Verdun battlefield at the hours dictated by
General Headquarters. As a rule the most successful sorties are those
in the early morning.

We are called while it's still dark. Sleepily I try to reconcile the
French orderly's muttered, _C'est l'heure, monsieur_, that rouses me
from slumber, with the strictly American words and music of "When That
Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam'" warbled by a particularly
wide-awake pilot in the next room. A few minutes later, having
swallowed some coffee, we motor to the field. The east is turning gray
as the hangar curtains are drawn apart and our machines trundled out
by the mechanicians. All the pilots whose planes are in
commission--save those remaining behind on guard--prepare to leave.
We average from four to six on a sortie, unless too many flights have
been ordered for that day, in which case only two or three go out at a
time.

Now the east is pink, and overhead the sky has changed from gray to
pale blue. It is light enough to fly. We don our fur-lined shoes and
combinations and adjust the leather flying hoods and goggles. A good
deal of conversation occurs--perhaps because, once aloft, there's
nobody to talk to.

"Eh, you," one pilot cries jokingly to another, "I hope some Boche
just ruins you this morning, so I won't have to pay you the fifty
francs you won from me last night!"

This financial reference concerns a poker game.

"You do, do you?" replies the other as he swings into his machine.
"Well, I'd be glad to pass up the fifty to see you landed by the
Boches. You'd make a fine sight walking down the street of some
German town in those wooden shoes and pyjama pants. Why don't you
dress yourself? Don't you know an aviator's supposed to look _chic?_"

A sartorial eccentricity on the part of one of our colleagues is here
referred to.


GETTING UNDER WAY

The raillery is silenced by a deafening roar as the motors are tested.
Quiet is briefly restored, only to be broken by a series of rapid
explosions incidental to the trying out of machine guns. You loudly
inquire at what altitude we are to meet above the field.

"Fifteen hundred metres--go ahead!" comes an answering yell.

_Essence et gaz!_ [Oil and gas!] you call to your mechanician,
adjusting your gasolene and air throttles while he grips the
propeller.

_Contact!_ he shrieks, and _Contact!_ you reply. You snap on the
switch, he spins the propeller, and the motor takes. Drawing forward
out of line, you put on full power, race across the grass and take the
air. The ground drops as the hood slants up before you and you seem to
be going more and more slowly as you rise. At a great height you
hardly realize you are moving. You glance at the clock to note the
time of your departure, and at the oil gauge to see its throb. The
altimeter registers 650 feet. You turn and look back at the field
below and see others leaving.

In three minutes you are at about 4,000 feet. You have been making
wide circles over the field and watching the other machines. At 4,500
feet you throttle down and wait on that level for your companions to
catch up. Soon the escadrille is bunched and off for the lines. You
begin climbing again, gulping to clear your ears in the changing
pressure. Surveying the other machines, you recognize the pilot of
each by the marks on its side--or by the way he flies. The
distinguishing marks of the Nieuports are various and sometimes
amusing. Bert Hall, for instance, has BERT painted on the left side of
his plane and the same word reversed (as if spelled backward with the
left hand) on the right--so an aviator passing him on that side at
great speed will be able to read the name without difficulty, he says!

The country below has changed into a flat surface of varicoloured
figures. Woods are irregular blocks of dark green, like daubs of ink
spilled on a table; fields are geometrical designs of different shades
of green and brown, forming in composite an ultra-cubist painting;
roads are thin white lines, each with its distinctive windings and
crossings--from which you determine your location. The higher you are
the easier it is to read.

In about ten minutes you see the Meuse sparkling in the morning light,
and on either side the long line of sausage-shaped observation
balloons far below you. Red-roofed Verdun springs into view just
beyond. There are spots in it where no red shows and you know what has
happened there. In the green pasture land bordering the town, round
flecks of brown indicate the shell holes. You cross the Meuse.


VERDUN, SEEN FROM THE SKY

Immediately east and north of Verdun there lies a broad, brown band.
From the Woevre plain it runs westward to the "S" bend in the Meuse,
and on the left bank of that famous stream continues on into the
Argonne Forest. Peaceful fields and farms and villages adorned that
landscape a few months ago--when there was no Battle of Verdun. Now
there is only that sinister brown belt, a strip of murdered Nature. It
seems to belong to another world. Every sign of humanity has been
swept away. The woods and roads have vanished like chalk wiped from a
blackboard; of the villages nothing remains but gray smears where
stone walls have tumbled together. The great forts of Douaumont and
Vaux are outlined faintly, like the tracings of a finger in wet sand.
One cannot distinguish any one shell crater, as one can on the
pockmarked fields on either side. On the brown band the indentations
are so closely interlocked that they blend into a confused mass of
troubled earth. Of the trenches only broken, half-obliterated links
are visible.

Columns of muddy smoke spurt up continually as high explosives tear
deeper into this ulcered area. During heavy bombardment and attacks I
have seen shells falling like rain. The countless towers of smoke
remind one of Gustave Doré's picture of the fiery tombs of the
arch-heretics in Dante's "Hell." A smoky pall covers the sector under
fire, rising so high that at a height of 1,000 feet one is enveloped
in its mist-like fumes. Now and then monster projectiles hurtling
through the air close by leave one's plane rocking violently in their
wake. Airplanes have been cut in two by them.


THE ROAR OF BATTLE--UNHEARD

For us the battle passes in silence, the noise of one's motor
deadening all other sounds. In the green patches behind the brown belt
myriads of tiny flashes tell where the guns are hidden; and those
flashes, and the smoke of bursting shells, are all we see of the
fighting. It is a weird combination of stillness and havoc, the Verdun
conflict viewed from the sky.

Far below us, the observation and range-finding planes circle over the
trenches like gliding gulls. At a feeble altitude they follow the
attacking infantrymen and flash back wireless reports of the
engagement. Only through them can communication be maintained when,
under the barrier fire, wires from the front lines are cut. Sometimes
it falls to our lot to guard these machines from Germans eager to
swoop down on their backs. Sailing about high above a busy flock of
them makes one feel like an old mother hen protecting her chicks.


"NAVIGATING" IN A SEA OF CLOUDS

The pilot of an _avion de chasse_ must not concern himself with the
ground, which to him is useful only for learning his whereabouts.
The earth is all-important to the men in the observation,
artillery-regulating, and bombardment machines, but the fighting
aviator has an entirely different sphere. His domain is the blue
heavens, the glistening rolls of clouds below the fleecy banks
towering above, the vague aërial horizon, and he must watch it as
carefully as a navigator watches the storm-tossed sea.

On days when the clouds form almost a solid flooring, one feels very
much at sea, and wonders if one is in the navy instead of aviation.
The diminutive Nieuports skirt the white expanse like torpedo boats in
an arctic sea, and sometimes, far across the cloud-waves, one sights
an enemy escadrille, moving as a fleet.

Principally our work consists of keeping German airmen away from our
lines, and in attacking them when opportunity offers. We traverse the
brown band and enter enemy territory to the accompaniment of an
antiaircraft cannonade. Most of the shots are wild, however, and we
pay little attention to them. When the shrapnel comes uncomfortably
close, one shifts position slightly to evade the range. One glances up
to see if there is another machine higher than one's own. Low and far
within the German lines are several enemy planes, a dull white in
appearance, resembling sand flies against the mottled earth. High
above them one glimpses the mosquito-like forms of two Fokkers. Away
off to one side white shrapnel puffs are vaguely visible, perhaps
directed against a German crossing the lines. We approach the enemy
machines ahead, only to find them slanting at a rapid rate into their
own country. High above them lurks a protection plane. The man doing
the "ceiling work," as it is called, will look after him for us.


TACTICS OF AN AIR BATTLE

Getting started is the hardest part of an attack. Once you have begun
diving you're all right. The pilot just ahead turns tail up like a
trout dropping back to water, and swoops down in irregular curves and
circles. You follow at an angle so steep your feet seem to be holding
you back in your seat. Now the black Maltese crosses on the German's
wings stand out clearly. You think of him as some sort of big bug.
Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine gun. The man that
dived ahead of you becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so
close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the
staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass from under the
German's tail.

The rattle of the gun that is aimed at you leaves you undisturbed.
Only when the bullets pierce the wings a few feet off do you become
uncomfortable. You see the gunner crouched down behind his weapon,
but you aim at where the pilot ought to be--there are two men aboard
the German craft--and press on the release hard. Your mitrailleuse
hammers out a stream of bullets as you pass over and dive, nose down,
to get out of range. Then, hopefully, you re-dress and look back at
the foe. He ought to be dropping earthward at several miles a minute.
As a matter of fact, however, he is sailing serenely on. They have an
annoying habit of doing that, these Boches.

Rockwell, who attacked so often that he has lost all count, and who
shoves his machine gun fairly in the faces of the Germans, used to
swear their planes were armoured. Lieutenant de Laage, whose list of
combats is equally extensive, has brought down only one. Hall, with
three machines to his credit, has had more luck. Lufbery, who
evidently has evolved a secret formula, has dropped four, according to
official statistics, since his arrival on the Verdun front. Four
"palms"--the record for the escadrille, glitter upon the ribbon of the
_Croix de Guerre_ accompanying his _Médaille Militaire_. [Footnote:
This book was written in the fall of 1915. Since that time many
additional machines have been credited to the American flyers.]

A pilot seldom has the satisfaction of beholding the result of his
bull's-eye bullet. Rarely--so difficult it is to follow the turnings
and twistings of the dropping plane--does he see his fallen foe strike
the ground. Lufbery's last direct hit was an exception, for he
followed all that took place from a balcony seat. I myself was in the
"nigger-heaven," so I know. We had set out on a sortie together just
before noon, one August day, and for the first time on such an
occasion had lost each other over the lines. Seeing no Germans, I
passed my time hovering over the French observation machines. Lufbery
found one, however, and promptly brought it down. Just then I chanced
to make a southward turn, and caught sight of an airplane falling out
of the sky into the German lines.

As it turned over, it showed its white belly for an instant, then
seemed to straighten out, and planed downward in big zigzags. The
pilot must have gripped his controls even in death, for his craft did
not tumble as most do. It passed between my line of vision and a wood,
into which it disappeared. Just as I was going down to find out where
it landed, I saw it again skimming across a field, and heading
straight for the brown band beneath me. It was outlined against the
shell-racked earth like a tiny insect, until just northwest of Fort
Douaumont it crashed down upon the battlefield. A sheet of flame and
smoke shot up from the tangled wreckage. For a moment or two I watched
it burn; then I went back to the observation machines.

I thought Lufbery would show up and point to where the German had
fallen. He failed to appear, and I began to be afraid it was he whom I
had seen come down, instead of an enemy. I spent a worried hour
before my return homeward. After getting back I learned that Lufbery
was quite safe, having hurried in after the fight to report the
destruction of his adversary before somebody else claimed him, which
is only too frequently the case. Observation posts, however,
confirmed Lufbery's story, and he was of course very much delighted.
Nevertheless, at luncheon, I heard him murmuring, half to himself:
"Those poor fellows."

The German machine gun operator, having probably escaped death in the
air, must have had a hideous descent. Lufbery told us he had seen the
whole thing, spiralling down after the German. He said he thought the
German pilot must be a novice, judging from his manoeuvres. It
occurred to me that he might have been making his first flight over
the lines, doubtless full of enthusiasm about his career. Perhaps,
dreaming of the Iron Cross and his Gretchen, he took a chance--and
then swift death and a grave in the shell-strewn soil of Douaumont.

Generally the escadrille is relieved by another fighting unit after
two hours over the lines. We turn homeward, and soon the hangars of
our field loom up in the distance. Sometimes I've been mighty glad to
see them and not infrequently I've concluded the pleasantest part of
flying is just after a good landing. Getting home after a sortie, we
usually go into the rest tent, and talk over the morning's work. Then
some of us lie down for a nap, while others play cards or read. After
luncheon we go to the field again, and the man on guard gets his
chance to eat. If the morning sortie has been an early one, we go up
again about one o'clock in the afternoon. We are home again in two
hours and after that two or three energetic pilots may make a third
trip over the lines. The rest wait around ready to take the air if an
enemy bombardment group ventures to visit our territory--as it has
done more than once over Bar-le-Duc. False alarms are plentiful, and
we spend many hours aloft squinting at an empty sky.


PRINCE'S AËRIAL FIREWORKS

Now and then one of us will get ambitious to do something on his own
account. Not long ago Norman Prince became obsessed with the idea of
bringing down a German "sausage," as observation balloons are called.
He had a special device mounted on his Nieuport for setting fire to
the aërial frankfurters. Thus equipped he resembled an advance agent
for Payne's fireworks more than an _aviateur de chasse_. Having
carefully mapped the enemy "sausages," he would sally forth in hot
pursuit whenever one was signalled at a respectable height. Poor
Norman had a terrible time of it! Sometimes the reported "sausages"
were not there when he arrived, and sometimes there was a
super-abundancy of German airplanes on guard.

He stuck to it, however, and finally his appetite for "sausage" was
satisfied. He found one just where it ought to be, swooped down upon
it, and let off his fireworks with all the gusto of an American boy on
the Fourth of July. When he looked again, the balloon had vanished.
Prince's performance isn't so easy as it sounds, by the way. If, after
the long dive necessary to turn the trick successfully, his motor had
failed to retake, he would have fallen into the hands of the Germans.

After dark, when flying is over for the day, we go down to the villa
for dinner. Usually we have two or three French officers dining with
us besides our own captain and lieutenant, and so the table talk is a
mixture of French and English. It's seldom we discuss the war in
general. Mostly the conversation revolves about our own sphere, for
just as in the navy the sea is the favourite topic, and in the army
the trenches, so with us it is aviation. Our knowledge about the
military operations is scant. We haven't the remotest idea as to what
has taken place on the battlefield--even though we've been flying over
it during an attack--until we read the papers; and they don't tell us
much.

Frequently pilots from other escadrilles will be our guests in passing
through our sector, and through these visitations we keep in touch
with the aërial news of the day, and with our friends along the front.
Gradually we have come to know a great number of _pilotes de chasse_.
We hear that so-&-so has been killed, that some one else has brought
down a Boche and that still another is a prisoner.

We don't always talk aviation, however. In the course of dinner almost
any subject may be touched upon, and with our cosmopolitan crowd one
can readily imagine the scope of the conversation. A Burton Holmes
lecture is weak and watery compared to the travel stories we listen
to. Were O. Henry alive, he could find material for a hundred new
yarns, and William James numerous pointers for another work on
psychology, while De Quincey might multiply his dreams _ad infinitum_.
Doubtless alienists as well as fiction writers would find us worth
studying. In France there's a saying that to be an aviator one must
be a bit "off."

After dinner the same scene invariably repeats itself, over the coffee
in the "next room." At the big table several sportive souls start a
poker game, while at a smaller one two sedate spirits wrap themselves
in the intricacies of chess. Captain Thénault labours away at the
messroom piano, or in lighter mood plays with Fram, his police dog. A
phonograph grinds out the ancient query "Who Paid the Rent for Mrs.
Rip Van Winkle?" or some other ragtime ditty. It is barely nine,
however, when the movement in the direction of bed begins.

A few of us remain behind a little while, and the talk becomes more
personal and more sincere. Only on such intimate occasions, I think,
have I ever heard death discussed. Certainly we are not indifferent to
it. Not many nights ago one of the pilots remarked in a tired way:

"Know what I want? Just six months of freedom to go where and do what
I like. In that time I'd get everything I wanted out of life, and be
perfectly willing to come back and be killed."

Then another, who was about to receive 2,000 francs from the American
committee that aids us, as a reward for his many citations, chimed in.

"Well, I didn't care much before," he confessed, "but now with this
money coming in I don't want to die until I've had the fun of spending
it."

So saying, he yawned and went up to bed.




CHAPTER II

VERDUN TO THE SOMME


On the 12th of October, twenty small airplanes flying in a V
formation, at such a height they resembled a flock of geese, crossed
the river Rhine, where it skirts the plains of Alsace, and, turning
north, headed for the famous Mauser works at Oberndorf. Following in
their wake was an equal number of larger machines, and above these
darted and circled swift fighting planes. The first group of aircraft
was flown by British pilots, the second by French and three of the
fighting planes by Americans in the French Aviation Division. It was a
cosmopolitan collection that effected that successful raid.

We American pilots, who are grouped into one escadrille, had been
fighting above the battlefield of Verdun from the 20th of May until
orders came the middle of September for us to leave our airplanes, for
a unit that would replace us, and to report at Le Bourget, the great
Paris aviation centre.

The mechanics and the rest of the personnel left, as usual, in the
escadrille's trucks with the material. For once the pilots did not
take the aërial route but they boarded the Paris express at Bar-le-Duc
with all the enthusiasm of schoolboys off for a vacation. They were
to have a week in the capital! Where they were to go after that they
did not know, but presumed it would be the Somme. As a matter of fact
the escadrille was to be sent to Luxeuil in the Vosges to take part in
the Mauser raid.

Besides Captain Thénault and Lieutenant de Laage de Mieux, our French
officers, the following American pilots were in the escadrille at this
time: Lieutenant Thaw, who had returned to the front, even though his
wounded arm had not entirely healed; Adjutants Norman Prince, Hall,
Lufbery, and Masson; and Sergeants Kiffin Rockwell, Hill, Pavelka,
Johnson, and Rumsey. I had been sent to a hospital at the end of
August, because of a lame back resulting from a smash up in landing,
and couldn't follow the escadrille until later.

Every aviation unit boasts several mascots. Dogs of every description
are to be seen around the camps, but the Americans managed, during
their stay in Paris, to add to their menagerie by the acquisition of a
lion cub named "Whiskey." The little chap had been born on a boat
crossing from Africa and was advertised for sale in France. Some of
the American pilots chipped in and bought him. He was a cute,
bright-eyed baby lion who tried to roar in a most threatening manner
but who was blissfully content the moment one gave him one's finger to
suck. "Whiskey" got a good view of Paris during the few days he was
there, for some one in the crowd was always borrowing him to take him
some place. He, like most lions in captivity, became acquainted with
bars, but the sort "Whiskey" saw were not for purposes of confinement.

The orders came directing the escadrille to Luxeuil and bidding
farewell to gay "Paree" the men boarded the Belfort train with bag and
baggage--and the lion. Lions, it developed, were not allowed in
passenger coaches. The conductor was assured that "Whiskey" was quite
harmless and was going to overlook the rules when the cub began to
roar and tried to get at the railwayman's finger. That settled it, so
two of the men had to stay behind in order to crate up "Whiskey" and
take him along the next day.

The escadrille was joined in Paris by Robert Rockwell, of Cincinnati,
who had finished his training as a pilot, and was waiting at the
Reserve (Robert Rockwell had gone to France to work as a surgeon in
one of the American war hospitals. He disliked remaining in the rear
and eventually enlisted in aviation).

The period of training for a pilot, especially for one who is to fly a
fighting machine at the front, has been very much prolonged. It is no
longer sufficient that he learns to fly and to master various types of
machines. He now completes his training in schools where aërial
shooting is taught, and in others where he practises combat, group
manoeuvres, and acrobatic stunts such as looping the loop and the more
difficult tricks. In all it requires from seven to nine months.

Dennis Dowd, of Brooklyn, N.Y., is so far the only American volunteer
aviator killed while in training. Dowd, who had joined the Foreign
Legion, shortly after the war broke out, was painfully wounded during
the offensive in Champagne. After his recovery he was transferred, at
his request, into aviation. At the Buc school he stood at the head of
the fifteen Americans who were learning to be aviators, and was
considered one of the most promising pilots in the training camp. On
August 11, 1916, while making a flight preliminary to his brevet, Dowd
fell from a height of only 260 feet and was instantly killed. Either
he had fainted or a control had broken.

While a patient at the hospital Dowd had been sent packages by a young
French girl of Neuilly. A correspondence ensued, and when Dowd went to
Paris on convalescent leave he and the young lady became engaged. He
was killed just before the time set for the wedding.

When the escadrille arrived at Luxeuil it found a great surprise in
the form of a large British aviation contingent. This detachment from
the Royal Navy Flying Corps numbered more than fifty pilots and a
thousand men. New hangars harboured their fleet of bombardment
machines. Their own anti-aircraft batteries were in emplacements near
the field. Though detached from the British forces and under French
command this unit followed the rule of His Majesty's armies in France
by receiving all of its food and supplies from England. It had its own
transport service.

Our escadrille had been in Luxeuil during the months of April and May.
We had made many friends amongst the townspeople and the French pilots
stationed there, so the older members of the American unit were
welcomed with open arms and their new comrades made to feel at home in
the quaint Vosges town. It wasn't long, however, before the Americans
and the British got together. At first there was a feeling of reserve
on both sides but once acquainted they became fast friends. The naval
pilots were quite representative of the United Kingdom hailing as they
did from England, Canada, New South Wales, South Africa, and other
parts of the Empire. Most of them were soldiers by profession. All
were officers, but they were as democratic as it is possible to be. As
a result there was a continuous exchange of dinners. In a few days
every one in this Anglo-American alliance was calling each other by
some nickname and swearing lifelong friendship.

"We didn't know what you Yanks would be like," remarked one of the
Englishmen one day. "Thought you might be snobby on account of being
volunteers, but I swear you're a bloody human lot." That, I will
explain, is a very fine compliment.

There was trouble getting new airplanes for every one in the
escadrille. Only five arrived. They were the new model Nieuport
fighting machine. Instead of having only 140 square feet of
supporting surface, they had 160, and the forty-seven shot Lewis
machine gun had been replaced by the Vickers, which fires five hundred
rounds. This gun is mounted on the hood and by means of a timing gear
shoots through the propeller. The 160 foot Nieuport mounts at a
terrific rate, rising to 7,000 feet in six minutes. It will go to
20,000 feet handled by a skillful pilot.

It was some time before these airplanes arrived and every one was
idle. There was nothing to do but loaf around the hotel, where the
American pilots were quartered, visit the British in their barracks at
the field, or go walking. It was about as much like war as a Bryan
lecture. While I was in the hospital I received a letter written at
this time from one of the boys. I opened it expecting to read of an
air combat. It informed me that Thaw had caught a trout three feet
long, and that Lufbery had picked two baskets of mushrooms.

Day after day the British planes practised formation flying. The
regularity with which the squadron's machines would leave the ground
was remarkable. The twenty Sopwiths took the air at precise intervals,
flew together in a V formation while executing difficult manoeuvres,
and landed one after the other with the exactness of clockwork. The
French pilots flew the Farman and Breguet bombardment machines
whenever the weather permitted. Every one knew some big bombardment
was ahead but when it would be made or what place was to be attacked
was a secret.

Considering the number of machines that were continually roaring above
the field at Luxeuil it is remarkable that only two fatal accidents
occurred. One was when a British pilot tried diving at a target, for
machine-gun practice, and was unable to redress his airplane. Both he
and his gunner were killed. In the second accident I lost a good
friend--a young Frenchman. He took up his gunner in a two-seated
Nieuport. A young Canadian pilot accompanied by a French officer
followed in a Sopwith. When at about a thousand feet they began to
manoeuvre about one another. In making a turn too close the tips of
their wings touched. The Nieuport turned downward, its wings folded,
and it fell like a stone. The Sopwith fluttered a second or two, then
its wings buckled and it dropped in the wake of the Nieuport. The two
men in each of the planes were killed outright.

Next to falling in flames a drop in a wrecked machine is the worst
death an aviator can meet. I know of no sound more horrible than that
made by an airplane crashing to earth. Breathless one has watched the
uncontrolled apparatus tumble through the air. The agony felt by the
pilot and passenger seems to transmit itself to you. You are helpless
to avert the certain death. You cannot even turn your eyes away at the
moment of impact. In the dull, grinding crash there is the sound of
breaking bones.

Luxeuil was an excellent place to observe the difference that exists
between the French, English, and American aviator, but when all is
said and done there is but little difference. The Frenchman is the
most natural pilot and the most adroit. Flying comes easier to him
than to an Englishman or American, but once accustomed to an airplane
and the air they all accomplish the same amount of work. A Frenchman
goes about it with a little more dash than the others, and puts on a
few extra frills, but the Englishman calmly carries out his mission
and obtains the same results. An American is a combination of the
two, but neither better nor worse. Though there is a large number of
expert German airmen I do not believe the average Teuton makes as good
a flier as a Frenchman, Englishman, or American.

In spite of their bombardment of open towns and the use of explosive
bullets in their aërial machine guns, the Boches have shown up in a
better light in aviation than in any other arm. A few of the Hun
pilots have evinced certain elements of honor and decency. I remember
one chap that was the right sort.

He was a young man but a pilot of long standing. An old infantry
captain stationed near his aviation field at Etain, east of Verdun,
prevailed upon this German pilot to take him on a flight. There was a
new machine to test out and he told the captain to climb aboard.
Foolishly he crossed the trench lines and, actuated by a desire to
give his passenger an interesting trip, proceeded to fly over the
French aviation headquarters. Unfortunately for him he encountered
three French fighting planes which promptly opened fire. The German
pilot was wounded in the leg and the gasoline tank of his airplane was
pierced. Under him was an aviation field. He decided to land. The
machine was captured before the Germans had time to burn it up.
Explosive bullets were discovered in the machine gun. A French
officer turned to the German captain and informed him that he would
probably be shot for using explosive bullets. The captain did not
understand.

"Don't shoot him," said the pilot, using excellent French, "if you're
going to shoot any one take me. The captain has nothing to do with the
bullets. He doesn't even know how to work a machine gun. It's his
first trip in an airplane."

"Well, if you'll give us some good information, we won't shoot you,"
said the French officer.

"Information," replied the German, "I can't give you any. I come from
Etain, and you know where that is as well as I do."

"No, you must give us some worth-while information, or I'm afraid
you'll be shot," insisted the Frenchman.

"If I give you worth-while information," answered the pilot, "you'll
go over and kill a lot of soldiers, and if I don't you'll only kill
one--so go ahead."

The last time I heard of the Boche he was being well taken care of.

Kiffin Rockwell and Lufbery were the first to get their new machines
ready and on the 23rd of September went out for the first flight since
the escadrille had arrived at Luxeuil. They became separated in the
air but each flew on alone, which was a dangerous thing to do in the
Alsace sector. There is but little fighting in the trenches there, but
great air activity. Due to the British and French squadrons at
Luxeuil, and the threat their presence implied, the Germans had to
oppose them by a large fleet of fighting machines. I believe there
were more than forty Fokkers alone in the camps of Colmar and
Habsheim. Observation machines protected by two or three fighting
planes would venture far into our lines. It is something the Germans
dare not do on any other part of the front. They had a special trick
that consisted in sending a large, slow observation machine into our
lines to invite attack. When a French plane would dive after it, two
Fokkers, that had been hovering high overhead, would drop on the tail
of the Frenchman and he stood but small chance if caught in the trap.

Just before Kiffin Rockwell reached the lines he spied a German
machine under him flying at 11,000 feet. I can imagine the
satisfaction he felt in at last catching an enemy plane in our lines.
Rockwell had fought more combats than the rest of us put together, and
had shot down many German machines that had fallen in their lines, but
this was the first time he had had an opportunity of bringing down a
Boche in our territory.

A captain, the commandant of an Alsatian village, watched the aërial
battle through his field glasses. He said that Rockwell approached so
close to the enemy that he thought there would be a collision. The
German craft, which carried two machine guns, had opened a rapid fire
when Rockwell started his dive. He plunged through the stream of lead
and only when very close to his enemy did he begin shooting. For a
second it looked as though the German was falling, so the captain
said, but then he saw the French machine turn rapidly nose down, the
wings of one side broke off and fluttered in the wake of the airplane,
which hurtled earthward in a rapid drop. It crashed into the ground in
a small field--a field of flowers--a few hundred yards back of the
trenches. It was not more than two and a half miles from the spot
where Rockwell, in the month of May, brought down his first enemy
machine. The Germans immediately opened up on the wreck with
artillery fire. In spite of the bursting shrapnel, gunners from a
near-by battery rushed out and recovered poor Rockwell's broken body.
There was a hideous wound in his breast where an explosive bullet had
torn through. A surgeon who examined the body, testified that if it
had been an ordinary bullet Rockwell would have had an even chance of
landing with only a bad wound. As it was he was killed the instant the
unlawful missile exploded.

Lufbery engaged a German craft but before he could get to close range
two Fokkers swooped down from behind and filled his aeroplane full of
holes. Exhausting his ammunition he landed at Fontaine, an aviation
field near the lines. There he learned of Rockwell's death and was
told that two other French machines had been brought down within the
hour. He ordered his gasoline tank filled, procured a full band of
cartridges and soared up into the air to avenge his comrade. He sped
up and down the lines, and made a wide détour to Habsheim where the
Germans have an aviation field, but all to no avail. Not a Boche was
in the air.

The news of Rockwell's death was telephoned to the escadrille. The
captain, lieutenant, and a couple of men jumped in a staff car and
hastened to where he had fallen. On their return the American pilots
were convened in a room of the hotel and the news was broken to them.
With tears in his eyes the captain said: "The best and bravest of us
all is no more."

No greater blow could have befallen the escadrille. Kiffin was its
soul. He was loved and looked up to by not only every man in our
flying corps but by every one who knew him. Kiffin was imbued with the
spirit of the cause for which he fought and gave his heart and soul to
the performance of his duty. He said: "I pay my part for Lafayette
and Rochambeau," and he gave the fullest measure. The old flame of
chivalry burned brightly in this boy's fine and sensitive being. With
his death France lost one of her most valuable pilots. When he was
over the lines the Germans did not pass--and he was over them most of
the time. He brought down four enemy planes that were credited to him
officially, and Lieutenant de Laage, who was his fighting partner,
says he is convinced that Rockwell accounted for many others which
fell too far within the German lines to be observed. Rockwell had been
given the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre, on the ribbon of
which he wore four palms, representing the four magnificent citations
he had received in the order of the army. As a further reward for his
excellent work he had been proposed for promotion from the grade of
sergeant to that of second lieutenant. Unfortunately the official
order did not arrive until a few days following his death.

The night before Rockwell was killed he had stated that if he were
brought down he would like to be buried where he fell. It was
impossible, however, to place him in a grave so near the trenches. His
body was draped in a French flag and brought back to Luxeuil. He was
given a funeral worthy of a general. His brother, Paul, who had
fought in the Legion with him, and who had been rendered unfit for
service by a wound, was granted permission to attend the obsequies.
Pilots from all near-by camps flew over to render homage to Rockwell's
remains. Every Frenchman in the aviation at Luxeuil marched behind
the bier. The British pilots, followed by a detachment of five
hundred of their men, were in line, and a battalion of French troops
brought up the rear. As the slow moving procession of blue and
khaki-clad men passed from the church to the graveyard, airplanes
circled at a feeble height above and showered down myriads of flowers.

Rockwell's death urged the rest of the men to greater action, and the
few who had machines were constantly after the Boches. Prince brought
one down. Lufbery, the most skillful and successful fighter in the
escadrille, would venture far into the enemy's lines and spiral down
over a German aviation camp, daring the pilots to venture forth. One
day he stirred them up, but as he was short of fuel he had to make for
home before they took to the air. Prince was out in search of a combat
at this time. He got it. He ran into the crowd Lufbery had aroused.
Bullets cut into his machine and one exploding on the front edge of a
lower wing broke it. Another shattered a supporting mast. It was a
miracle that the machine did not give way. As badly battered as it was
Prince succeeded in bringing it back from over Mulhouse, where the
fight occurred, to his field at Luxeuil.

The same day that Prince was so nearly brought down Lufbery missed
death by a very small margin. He had taken on more gasoline and made
another sortie. When over the lines again he encountered a German with
whom he had a fighting acquaintance. That is he and the Boche, who
was an excellent pilot, had tried to kill each other on one or two
occasions before. Each was too good for the other. Lufbery manoeuvred
for position but, before he could shoot, the Teuton would evade him by
a clever turn. They kept after one another, the Boche retreating into
his lines. When they were nearing Habsheim, Lufbery glanced back and
saw French shrapnel bursting over the trenches. It meant a German
plane was over French territory and it was his duty to drive it off.
Swooping down near his adversary he waved good-bye, the enemy pilot
did likewise, and Lufbery whirred off to chase the other
representative of Kultur. He caught up with him and dove to the
attack, but he was surprised by a German he had not seen. Before he
could escape three bullets entered his motor, two passed through the
fur-lined combination he wore, another ripped open one of his woolen
flying boots, his airplane was riddled from wing tip to wing tip, and
other bullets cut the elevating plane. Had he not been an exceptional
aviator he never would have brought safely to earth so badly damaged a
machine. It was so thoroughly shot up that it was junked as being
beyond repairs. Fortunately Lufbery was over French territory or his
forced descent would have resulted in his being made prisoner.

I know of only one other airplane that was safely landed after
receiving as heavy punishment as did Lufbery's. It was a two-place
Nieuport piloted by a young Frenchman named Fontaine with whom I
trained. He and his gunner attacked a German over the Bois le Pretre
who dove rapidly far into his lines. Fontaine followed and in turn was
attacked by three other Boches. He dropped to escape, they plunged
after him forcing him lower. He looked and saw a German aviation field
under him. He was by this time only 2,000 feet above the ground.
Fontaine saw the mechanics rush out to grasp him, thinking he would
land. The attacking airplanes had stopped shooting. Fontaine pulled on
full power and headed for the lines. The German planes dropped down on
him and again opened fire. They were on his level, behind and on his
sides. Bullets whistled by him in streams. The rapid-fire gun on
Fontaine's machine had jammed and he was helpless. His gunner fell
forward on him, dead. The trenches were just ahead, but as he was
slanting downward to gain speed he had lost a good deal of height, and
was at only six hundred feet when he crossed the lines, from which he
received a ground fire. The Germans gave up the chase and Fontaine
landed with his dead gunner. His wings were so full of holes that they
barely supported the machine in the air.

The uncertain wait at Luxeuil finally came to an end on the 12th of
October. The afternoon of that day the British did not say: "Come on
Yanks, let's call off the war and have tea," as was their wont, for
the bombardment of Oberndorf was on. The British and French machines
had been prepared. Just before climbing into their airplanes the
pilots were given their orders. The English in their single-seated
Sopwiths, which carried four bombs each, were the first to leave. The
big French Brequets and Farmans then soared aloft with their tons of
explosive destined for the Mauser works. The fighting machines, which
were to convoy them as far as the Rhine, rapidly gained their height
and circled above their charges. Four of the battleplanes were from
the American escadrille. They were piloted respectively by Lieutenant
de Laage, Lufbery, Norman Prince, and Masson.

The Germans were taken by surprise and as a result few of their
machines were in the air. The bombardment fleet was attacked, however,
and six of its planes shot down, some of them falling in flames.
Baron, the famous French night bombarder, lost his life in one of the
Farmans. Two Germans were brought down by machines they attacked and
the four pilots from the American escadrille accounted for one each.
Lieutenant de Laage shot down his Boche as it was attacking another
French machine and Masson did likewise. Explaining it afterward he
said: "All of a sudden I saw a Boche come in between me and a Breguet
I was following. I just began to shoot, and darned if he didn't fall."

As the fuel capacity of a Nieuport allows but little more than two
hours in the air the _avions de chasse_ were forced to return to their
own lines to take on more gasoline, while the bombardment planes
continued on into Germany. The Sopwiths arrived first at Oberndorf.
Dropping low over the Mauser works they discharged their bombs and
headed homeward. All arrived, save one, whose pilot lost his way and
came to earth in Switzerland. When the big machines got to Oberndorf
they saw only flames and smoke where once the rifle factory stood.
They unloaded their explosives on the burning mass.

The Nieuports having refilled their tanks went up to clear the air of
Germans that might be hovering in wait for the returning raiders.
Prince found one and promptly shot it down. Lufbery came upon three.
He drove for one, making it drop below the others, then forcing a
second to descend, attacked the one remaining above. The combat was
short and at the end of it the German tumbled to earth. This made the
fifth enemy machine which was officially credited to Lufbery. When a
pilot has accounted for five Boches he is mentioned by name in the
official communication, and is spoken of as an "Ace," which in French
aërial slang means a super-pilot. Papers are allowed to call an "ace"
by name, print his picture and give him a write-up. The successful
aviator becomes a national hero. When Lufbery worked into this
category the French papers made him a head liner. The American "Ace,"
with his string of medals, then came in for the ennuis of a matinee
idol. The choicest bit in the collection was a letter from
Wallingford, Conn., his home town, thanking him for putting it on the
map.

Darkness was coming rapidly on but Prince and Lufbery remained in the
air to protect the bombardment fleet. Just at nightfall Lufbery made
for a small aviation field near the lines, known as Corcieux.
Slow-moving machines, with great planing capacity, can be landed in
the dark, but to try and feel for the ground in a Nieuport, which
comes down at about a hundred miles an hour, is to court disaster. Ten
minutes after Lufbery landed Prince decided to make for the field. He
spiraled down through the night air and skimmed rapidly over the trees
bordering the Corcieux field. In the dark he did not see a
high-tension electric cable that was stretched just above the tree
tops. The landing gear of his airplane struck it. The machine snapped
forward and hit the ground on its nose. It turned over and over. The
belt holding Prince broke and he was thrown far from the wrecked
plane. Both of his legs were broken and he naturally suffered internal
injuries. In spite of the terrific shock and his intense pain Prince
did not lose consciousness. He even kept his presence of mind and
gave orders to the men who had run to pick him up. Hearing the hum of
a motor, and realizing a machine was in the air, Prince told them to
light gasoline fires on the field. "You don't want another fellow to
come down and break himself up the way I've done," he said.

Lufbery went with Prince to the hospital in Gerardmer. As the
ambulance rolled along Prince sang to keep up his spirits. He spoke of
getting well soon and returning to service. It was like Norman. He
was always energetic about his flying. Even when he passed through
the harrowing experience of having a wing shattered, the first thing
he did on landing was to busy himself about getting another fitted in
place and the next morning he was in the air again.

No one thought that Prince was mortally injured but the next day he
went into a coma. A blood clot had formed on his brain. Captain Haff
in command of the aviation groups of Luxeuil, accompanied by our
officers, hastened to Gerardmer. Prince lying unconscious on his bed,
was named a second lieutenant and decorated with the Legion of Honor.
He already held the Médaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre. Norman
Prince died on the 15th of October. He was brought back to Luxeuil and
given a funeral similar to Rockwell's. It was hard to realize that
poor old Norman had gone. He was the founder of the American
escadrille and every one in it had come to rely on him. He never let
his own spirits drop, and was always on hand with encouragement for
the others. I do not think Prince minded going. He wanted to do his
part before being killed, and he had more than done it. He had, day
after day, freed the line of Germans, making it impossible for them to
do their work, and three of them he had shot to earth.

Two days after Prince's death the escadrille received orders to leave
for the Somme. The night before the departure the British gave the
American pilots a farewell banquet and toasted them as their "Guardian
Angels." They keenly appreciated the fact that four men from the
American escadrille had brought down four Germans, and had cleared the
way for their squadron returning from Oberndorf. When the train pulled
out the next day the station platform was packed by khaki-clad pilots
waving good-bye to their friends the "Yanks."

The escadrille passed through Paris on its way to the Somme front. The
few members who had machines flew from Luxeuil to their new post. At
Paris the pilots were reënforced by three other American boys who had
completed their training. They were: Fred Prince, who ten months
before had come over from Boston to serve in aviation with his brother
Norman; Willis Haviland, of Chicago, who left the American Ambulance
for the life of a birdman, and Bob Soubrian, of New York, who had been
transferred from the Foreign Legion to the flying corps after being
wounded in the Champagne offensive.

Before its arrival in the Somme the escadrille had always been
quartered in towns and the life of the pilots was all that could be
desired in the way of comforts. We had, as a result, come to believe
that we would wage only a de luxe war, and were unprepared for any
other sort of campaign. The introduction to the Somme was a rude
awakening. Instead of being quartered in a villa or hotel, the pilots
were directed to a portable barracks newly erected in a sea of mud.

It was set in a cluster of similar barns nine miles from the nearest
town. A sieve was a watertight compartment in comparison with that
elongated shed. The damp cold penetrated through every crack, chilling
one to the bone. There were no blankets and until they were procured
the pilots had to curl up in their flying clothes. There were no
arrangements for cooking and the Americans depended on the other
escadrilles for food. Eight fighting units were located at the same
field and our ever-generous French comrades saw to it that no one went
hungry. The thick mist, for which the Somme is famous, hung like a
pall over the birdmen's nest dampening both the clothes and spirits of
the men.

Something had to be done, so Thaw and Masson, who is our _Chef de
Popote_ (President of the Mess) obtained permission to go to Paris in
one of our light trucks. They returned with cooking utensils, a stove,
and other necessary things. All hands set to work and as a result life
was made bearable. In fact I was surprised to find the quarters as
good as they were when I rejoined the escadrille a couple of weeks
after its arrival in the Somme. Outside of the cold, mud, and dampness
it wasn't so bad. The barracks had been partitioned off into little
rooms leaving a large space for a dining hall. The stove is set up
there and all animate life from the lion cub to the pilots centre
around its warming glow.

The eight escadrilles of fighting machines form a rather interesting
colony. The large canvas hangars are surrounded by the house tents of
their respective escadrilles; wooden barracks for the men and pilots
are in close proximity, and sandwiched in between the encampments of
the various units are the tents where the commanding officers hold
forth. In addition there is a bath house where one may go and freeze
while a tiny stream of hot water trickles down one's shivering form.
Another shack houses the power plant which generates electric light
for the tents and barracks, and in one very popular canvas is located
the community bar, the profits from which go to the Red Cross.

We had never before been grouped with as many other fighting
escadrilles, nor at a field so near the front. We sensed the war to
better advantage than at Luxeuil or Bar-le-Duc. When there is
activity on the lines the rumble of heavy artillery reaches us in a
heavy volume of sound. From the field one can see the line of
sausage-shaped observation balloons, which delineate the front, and
beyond them the high-flying airplanes, darting like swallows in the
shrapnel puffs of anti-air-craft fire. The roar of motors that are
being tested, is punctuated by the staccato barking of machine guns,
and at intervals the hollow whistling sound of a fast plane diving to
earth is added to this symphony of war notes.




CHAPTER III

PERSONAL LETTERS FROM SERGEANT McCONNELL--AT THE FRONT


We're still waiting for our machines. In the meantime the Boches sail
gaily over and drop bombs. One of our drivers has been killed and five
wounded so far but we'll put a stop to it soon. The machines have
left and are due to-day.

You ask me what my work will be and how my machine is armed. First of
all I mount an _avion de chasse_ and am supposed to shoot down Boches
or keep them away from over our lines. I do not do observation, or
regulating of artillery fire. These are handled by escadrilles
equipped with bigger machines. I mount at daybreak over the lines;
stay at from 11,000 to 15,000 feet and wait for the sight of an enemy
plane. It may be a bombardment machine, a regulator of fire, an
observer, or an _avion de chasse_ looking for me. Whatever she is I
make for her and manoeuvre for position. All the machines carry
different gun positions and one seeks the blind side. Having obtained
the proper position one turns down or up, whichever the case may be,
and, when within fifty yards, opens up with the machine gun. That is
on the upper plane and it is sighted by a series of holes and cross
webs. As one is passing at a terrific rate there is not time for many
shots, so, unless wounded or one's machine is injured by the first
try--for the enemy plane shoots, too--one tries it again and again
until there's nothing doing or the other fellow is dropped. Apart from
work over the lines, which is comparatively calm, there is the job of
convoying bombardment machines. That is the rotten task. The captain
has called on us to act as guards on the next trip. You see we are
like torpedo boats of the air with our swift machines.

We have the honour of being attached to a bombardment squadron that is
the most famous in the French Army. The captain of the unit once lost
his whole escadrille, and on the last trip eight lost their lives. It
was a wonderful fight. The squadron was attacked by thirty-three
Boches. Two French planes crashed to earth--then two German; another
German was set on fire and streaked down, followed by a streaming
column of smoke. Another Frenchman fell; another German; and then a
French lieutenant, mortally wounded and realizing that he was dying,
plunged his airplane into a German below him and both fell to earth
like stones.

The tours of Alsace and the Vosges that we have made, to look over
possible landing places, were wonderful. I've never seen such
ravishing sights, and in regarding the beauty of the country I have
missed noting the landing places. The valleys are marvellous. On each
side the mountain slopes are a solid mass of giant pines and down
these avenues of green tumble myriads of glittering cascades which
form into sparkling streams beneath. It is a pleasant feeling to go
into Alsace and realize that one is touring over country we have taken
from the Germans. It's a treat to go by auto that way. In the air, you
know, one feels detached from all below. It's a different world, that
has no particular meaning, and besides, it all looks flat and of a
weary pattern.


THE FIRST TRIP

Well, I've made my first trip over the lines and proved a few things
to myself. First, I can stand high altitudes. I had never been higher
than 7,000 feet before, nor had I flown more than an hour. On my trip
to Germany I went to 14,000 feet and was in the air for two hours. I
wore the fur head-to-foot combination they give one and paper gloves
under the fur ones you sent me. I was not cold. In a way it seemed
amusing to be going out knowing as little as I do. My mitrailleuse
had been mounted the night before. I had never fired it, nor did I
know the country at all even though I'd motored along our lines. I
followed the others or I surely should have been lost. I shall have to
make special trips to study the land and be able to make it out from
my map which I carry on board. For one thing the weather was hazy and
clouds obscured the view.

We left en escadrille, at 30-second intervals, at 6:30 A.M. I'd been
on guard since three, waiting for an enemy plane. I climbed to 3,500
feet in four minutes and so started off higher than the rest. I lost
them immediately but took a compass course in the direction we were
headed. Clouds were below me and I could see the earth only in spots.
Ahead was a great barrier of clouds and fog. It seemed like a
limitless ocean. To the south the Alps jutted up through the clouds
and glistened like icebergs in the morning sun. I began to feel
completely lost. I was at 7,000 feet and that was all I knew. Suddenly
I saw a little black speck pop out of a cloud to my left--then two
others. They were our machines and from then on I never let them get
out of my sight. I went to 14,000 in order to be able to keep them
well in view below me. We went over Belfort which I recognized, and,
turning, went toward the lines. The clouds had dispersed by this time.
Alsace was below us and in the distance I could see the straight
course of the Rhine. It looked very small. I looked down and saw the
trenches and when I next looked for our machines I saw clusters of
smoke puffs. We were being fired at. One machine just under me seemed
to be in the centre of a lot of shrapnel. The puffs were white, or
black, or green, depending on the size of the shell used. It struck me
as more amusing than anything else to watch the explosions and smoke.
I thought of what a lot of money we were making the Germans spend. It
is not often that they hit. The day before one of our machines had a
part of the tail shot away and the propeller nicked, but that's just
bum luck. Two shells went off just at my height and in a way that led
me to think that the third one would get me; but it didn't. It's hard
even for the aviator to tell how far off they are. We went over
Mulhouse and to the north. Then we sailed south and turned over the
lines on the way home. I was very tired after the flight but it was
because I was not used to it and it was a strain on me keeping a
look-out for the others.


AT VERDUN

To-day the army moving picture outfit took pictures of us. We had a
big show. Thirty bombardment planes went off like clock-work and we
followed. We circled and swooped down by the camera. We were taken in
groups, then individually, in flying togs, and God knows what-all.
They will be shown in the States.

If you happen to see them you will recognize my machine by the MAC,
painted on the side.

Seems quite an important thing to have one's own airplane with two
mechanics to take care of it, to help one dress for flights, and to
obey orders. A pilot of no matter what grade is like an officer in any
other arm.

We didn't see any Boche planes on our trip. We were too many. The only
way to do is to sneak up on them.

I do not get a chance to see much of the biggest battle in the world
which is being fought here, for I'm on a fighting machine and the sky
is my province. We fly so high that ground details are lacking. Where
the battle has raged there is a broad, browned band. It is a great
strip of murdered Nature. Trees, houses, and even roads have been
blasted completely away. The shell holes are so numerous that they
blend into one another and cannot be separately seen. It looks as if
shells fell by the thousand every second. There are spurts of smoke at
nearly every foot of the brown areas and a thick pall of mist covers
it all. There are but holes where the trenches ran, and when one
thinks of the poor devils crouching in their inadequate shelters under
such a hurricane of flying metal, it increases one's respect for the
staying powers of modern man. It's terrible to watch, and I feel sad
every time I look down. The only shooting we hear is the tut-tut-tut
of our own or enemy plane's machine guns when fighting is at close
quarters. The Germans shoot explosive bullets from theirs. I must
admit that they have an excellent air fleet even if they do not fight
decently.

I'm a sergeant now--_sergent_ in French--and I get about two francs
more a day and wear a gold band on my cap, which makes old
territorials think I'm an officer and occasions salutes which are some
bother.


A SORTIE

We made a foolish sortie this morning. Only five of us went, the
others remaining in bed thinking the weather was too bad. It was. When
at only 3,000 feet we hit a solid layer of clouds, and when we had
passed through, we couldn't see anything but a shimmering field of
white. Above were the bright sun and the blue sky, but how we were in
regard to the earth no one knew. Fortunately the clouds had a big
hole in them at one point and the whole mass was moving toward the
lines. By circling, climbing, and dropping we stayed above the hole,
and, when over the trenches, worked into it, ready to fall on the
Boches. It's a stunt they use, too. We finally found ourselves 20
kilometres in the German lines. In coming back I steered by compass
and then when I thought I was near the field I dived and found myself
not so far off, having the field in view. In the clouds it shakes
terribly and one feels as if one were in a canoe on a rough sea.


VICTOR CHAPMAN

I was mighty sorry to see old Victor Chapman go. He was one of the
finest men I've ever known. He was _too_ brave if anything. He was
exceptionally well educated, had a fine brain, and a heart as big as a
house. Why, on the day of his fatal trip, he had put oranges in his
machine to take to Balsley who was lying wounded with an explosive
bullet. He was going to land near the hospital after the sortie.

Received letter inclosing note from Chapman's father. I'm glad you
wrote him. I feel sure that some of my letters never reach you. I
never let more than a week go by without writing. Maybe I do not get
all yours, either.


A SMASH-UP

Weather has been fine and we've been doing a lot of work. Our
Lieutenant de Laage de Mieux, brought down a Boche. I had another
beautiful smash-up. Prince and I had stayed too long over the lines.
Important day as an attack was going on. It was getting dark and we
could see the tiny balls of fire the infantry light to show the
low-flying observation machines their new positions. On my return,
when I was over another aviation field, my motor broke. I made for
field. In the darkness I couldn't judge my distance well, and went too
far. At the edge of the field there were trees, and beyond, a deep cut
where a road ran. I was skimming ground at a hundred miles an hour and
heading for the trees. I saw soldiers running to be in at the finish
and I thought to myself that James's hash was cooked, but I went
between two trees and ended up head on against the opposite bank of
the road. My motor took the shock and my belt held me. As my tail went
up it was cut in two by some very low 'phone wires. I wasn't even
bruised. Took dinner with the officers there who gave me a car to go
home in afterward.


FIGHTING A BOCHE

To-day I shared another chap's machine (Hill of Peekskill), and got it
shot up for him. De Laage (our lieutenant) and I made a sortie at
noon. When over the German lines, near _Côte_ 304, I saw two Boches
under me. I picked out the rear chap and dived. Fired a few shots and
then tried to get under his tail and hit him from there. I missed, and
bobbed up alongside of him. Fine for the Boche, but rotten for me! I
could see his gunner working the mitrailleuse for fair, and felt his
bullets darn close. I dived, for I could not shoot from that
position, and beat it. He kept plunking away and altogether put seven
holes in my machine. One was only ten inches in from me. De Laage was
too far off to get to the Boche and ruin him while I was amusing him.

Yesterday I motored up to an aviation camp to see a Boche machine that
had been forced to land and was captured. On the way up I passed a
cantonment of Senegalese. About twenty of 'em jumped up from the bench
they were sitting on and gave me the hell of a salute. Thought I was a
general because I was riding in a car, I guess. They're the blackest
niggers you ever saw. Good-looking soldiers. Can't stand shelling but
they're good on the cold steel end of the game. The Boche machine was
a beauty. Its motor is excellent and she carries a machine gun aft and
one forward. Same kind of a machine I attacked to-day. The German
pilots must be mighty cold-footed, for if the Frenchmen had airplanes
like that they surely would raise the devil with the Boches.

As it is the Boches keep well within their lines, save occasionally,
and we have to go over and fight them there.


KIFFIN ROCKWELL

Poor Kiffin Rockwell has been killed. He was known and admired far
and wide, and he was accorded extraordinary honours. Fifty English
pilots and eight hundred aviation men from the British unit in the
Vosges marched at his funeral. There was a regiment of Territorials
and a battalion of Colonial troops in addition to the hundreds of
French pilots and aviation men. Captain Thénault of the American
Escadrille delivered an exceptionally eulogistic funeral oration. He
spoke at length of Rockwell's ideals and his magnificent work. He told
of his combats. "When Rockwell was on the lines," he said, "no German
passed, but on the contrary was forced to seek a refuge on the
ground."

Rockwell made the _esprit_ of the escadrille, and the Captain voiced
the sentiments of us all when, in announcing his death, he said: "The
best and bravest of us all is no more."

How does the war look to you--as regards duration? We are figuring on
about ten more months, but then it may be ten more years. Of late
things are much brighter and one can feel a certain elation in the
air. Victory, before, was a sort of academic certainty; now, it's
felt.




CHAPTER IV

HOW FRANCE TRAINS PILOT AVIATORS


France now has thousands of men training to become military aviators,
and the flying schools, of which there is a very great number, are
turning out pilots at an astounding rate.

The process of training a man to be a pilot aviator naturally varies
in accordance with the type of machine on which he takes his first
instruction, and so the methods of the various schools depend on the
apparatus upon which they teach an _élève pilote_--as an embryonic
aviator is called--to fly.

In the case of the larger biplanes, a student goes up in a
dual-control airplane, accompanied by an old pilot, who, after first
taking him on many short trips, then allows him part, and later full,
control, and who immediately corrects any false moves made by him.
After that, short, straight line flights are made alone in a
smaller-powered machine by the student, and, following that, the
training goes on by degrees to the point where a certain mastery of
the apparatus is attained. Then follows the prescribed "stunts" and
voyages necessary to obtain the military brevet.


TRAINING FOR PURSUIT AIRPLANES

The method of training a pilot for a small, fast _avion de chasse_, as
a fighting airplane is termed, is quite different, and as it is the
most thorough and interesting I will take that course up in greater
detail.

The man who trains for one of these machines never has the advantage
of going first into the air in a double-control airplane. He is alone
when he first leaves the earth, and so the training preparatory to
that stage is very carefully planned to teach a man the habit of
control in such a way that all the essential movements will come
naturally when he first finds himself face to face with the new
problems the air has set for him. In this preparatory training a great
deal of weeding out is effected, for a man's aptitude for the work
shows up, and unless he is by nature especially well fitted he is
transferred to the division which teaches one to fly the larger and
safer machines.

First of all, the student is put on what is called a roller. It is a
low-powered machine with very small wings. It is strongly built to
stand the rough wear it gets, and no matter how much one might try it
could not leave the ground. The apparatus is jokingly and universally
known as a Penguin, both because of its humorous resemblance to the
quaint arctic birds and its inability in common with them to do any
flying. A student makes a few trips up and down the field in a
double-control Penguin, and learns how to steer with his feet. Then he
gets into a single-seated one and, while the rapidly whirling
propeller is pulling him along, tries to keep the Penguin in a
straight line. The slightest mistake or delayed movement will send the
machine skidding off to the right or left, and sometimes, if the motor
is not stopped in time, over on its side or back. Something is always
being broken on a Penguin, and so a reserve flock is kept at the side
of the field in order that no time may be lost.

After one is able to keep a fairly straight line, he is put on a
Penguin that moves at a faster rate, and after being able to handle it
successfully passes to a very speedy one, known as the "rapid." Here
one learns to keep the tail of the machine at a proper angle by means
of the elevating lever, and to make a perfectly straight line. When
this has been accomplished and the monitor is thoroughly convinced
that the student is absolutely certain of making no mistakes in
guiding with his feet, the young aviator is passed on to the class
which teaches him how to leave the ground. As one passes from one
machine to another one finds that the foot movements must be made
smaller and smaller. The increased speed makes the machine more and
more responsive to the rudder, and as a result the foot movements
become so gentle when one gets into the air that they must come
instinctively.


FIRST FLIGHTS ALONE

The class where one will leave the ground has now been reached, and an
outfit of leather clothes and casque is given to the would-be pilot.
The machines used at this stage are low-powered monoplanes of the
Blériot type, which, though being capable of leaving the ground,
cannot rise more than a few feet. They do not run when the wind is
blowing or when there are any movements of air from the ground, for
though a great deal of balancing is done by correcting with the
rudder, the student knows nothing of maintaining the lateral
stability, and if caught in the air by a bad movement would be apt to
sustain a severe accident. He has now only to learn how to take the
machine off the ground and hold it at a low line of flight for a few
moments.

For the first time one is strapped into the seat of the machine, and
this continues to be the case from this point on. The motor is
started, and one begins to roll swiftly along the ground. The tail is
brought to an angle slightly above a straight line. Then one sits
tight and waits. Suddenly the motion seems softer, the motor does not
roar so loudly, and the ground is slipping away. The class standing at
the end of the line looks far below; the individuals are very small,
but though you imagine you are going too high, you must not push to go
down more than the smallest fraction, or the machine will dive and
smash. The small push has brought you down with a bump from a
seemingly great height. In reality you have been but three feet off
the ground. Little by little the student becomes accustomed to leaving
the ground, for these short hop-skip-and-jump flights, and has learned
how to steer in the air.

If he has no bad smash-ups he is passed on to a class where he rises
higher, and is taught the rudiments of landing. If, after a few days,
that act is reasonably performed and the young pilot does not land too
hard, he is passed to the class where he goes about sixty feet high,
maintains his line of flight for five or six minutes and learns to
make a good landing from that height. He must by this time be able to
keep his machine on the line of flight without dipping and rising, and
the landings must be uniformly good. The instructor takes a great deal
of time showing the student the proper line of descent, for the
landings must be perfect before he can pass on.

Now comes the class where the pilot rises three or four hundred feet
high and travels for more than two miles in a straight line. Here he
is taught how to combat air movements and maintain lateral stability.
All the flying up to this point has been done in a straight line, but
now comes the class where one is taught to turn. Machines in this
division are almost as high powered as a regular flying machine, and
can easily climb to two thousand feet. The turn is at first very wide,
and then, as the student becomes more confident, it is done more
quickly, and while the machine leans at an angle that would frighten
one if the training in turning had not been gradual. When the pilot
can make reasonably close right and left turns, he is told to make
figure eights. After doing this well he is sent to the real flying
machines.

There is nothing in the way of a radical step from the turns and
figure eights to the real flying machines. It is a question of
becoming at ease in the better and faster airplanes taking greater
altitudes, making little trips, perfecting landings, and mastering all
the movements of correction that one is forced to make. Finally one is
taught how to shut off and start one's motor again in the air, and
then to go to a certain height, shut off the motor, make a half-turn
while dropping and start the motor again. After this, one climbs to
about two thousand feet and, shutting off the motor, spirals down to
within five hundred feet of the ground. When that has been practised
sufficiently, a registering altitude meter is strapped to the pilot's
back and he essays the official spiral, in which one must spiral all
the way to earth with the motor off, and come to a stop within a few
yards of a fixed point on the aviation grounds. After this, the
student passes to the voyage machines, which are of almost twice the
power of the machine used for the short trips and spirals.


TESTS FOR THE MILITARY BREVET

There are three voyages to make. Two consist in going to designated
towns an hour or so distant and returning. The third voyage is a
triangle. A landing is made at one point and the other two points are
only necessary to cross. In addition, there are two altitudes of about
seven thousand feet each that one has to attain either while on the
voyages or afterward.

The young pilot has not, up to this point, had any experience on
trips, and there is always a sense of adventure in starting out over
unknown country with only a roller map to guide one and the gauges and
controls, which need constant attention, to distract one from the
reading of the chart. Then, too, it is the first time that the student
has flown free and at a great height over the earth, and his sense of
exultation at navigating at will the boundless sky causes him to
imagine he is a real pilot. True it is that when the voyages and
altitudes are over, and his examinations in aeronautical sciences
passed, the student becomes officially a _pilote-aviateur_, and he can
wear two little gold-woven wings on his collar to designate his
capacity, and carry a winged propeller emblem on his arm, but he is
not ready for the difficult work of the front, and before he has time
to enjoy more than a few days' rest he is sent to a school of
_perfectionnement_. There the real, serious and thorough training
begins.

Schools where the pilots are trained on the modern machines--_écoles
de perfectionnement_ as they are called--are usually an annex to the
centres where the soldiers are taught to fly, though there are one or
two camps that are devoted exclusively to giving advanced instruction
to aviators who are to fly the _avions de chasse_, or fighting
machines. When the aviator enters one of these schools he is a
breveted pilot, and he is allowed a little more freedom than he
enjoyed during the time he was learning to fly.

He now takes up the Morane monoplane. It is interesting to note that
the German Fokker is practically a copy of this machine. After flying
for a while on a low-powered Morane and having mastered the landing,
the pilot is put on a new, higher-powered model of the same make. He
has a good many hours of flying, but his trips are very short, for the
whole idea is to familiarize one with the method of landing. The
Blériot has a landing gear that is elastic in action, and it is easy
to bring to earth. The Nieuport and other makes of small, fast
machines for which the pilot is training have a solid wheel base, and
good landings are much more difficult to make. The Morane pilot has
the same practices climbing to small altitudes around eight thousand
feet and picking his landing from that height with motor off. When he
becomes proficient in flying the single- and double-plane types he
leaves the school for another, where shooting with machine guns is
taught.

This course in shooting familiarizes one with various makes of machine
guns used on airplanes, and one learns to shoot at targets from the
air. After two or three weeks the pilot is sent to another school of
combat.


TRICK FLYING AND DOING STUNTS

These schools of combat are connected with the _écoles de
perfectionnement_ with which the pilot has finished. In the combat
school he learns battle tactics, how to fight singly and in fleet
formation, and how to extract himself from a too dangerous position.
Trips are made in squadron formation and sham battles are effected
with other escadrilles, as the smallest unit of an aërial fleet is
called. For the first time the pilot is allowed to do fancy flying. He
is taught how to loop the loop, slide on his wings or tail, go into
corkscrews and, more important, to get out of them, and is encouraged
to try new stunts.

Finally the pilot is considered well enough trained to be sent to the
reserve, where he waits his call to the front. At the reserve he flies
to keep his hand in, practises on any new make of machine that happens
to come out or that he may be put on in place of the Nieuport, and
receives information regarding old and new makes of enemy airplanes.

At last the pilot receives his call to the front, where he takes his
place in some established or newly formed escadrille. He is given a
new machine from the nearest airplane reserve centre, and he then
begins his active service in the war, which, if he survives the
course, is the best school of them all.




CHAPTER V

AGAINST ODDS


Since the publication of previous editions of "Flying for France" we
have obtained the following letters which add greatly to the interest
and complete the record of McConnell's connection with the Lafayette
Escadrille.



_March 19, 1917._

DEAR PAUL:

We are passing through some very interesting times. The boches are in
full retreat, offering very little resistance to the English and
French advance. The boches have systematically destroyed all the towns
and villages abandoned. Where they haven't burned a house, they have
made holes through the roofs with pickaxes. All the cross-roads are
blown up at the junctions, and when the trees bordering the roads
haven't been cut down, barricading the roads, they have been cut half
way through so that when the wind blows they keep falling on the
passing convoys. The inhabitants left in these villages are wild with
delight and are giving the troops an inspiring reception. In one town
the boches raped all the women before leaving, then locked them down
cellar, and carried off all the young girls with them.

We have been flying low, and watching the cavalry overrunning the
country. The boches are retreating to very strongly fortified
positions, where the advance is going to come up against a stone wall.

This morning Genet and McConnell flew well ahead of the advancing
army, Mac leading. Genet saw two boche planes maneuvering to get
above them, so he began to climb, too. Finally they got together; the
boche was a biplane and had the edge on Genet. Almost the first shot
got Genet in the cheek. Fortunately it was only a deep flesh wound,
and another shot almost broke the stanchion, which supports the wings,
in two. Genet stuck to the boche and opened fire on him. He knows he
hit the machine and at one time he thought he saw the machine on fire,
but nothing happened. At last the boche had Genet in a bad position,
so he (Genet) piqued down about a thousand meters and got away from
the boche. He looked around for Mac but couldn't find him, so he came
home. Mac hasn't yet shown up and we are frightfully worried. Genet
has a dim recollection that when he attacked the boche, the other
boche piqued down in Mac's direction, and it looks as if the boche got
Mac unawares. Late this afternoon we got a report that this morning a
Nieuport was seen to land near Tergnier, which is unfortunately still
in German hands. This must have been Mac's, in which case he is only
wounded, or perhaps only his machine was badly damaged. There is a
general feeling among us that Mac is all right. The French cavalry are
within ten or fifteen kilometers of Tergnier now and perhaps they will
take the place to-morrow, in which case we will certainly learn
something. This afternoon Lieut. de Laage and Lufbery landed at Ham,
where the advance infantry were, and made a lot of inquiries. It was
near this place where the fight started. Nobody had seen any machine
come down. You may be sure I will keep you informed of everything that
turns up. Genet is going to write you in a day or so.

Sincerely,

WALTER (signed Walter Lovell).

P. S. I apologize for the mistakes and the disconnectedness of this
letter, but I wrote it in frightful haste in order to get it in the
first post.



_March 20, 1917._

MY DEAR ROCKWELL:

I do not know if any of the boys have written you about the
disappearance of Jim, so perhaps you might know something about it
when this letter reaches you.

He left yesterday at 8:45 a.m. in his machine for the German lines,
and has not returned yet. He and Genet were attacked by two Germans,
the latter, who received a slight wound on the cheek, was so occupied
he did not see what became of Jim, and returned without him.

The combat took place between Ham and St. Quentin; the territory was
still occupied by the enemy when the combat took place. The worst I
hope has happened to our friend is that perhaps he was wounded and was
forced to land in the enemy's lines and was made prisoner. Nothing
definite is known. I shall write you immediately I get news.

I am extremely worried. To lose my friend would be a severe blow. I
can't and will not believe that anything serious has happened.

Best wishes,

Sincerely,

E. A. MARSHALL.



_Escadrille N. 124, Secteur Postal 182,_
 _March 21, 1917._

MY DEAR PAUL:

Had I been feeling less distressed and miserable on Monday morning, or
during yesterday, I would have written you then, but I told Lovell to
tell you how I felt when he wrote on Monday and that I would try and
write in a day or so. I am not feeling much better mentally but I'll
try and write something, for I am the only one who was out with poor
Mac on Monday morning and it just adds that much more to my distress.

As you know, we have had a big advance here, due to the deliberate
evacuation by the Germans, without much opposition, of the territory
now in the hands of the French and English. The advance began last
Thursday night and each day has brought the lines closer to Saint
Quentin and the region north and south of it.

On Monday morning Mac, Parsons, and myself went out at nine o'clock on
the third patrol of the escadrille. We had orders to protect
observation machines along the new lines around the region of Ham. Mac
was leader. I came second and Parsons followed me. Before we had gone
very far Parsons was forced to go back on account of motor trouble,
which handicapped us greatly on account of what followed, but of
course that cannot be remedied because Parsons was perfectly right in
returning when his motor was not running well. We all do that one time
or another.

Mac and I kept on and up to ten o'clock were circling around the
region of Ham, watching out for the heavier machines doing
reconnoitring work below us. We went higher than a thousand meters
during that time. About ten, for some reason or other of his own, Mac
suddenly headed into the German lines toward Saint Quentin and I
naturally followed close to his rear and above him. Perhaps he wanted
to make observations around Saint Quentin. At any rate, we had gotten
north of Ham and quite inside the hostile lines, when I saw two boche
machines crossing towards us from the region of Saint Quentin at an
altitude quite higher than ours. We were then about 1,600 meters. I
supposed Mac saw them the same as I did. One boche was much farther
ahead than the other, and was headed as if he would dive at any moment
on Mac. I glanced ahead at Mac and saw what direction he was taking,
and then pulled back to climb up as quickly as possible to gain an
advantageous height over the nearest boche. It was cloudy and misty
and I had to keep my eyes on him all the time, so naturally I couldn't
watch Mac. The second boche was still much farther off than his mate.
By this time I had gotten to 2,200, the boche was almost up to me and
taking a diagonal course right in front. He started to circle and his
gunner--it was a biplane, probably an Albatross, although the mist was
too thick and dark for me to see much but the bare outline of his
dirty, dark green body, with white and black crosses--opened fire
before I did and his first volley did some damage. One bullet cut the
left central support of my upper wing in half, an explosive bullet cut
in half the left guiding rod of the left aileron, and I was
momentarily stunned by part of it which dug a nasty gouge into my left
cheek. I had already opened fire and was driving straight for the
boche with teeth set and my hand gripping the triggers making a
veritable stream of fire spitting out of my gun at him, as I had
incendiary bullets, it being my job lately to chase after observation
balloons, and on Saturday morning I had also been up after the
reported Zeppelins. I had to keep turning toward the boche every
second, as he was circling around towards me and I was on the inside
of the circle, so his gunner had all the advantage over me. I thought
I had him on fire for one instant as I saw--or supposed I did--flames
on his fuselage. Everything passed in a few seconds and we swung past
each other in opposite directions at scarcely twenty-five meters from
each other--the boche beating off towards the north and I immediately
dived down in the opposite direction wondering every second whether
the broken wing support would hold together or not and feeling weak
and stunned from the hole in my face. A battery opened a heavy fire on
me as I went down, the shells breaking just behind me. I straightened
out over Ham at a thousand meters, and began to circle around to look
for Mac or the other boche, but saw absolutely nothing the entire
fifteen minutes I stayed there. I was fearful every minute that my
whole top wing would come off, and I thought that possibly Mac had
gotten around toward the west over our lines, missed me, and was
already on his way back to camp. So I finally turned back for our
camp, having to fly very low and against a strong northern wind, on
account of low clouds just forming. I got back at a quarter to eleven
and my first question to my mechanic was: "Has McConnell returned?"

He hadn't, Paul, and no news of any sort have we had of him yet,
although we hoped and prayed every hour yesterday for some word to
come in. The one hope that we have is that on account of this
continued advance some news will be brought in of Mac through
civilians who might have witnessed his flight over the lines north of
Ham, while they were still in the hands of the enemy, for many of the
civilians in the villages around there are being left by the Germans
as they retire. We can likewise hope that Mac was merely forced to
land inside the enemy lines on account of a badly damaged machine, or
a bad wound, and is well but a prisoner. I wish to God, Paul, that I
had been able to see Mac during his combat, or had been able to get
down to him sooner and help him. The mists were thick, and
consequently seeing far was difficult. I would have gone out that
afternoon to look for him but my machine was so damaged it took until
yesterday afternoon to be repaired. Lieut. de Laage and Lufbery did
go out with their Spads and looked all around the region north of Ham
towards Saint Quentin but saw nothing at all of a Nieuport on the
ground, or anything else to give news of what had occurred.

The French are still not far enough towards Saint Quentin to be on the
territory where the chances are Mac landed, so we'll still have to
wait for to-day's developments for any possibility of news. I got lots
of hope, Paul, that Mac is at least alive although undoubtedly a
prisoner. I know how badly the news has affected you. We're all
feeling mighty blue over it and as for myself--I'm feeling utterly
miserable over the whole affair. Just as soon as any definite news
comes in I'll surely let you know at once. Meanwhile, keep cheered and
hopeful. There's no use in losing hope yet. If a prisoner Mac may even
be able to escape and return to our lines, on account of the very
unsettled state of the retreating Germans. Others have done so under
much less favorable conditions.

I hope you are having a very enjoyable trip through the South. Walter
showed me the postal you wrote him, which he received yesterday.
Please give my very warm regards to your wife. Write as soon as you
can, too.

Very faithfully yours,

EDMOND C. C. GENET.



_March 22, 1917._

MY DEAR ROCKWELL:

Still no news about Jim. Last night the captain sent out a request to
the military authorities to have our troops advancing in the direction
of Saint Quentin report immediately any particulars about avion 2055.
Even now I cannot reconcile myself concerning Jim's fate. I hope he
has been made prisoner.

Just a few words about myself. I am awaiting the results of my
friends' actions in the States on my behalf. I am placed in a peculiar
position in the escadrille. I have nothing to do here. Shall I take
care of Jim's belongings?

Best wishes,

Sincerely,

E. A. MARSHALL.



_Escadrille N. 124, Secteur Postal 182,_
 _March 23, 1917._

DEAR PAUL:

In my letter I promised to send you word as soon as any definite news
came in concerning poor Mac. To-day word came in from a group of
French cavalry that they witnessed our fight on Monday morning and
that they saw Mac brought down inside the German lines towards Saint
Quentin after being attacked by two boche machines and at the same
time they saw me fighting a third one higher than Mac, and that just
as I piqued down Mac fell so there were three boche machines instead
of two, as I supposed, having missed seeing the third one on account
of the heavy clouds and mist around us.

There is still the hope that Mac wasn't killed but only wounded and a
prisoner. If he is we'll learn of it later. The cavalrymen didn't say
whether he came down normally or fell. Possibly he was too far off
really to tell definitely about that. Certainly he had been already
brought down before I could get down to help him after the boche I
attacked beat it off. Had I known there were three boche machines I
certainly would not have played around that boche at such a distance
from Mac.

When will Mrs. Weeks return to Paris from the States? Will you write
and tell her about Mac? She'll be mighty well grieved to hear of it, I
know, and you'll be the best one to break it to her.

Write to me soon. Best regards to Mrs. Rockwell.

E. GENET.



_March 24th, a. m._
 _C. Aeronatique, Noyon & D. C. 13._

MY DEAR ROCKWELL:

The targe element informs us that it has found, in the environs of the
Bois l'Abbe, a Nieuport No. 2055. The aviator, a sergeant, has been
dead since three days, in the opinion of the doctor. His pockets
appear to have been searched, for no papers were found on him. The
Bois l'Abbe is two kilometers south of Jussy. The above message
received by us at ten o'clock last night. Jussy is on the main road
between Saint Quentin and Chauny. I expect to go back to the infantry
soon.

Sincerely, E. A. MARSHALL.



_Escadrille N. 124, Secteur Postal 182,_
 _March 25, 1917._

DEAR PAUL:

The evening before last definite news was brought to us that a badly
smashed Nieuport had been found by French troops, beside which was the
body of a sergeant-pilot which had been there at least three days and
had been stripped of all identification papers, flying clothes and
even the boots. They got the number of the machine, which proved
without further question that it was poor Mac. They gave the location
as being at the little village of Petit Detroit, which is just south
of Flavy-le-Martel, the latter place being about ten kilometers east
of Ham on the railroad running from Ham to La Fere.

After having made a flight over the lines yesterday morning, I went
down around Petit Detroit to locate the machine. There was no decent
place there on which to land so I circled around over it for a few
minutes to see in which condition it (the Nieuport) was. The machine
was scarcely distinguishable so badly had it smashed into the ground,
and there is scarcely any doubt, Paul, that Mac was killed while
having his fight in the air, as no pilot would have attempted to land
a machine in the tiny rotten field--no more than a little orchard
beside the road--voluntarily. It seems almost certain that he struck
the ground with full motor on. Captain Thénault landed some distance
from there that he might go over there in a car and see just what
could be done about poor Mac's body. When he returned last night he
told us the following:

Mac, he said, was as badly mangled as the machine and had been
relieved of his flying suit by the damned boches, also of his shoes
and all papers. The machine had struck the ground so hard that it was
half buried, the motor being totally in the earth and the rest,
including even the machine gun, completely smashed. It was just beside
the main road, in a small field containing apple trees cut down by the
retreating boches, and just at the southern edge of the village.

Mac has been buried right there beside the road, and we will see that
the grave is decently marked with a cross, etc. The captain brought
back a square piece of canvas cut from one of the wings, and we are
going to get a good picture we have of Mac enlarged and placed on this
with a frame. I suppose that Thaw or Johnson will attend to the
belongings of Mac which he had written are to be sent to you to care
for. In the letter which he had left for just such an occasion as this
he concludes with the following words: "Good luck to the rest of you.
God damn Germany and vive la France!"

All honour to him, Paul. The world will look up to him, as well as
France, for whom he died so gloriously, just as it is looking up to
your fine brother and the rest of us who have given their lives so
freely and gladly for this big cause.

Warmest regards, etc.,

Faithfully,

EDMOND C. C. GENET.

P. S. The captain has already put in a proposal for a citation for
Mac, and also one for me. Mac surely deserved it, and lots more too.



_Escadrille N. 124, S. P. 182,_
 _March 27, 1917._

DEAR PAUL:

I got your postcard to-day and would have written you sooner about
poor Jim but haven't been up to it, which I know you understand.

It hit me pretty hard, Paul, for as you know we were in school and
college together, and for the last four or five years have been very
intimate, living in N.C. and New York together.

It's hell, Paul, that all the good boys are being picked off. The
damned Huns have raised hell with the old crowd, but I think we have
given them more than we have received. The boys who have gone made
the name for the escadrille and now it's up to us who are left
(especially the old Verdun crowd) to keep her going and make the
boches suffer.

Like old Kiffin, Mac died gloriously and in full action. It was in a
fight with three Germans in their lines. Genet took one Hun (and was
wounded). The last he saw was a Hun on Mac's back. Later we learned
from the cavalry that there were two on Mac and after a desperate
fight Mac crashed to the ground. This was the 19th of March. Three
days later we took the territory Mac fell in and they were unable to
distinguish who he was. The swine Huns had taken every paper or piece
of identification from him and also robbed him--even took his shoes.
The captain went over and was able to identify him by the number of
his machine and uniform. He had lain out there three days and was
smashed so terribly that you couldn't recognize his face. He was
buried where he fell in a coffin made from the door of a pillaged
house. His last resting place (and where he fell) is "Petit Detroit,"
which is a village southwest of Saint Quentin and north of Chauney. He
is buried just at the southeast end of the village and in a hell of a
small town.

Jim left a letter of which I am copying the important parts:

"In case of my death or made prisoner--which is worse--please send my
canteen and what money I have on me, or coming to me [he had none on
him as the Huns lifted that] to Mr. Paul A. Rockwell, 80 rue, etc.
Shoes, tools, wearing apparel, etc., you can give away. The rest of my
things, such as diary, photos, souvenirs, croix de guerre, best
uniform [he had best uniform on and I think the croix de
guerre--however, you may find the latter in his things, his other
uniform can't be found], please put in canteen and ship along.

"Kindly cable my sister, Mrs. Followsbee, 65 Bellevue Place, Chicago.
It would be kind to follow same by a letter telling about my death
[which I am doing].

"I have a box trunk in Paris containing belongings I would like to
send home. Paul R. knows about it and can attend to the shipping. I
would appreciate it if the committee of the American Escad. would pay
to Mr. Paul Rockwell the money needed to cover express.

"My burial is of no import. Make it as easy as possible for
yourselves. I have no religion and do not care for any service. If the
omission would embarrass you I presume I could stand the performance.
[Note Jim's keen sense of humour even to death instructions.]

"Good luck to the rest of you. God damn Germany and vive la France.

"Signed,

"J. R. McCONNELL."

Jim had on the day of his death been proposed for the Croix de Guerre
with palm. When it comes I shall send it to you.

Well, Paul, I have told you everything I can think of, but if there
are any omissions or questions don't hesitate to ask.

I think we are now beginning to see the beginning of the end. The
devastation, destruction and misery the Huns have left is a
disgraceful crime to civilization and is pitiful. It drives me so
furious I can't talk about it.

Best regards to you, old boy, and luck. All join in the above. I shall
wind up the same as Jim.

As always,

CHOUT (Charles Chouteau Johnson).

P. S. Steve Biglow is taking canteen to your place in Paris to-morrow,
so you will find it there upon your return.

C. C. J.











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