Bombs for the General

There was no high tribunal on the Toul front in the early summer of ‘18 to pass judgment on whether or not you had the stuff to stick in combat work. You had one chance, just one, to make good and bang! as fast as that it was over. If you stood the test you had long hours, a wracking grind and perhaps a hero’s death to look forward to; if you failed you went back. It mattered not how swell a guy you were nor whom you knew at G.H.Q.—back you went.
Quite a few were going back in those days. They lacked some sort of spark or callousness, something was missing. Few had the inclination, nobody the time, to help them discover what it was.
Up in Flanders the harassed Haig had just issued his desperate “backs to the wall” order; from Arras to Luneville the Boche were raising hell and out on the Somme somebody had pot-shotted Richtofen and his triplane into immortality. Thus inspired, the Allies banged into the air with every crate they could muster—the Baron was gone—recklessly determined to drive Jerry out of the sky... and at the Toul airdrome General Gerard and Billy Mitchell were hanging the green and red ribbon of the Croix de Guerre on Peterson, Meissner and a promising young lieutenant named Rickenbacker...
Those cherished bits of bronze were the rewards of experience. Without that you couldn’t hope to do much; and yet the attitude of the fighting pilots was strange, for they expected the green men coming up to have it. When you reported for duty you were expected to have had at least fifty hours on combat, or that was what you felt. Where did they expect you to get it? At birth? Out of a bottle of vin rouge? Where else? Certainly you couldn’t get it at ground school. They gave you, Heaven knows, everything else—the works, then they transferred the responsibility of your soul to God and shoved you off to the front.
And you came along, eyes sparkling, chin high, your boots drumming defiantly on the Rue Royale as you stopped over in Paris for what you were certain was the final look-see; your brain hummed a fierce litany to the memories of Guenemer and Chapman and Nimmie Prince and other stout souls who had gone west; and you clicked your jaws together and jumped off on the final lap swearing to show those dirty Huns a thing or two about air fighting.