THE preceding chapters of this journal have been written to
little purpose if it has not been made clear that Drew and I, like most pilots
during the first weeks of service at the front, were worth little to the Allied
cause. We were warned often enough that the road to efficiency in military
aviation is a long and dangerous one. We were given much excellent advice by
aviators who knew what they were talking about. Much of this we solicited, in
fact, and then proceeded to disregard it item by item. Eager to get results, we
plunged into our work with the valor of ignorance, the result being that Drew
was shot down in one of his first encounters, escaping with his life by one of
those more than miracles for which there is no explanation. That I did not fare
as badly or worse is due solely to the indulgence of that godfather of ours,
already mentioned, who watched over my first flights while in a mood
beneficently pro-ally.
Drew's adventure followed soon after our first patrol, when
he had the near combat with the two-seater. Luckily, on that occasion, both the
German pilot and his machine-gunner were taken completely off their guard. Not
only did he attack with the sun squarely in his face, but he went down in a
long, gradual dive, in full view of the gunner, who could not have asked for a
better target. But the man was asleep, and this gave J. B. a dangerous contempt
for all gunners of enemy nationality.
Lieutenant Talbott cautioned him. "You have been lucky, but
don't get it into your head that this sort of thing happens often. Now, I'm
going to give you a standing order. You are not to attack again, neither of you
are to think of attacking, during your first month here. As likely as not it
would be your luck the next time to meet an old pilot. If you did, I would n't
give much for your chances. He would outmaneuver you in a minute. You will go
out on patrol with the others, of course; it's the only way to learn to fight.
But if you get lost, go back to our balloons and stay there until it is time to
go home."
Neither of us obeyed this order, and, as it happened, Drew
was the one to suffer. A group of American officers visited the squadron one
afternoon. In courtesy to our guests, it was decided to send out all the pilots
for an additional patrol, to show them how the thing was done. Twelve machines
were in readiness for the sortie, which was set for seven o'clock, the last one
of the day. We were to meet at three thousand metres, and then to divide
forces, one patrol to cover the east half of the sector and one the west.
We got away beautifully, with the exception of Drew, who had
motor-trouble and was five minutes late in starting. With his permission I
insert here his own account of the adventure a letter written while he
was in hospital.
No doubt you are wondering what happened, listening,
meanwhile, to many I-told-you-so explanations from the others. This will be
hard on you, but bear up, son. It might not be a bad plan to listen, with the
understanding as well as with the ear, to some expert advice on how to bag the
Hun. To quote the prophetic Miller, "I'm telling you this for your own good."
I gave my name and the number of the escadrille to the
medical officer at the poste de secours, He said he would 'phone the captain at
once, so that you must know before this, that I have been amazingly lucky. I
fell the greater part of two milescount 'em, two!before I actually
regained control, only to lose it again. I fainted while still several hundred
feet from the ground; but more of this later. Could n't sleep last night. Had a
fever and my brain went on a spree, taking advantage of my helplessness. I just
lay in bed and watched it function. Besides, there was a great artillery racket
all night long. It appeared to be coming from our sector, so you must have
heard it as well. This hospital is not very far back and we get the full
orchestral effect of heavy firing. The result is that I am dead tired to-day. I
believe I can sleep for a week.
They have given me a bed in the officers' ward me, a
corporal. It is because I am an American, of course. Wish there was some way of
showing one's appreciation for so much kindness. My neighbor.on the left is a
chasseur captain. A hand grenade exploded in his face. He will go through life
horribly disfigured. An old padre, with two machine-gun bullets in his hip, is
on the other side. He is very patient, but sometimes the pain is a little too
much for him. To a Frenchman, "Oh, la, la!" is an expression for every
conceivable kind of emotion. In the future it will mean unbearable physical
pain to me. Our orderlies are two poilus, long past military age. They are as
gentle and thoughtful as the nurses themselves. One of them brought me lemonade
all night long. Worth while getting wounded just to have something taste so
good.
I meant to finish this letter a week ago, but have n't felt
up to it. Quite perky this morning, so I'll go on with the tale of my "heroic
combat." Only, first, tell me how that absurd account of it got into the
"Herald"? I hope Talbott knows that I was not foolish enough to attack six
Germans single-handed. If he does n't, please enlighten him. His opinion of my
common sense must be low enough, as it is.
We were to meet over S at three thousand metres, you
remember, and to cover the sector at five thousand until dusk. I was late in
getting away, and by the time I reached the rendezvous you had all gone. There
was n't a chasse machine in sight. I ought to have gone back to the balloons as
Talbott advised, but thought it would be easy to pick you up later, so went on
alone after I had got some height. Crossed the lines at thirty-five hundred
metres, and finally got up to four thousand, which was the best I could do with
my rebuilt engine. The Huns started shelling, but there were only a few of them
that barked. I went down the lines for a quarter of an hour, meeting two
Sopwiths and a Letord, but no Spads. You were almost certain to be higher than
I, but my old packet was doing its best at four thousand, and getting
overheated with the exertion. Had to throttle down and pique several times to
cool off.
Then I saw youat least I thought it was you
about four kilometres inside the German lines. I counted six machines, well
grouped, one a good deal higher than the others and one several hundred metres
below them. The pilot on top was doing beautiful renversements and an
occasional barrel-turn, in Barry's manner. I was so certain it was our patrol
that I started over at once, to join you. It was getting dusk and I lost sight
of the machine lowest down for a few seconds. Without my knowing it, he was
approaching at exactly my altitude. You know how difficult it is to see a
machine in that position. Suddenly he loomed up in front of me like an express
train, as you have seen them approach from the depths of a moving-picture
screen, only ten times faster; and he was firing as he came. I realized my
awful mistake, of course. His tracer bullets were going by on the left side,
but he corrected his aim, and my motor seemed to be eating them up. I banked to
the right, and was about to cut my motor and dive, when I felt a smashing blow
in the left shoulder. A sickening sensation and a very peculiar one, not at all
what I thought it might feel like to be hit with a bullet. I believed that it
came from the German in front of me. But it could n't have, for he was still
approaching when I was hit, and I have learned here that the bullet entered
from behind.
This is the history of less than a minute I'm giving you. It
seemed much longer than that, but I don't suppose it was. I tried to shut down
the motor, but could n't manage it because my left arm was gone. I really
believed that it had been blown off into space until I glanced down and saw
that it was still there. But for any service it was to me, I might just as well
have lost it. There was a vacant period of ten or fifteen seconds which I can't
fill in. After that I knew that I was falling, with my motor going full speed.
It was a helpless realization. My brain refused to act. I could do nothing.
Finally, I did have one clear thought, "Am I on fire?" This cut right through
the fog, brought me up broad awake. I was falling almost vertically, in a sort
of half vrille. No machine but a Spad could have stood the strain. The Huns
were following me and were not far away, judging by the sound of their guns. I
fully expected to feel another bullet or two boring its way through. One did
cut the skin of my right leg, although I did n't know this until I reached the
hospital. Perhaps it was well that I did fall out of control, for the firing
soon stopped, the Germans thinking, and with reason, that they had bagged me.
Some proud Boche airman is wearing an iron cross on my account. Perhaps the
whole crew of dare-devils has been decorated. However, no unseemly sarcasm. We
would pounce on a lonely Hun just as quickly. There is no chivalry in war in
these modern days.
I pulled out of the spin, got the broomstick between my
knees, reached over, and shut down the motor with my right hand. The propeller
stopped dead. I did n't much care, being very drowsy and tired. The worst of it
was that I could n't get my breath. I was gasping as though I had been hit in
the pit of the stomach. Then I lost control again and started falling. It was
awful! I was almost ready to give up. I believe that I said, out loud, "I'm
going to be killed. This is my last sortie." At any rate, I thought it. Made
one last effort and came out in ligne de vol, as nearly as I could
judge, about one hundred and fifty metres from the ground. It was an ugly-
looking place for landing, trenches and shell-holes everywhere. I was wondering
in a vague way whether they were French or German, when I fell into the most
restful sleep I've ever had in my life.
I have no recollection of the crash, not the slightest. I
might have fallen as gently as a leaf. That is one thing to be thankful for
among a good many others. When I came to, it was at once, completely. I knew
that I was on a stretcher and remembered immediately exactly what had happened.
My heart was going pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, and I could hardly breathe, but I had
no sensation of pain except in my chest. This made me think that I had broken
every bone in my body. I tried moving first one leg, then the other, then my
arms, my head, my body. No trouble at all, except with my left arm and side.
I accepted the miracle without attempting to explain it, for
I had something more important to wonder about: who had the handles of my
stretcher? The first thing I did was to open my eyes, but I was bleeding from a
scratch on the forehead and saw only a red blur. I wiped them dry with my
sleeve and looked again. The broad back in front of me was covered with mud.
Impossible to distinguish the color of the tunic. But the shrapnel helmet above
it wasFrench! I was in French hands. If ever I live long enough in one
place, so that I may gather a few possessions and make a home for myself, on
one wall of my living-room I will have a bust-length portrait, rear view, of a
French brancardier, mud-covered back and battered tin hat.
Do you remember our walk with Menault in the rain, and the
dejeuner at the restaurant where they made such wonderful omelettes? I
am sure that you will recall the occasion, although you may have forgotten the
conversation. I have not forgotten one remark of Menault's apropos of talk
about risks. If a man were willing, he said, to stake everything for it, he
would accumulate an experience of fifteen or twenty minutes which would
compensate him, a thousand times over, for all the hazard. "And if you live to
be old," he said quaintly, "you can never be bored with life. You will have
something, always, very pleasant to think about." I mention this in connection
with my discovery that I was not in German hands. I have had five minutes of
perfect happiness without any background no thought of yesterday or
to-morrow to spoil it.
I said, "Bonjour, messieurs," in a gurgling voice.
The man in front turned his head sidewise and said,
"Tiens! Ca. va, monsieur l'aviateur?"
The other one said, "Ah, mon vieux!" You know the inflection
they give this expression, particularly when it means, "This is something
wonderful!" He added that they had seen the combat and my fall, and little
expected to find the pilot living, to say nothing of speaking. I hoped that
they would go on talking, but I was being carried along a trench; they had to
lift me shoulder-high at every turn, and needed all their energy. The Germans
were shelling the lines. Several fell fairly close, and they brought me down a
long flight of wooden steps into a dugout to wait until the worst of it should
be over. While waiting, they told me that I had fallen just within the
first-line trenches, at a spot where a slight rise in ground hid me from sight
of the enemy. Otherwise, they might have had a bad time rescuing me. My Spad
was completely wrecked. It fell squarely into a trench, the wings breaking the
force of the fall. Before reaching the ground, I turned, they said, and was
making straight for Germany. Fifty metres higher, and I would have come down in
No Man's Land.
For a long time we listened in silence to the subdued
crr-ump, crr-ump, of the shells. Sometimes showers of earth pattered down the
stairway, and we would hear the high-pitched, droning F-z-z-z of pieces of
shell-casing as they whizzed over the opening. One of them would say, "Not far,
that one"; or, "He's looking for some one, that fellow," in a voice without a
hint of emotion. Then, long silences and other deep, earth-shaking rumbles.
They asked me, several times, if I was suffering, and
offered to go on to the poste de secours if I wanted them to. It was not heavy
bombardment, but it would be safer to wait for a little while. I told them that
I was ready to go on at any time, but not to hurry on my account; I was quite
comfortable.
The light glimmering down the stairway faded out and we were
in complete darkness. My brain was amazingly clear. It registered every
trifling impression. I wish it might always be so intensely awake and active.
There seemed to be four of us in the dugout; the two brancardiers, and this
second self of mine, as curious as an eavesdropper at a keyhole, listening
intently to everything, and then turning to whisper to me. The brancardiers
repeated the same comments after every explosion. I thought: "They have been
saying this to each other for over three years. It has become automatic. They
will never be able to stop." I was feverish, perhaps. If it was fever, it
burned away any illusions I may have had of modern warfare from the
infantryman's viewpoint. I know that there is no glamour in it for them; that
it has long since become a deadly monotony, an endless repetition of the same
kinds of horror and suffering, a boredom more terrible than death itself, which
is repeating itself in the same ways, day after day and month after month. It
is n't often that an aviator has the chance I 've had. It would be a good thing
if they were to send us into the trenches for twenty-four hours, every few
months. It would make us keener fighters, more eager to do our utmost to bring
the war to an end for the sake of those poilus.
The dressing-station was in a very deep dugout, lighted by
candles. At a table in the center of the room the medical officer was working
over a man with a terribly crushed leg. Several others were sitting or lying
along the wall, awaiting their turn. They watched every movement he made in an
apprehensive, animal way, and so did I. They put me on the table next, although
it was not my turn. I protested, but the doctor paid no attention. "Aviateur
americain," again, lt's a pity that Frenchmen can't treat us Americans as
though we belong here.
As soon as the doctor had finished with me, my stretcher was
fastened to a two-wheeled carrier and we started down a cobbled road to the
ambulance station. I was light-headed and don't remember much of that part of
the journey. Had to take refuge in another dugout when the Huns dropped a shell
on an ammunition-dump in a village through which we were to pass. There was a
deafening banging and booming for a long time, and when we did go through the
town it was on the run. The whole place was in flames and small-arms ammunition
still exploding. I remember seeing a long column of soldiers going at the
double in the opposite direction, and they were in full marching order.
Well, this is the end of the tale; all of it, at any rate,
in which you would be interested. It was one o'clock in the morning before I
got between cool, clean sheets, and I was wounded about a quarter past eight. I
have been tired ever since.
There is another aviator here, a Frenchman, who broke his
jaw and both legs in a fall while returning from a night bombardment. His bed
is across the aisle from mine; he has a formidable- looking apparatus fastened
on his head and under his chin, to hold his jaw firm until the bones knit. He
is forbidden to talk, but breaks the rule whenever the nurse leaves the ward.
He speaks a little English and has told me a delightful story about the origin
of aerial combat. A French pilot, a friend of his, he says, attached to a
certain army group during August and September, 1914, often met a German
aviator during his reconnaissance patrols. In those Arcadian days, fighting in
the air was a development for the future, and these two pilots exchanged
greetings, not cordially, perhaps, but courteously: a wave of the hand, as much
as to say, "We are enemies, but we need not forget the civilities." Then they
both went about their work of spotting batteries, watching for movements of
troops, etc. One morning the German failed to return the salute. The Frenchman
thought little of this, and greeted him in the customary manner at their next
meeting. To his surprise, the Boche shook his fist at him in the most
blustering and caddish way. There was no mistaking the insult. They had passed
not fifty metres from each other, and the Frenchman distinctly saw the closed
fist. He was saddened by the incident, for he had hoped that some of the
ancient courtesies of war would survive in the aerial branch of the service, at
least. It angered him too; therefore, on his next reconnaissance, he ignored
the German. Evidently the Boche air-squadrons were being Prussianized. The
enemy pilot approached very closely and threw a missile at him. He could not be
sure what it was, as the object went wide of the mark; but he was so incensed
that he made a virago, and drawing a small flask from his pocket, buried it at
his boorish antagonist. The flask contained some excellent port, he said, but
he was repaid for the loss in seeing it crash on the exhaust-pipe of the enemy
machine.
This marked the end of courtesy and the beginning of active
hostilities in the air. They were soon shooting at each other with rifles,
automatic pistols, and at last with machine guns. Later developments we know
about. The night bombarder has been telling me this yarn in serial form. When
the nurse is present, he illustrates the last chapter by means of gestures. I
am ready to believe everything but the incident about the port. That does n't
sound plausible. A Frenchman would have thrown his watch before making such a
sacrifice!
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