It sounds a little thing when one speaks of all this jumping down and scrambling up from one gun to another, but it is worth pausing to consider just what it means. The place the observer had to jump from at his top gun was about as scanty and precarious as a canary bird's perch; the space he had to jump or fall down into was little bigger than a respectable hip-bath; the floor and footholds on which he did these gymnastics were heaving, pitching, and tossing, tilting to and fro at anything between level, a slope as steep as a sharp-angled roof, and steeper still to near the perpendicular.
And all the time the machine which carried out the acrobatic performance was travelling at the speed of a record-breaking express train, and if the performer mis-jumped or over-reached the enclosing sides of his cockpit, sides little more than knee-high as he stood on the floor, not ankle-high as he stood at the top gun, he had a clear eight to ten thousand feet, a good mile and quarter, to fall before he hit the ground. And this particular Fo-Fum stood on her head or her tail, on one wing-tip or the other, dived and dodged, twisted and turned and wriggled and fought her way through, over, under, and about her eleven opponents, putting four well down and a fifth damaged in the process, and picked up her place in the shifting, breaking, and ragged, but always reforming, circle.
The fight flared on for full forty minutes, and still at the end of that time the Fo-Fums were all afloat and able to make home and a good landing, although some were so shot about and damaged that it was only by a marvel of piloting skill they were kept going—and, let it be added, as their crews never failed to add, because they were stout buses well and honestly built of good material by skilled and careful hands, driven by engines that were a credit to the shops they came from and would "keep running as strong as a railway locomotive, into Hell and out the other side, s'long's you fed oil and petrol to 'em."
One machine had the oil tank shot through, and yet the engine ran long enough without "seizing up" (melting the dry metal by friction to sticking point) to get home. There were other mechanical miracles—too technical for explanation here—that the pilots tell of with wonder and admiration, although they say little, or at most or no more than a mild "good man" or "sporting effort" of the equal or greater miracle of men enduring and keeping their wits and stout hearts, and carrying on, whole or wounded as some were—one observer to his death soon after landing—for that forty minutes' savage fight against odds. Full forty minutes, and at the end of that time there were only some score Huns left in the fight: and in the finish it was they who broke off the action, and slid out and away down wind.
"Y'see," as the Flight Leader said after when he was asked why he didn't pull out or battle his way out and home, "Y'see, the old Fo-Fums are pretty well known on this slice of front, and they've got a reputation for never chucking a scrap. I'd have hated to come plungin' home with a crowd of Huns hare-in' after us. The line 'ud think we'd been runnin' away from a scrap; and I wouldn't like my Flight to be letting down the old Fo-Fums' reputation like that."
Most people will admit that the Flight didn't let it down. There are even a good many who think it added a good-sized gilt-edged leaf to the Fo-Fums' and the Umpty Squadron's plentiful laurels.
XI
LIKE GENTLEMEN
When Lieutenant Jack Smith, new come from a year of life in the trenches and reserve billets, landed for a day or two's stay with his brother in one of the squadrons of the R.F.C., he began to think he had strayed into an earthly Paradise, was amazed that such an excellent substitute for well-found civilised life could exist in the Field.