VII
The Bedouin who held the unenvied record for crashes was known throughout the service as "Killem." Almost every time he went on a raid he crashed his machine, fortunately for him on this side of the lines. One night, returning from a raid on the Boche magneto works at Stuttgart, he lost his way and was forced to land, because of engine trouble, in France, near the Swiss border. The topography of the country here being mountainous, he was fortunate in merely "writing off" his aeroplane. He might easily have killed himself and his two companions, but he came out of the crash quite unhurt except for a severe chill contracted by a forced sojourn in the icy waters of a shallow pond. Pinned beneath the wreckage of his machine with an unpleasant ripple of water in close proximity to his chin, Killem had an excellent opportunity to think over his past sins while his companions in misery, who had been thrown clear for no other reason apparently except that the devil takes care of his own, struggled manfully, one with a broken arm and the other with a wrenched knee, to release him from the pressure of wreckage which held him helpless.
A few nights after this unpleasant experience the mad fellow "took off" down wind. This idiotic method of leaving the ground resulted in his being barely able to rise above the roofs of the near-by village and brought him into direct contact with the church spire. The spire being of solid construction withstood the impact; the aeroplane did not. So Killem and his companions, together with the wrecked Handley-Page and one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight pounds of undetonated bombs descended onto the street below—UNDETONATED. It was exceedingly fortunate for the inhabitants of the French village that the bombs remained undetonated. Killem crawled out of the wreck, looked ruefully at the church spire, and muttered, "I've always felt that I should have gone oftener to church in my youth. Now look at the damned result of my negligence."
It was Killem who tested out a new aeroplane one day while a south wind equal to the air speed of his machine was blowing. While flying north he travelled over the ground twice as fast as he travelled through the air, but when he turned around over the city of Toul he remained stationary. He was travelling through the air as fast as before, but now he was headed south, and as the wind passed over the ground toward the north as rapidly as Killem travelled through the air toward the south, the inhabitants of Toul were amazed to see a heavier-than-air machine remaining stationary above their heads. This situation greatly alarmed a dear old lady of Toul, who eventually arrived at our aerodrome in a donkey cart with the astounding information that one of our planes "had run out" of petrol and was stalled directly above her house.