From our trenches there were wild cheers for Ball. The Germans yelled just as vigorously for Immelman.
The cheers from the trenches continued. The Germans’ increased in volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.
Ball, thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was doing the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and was, apparently, making no effort to get above him, thus gaining the advantage of position. Rather he was swinging around, this way and that, attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.
We saw the German’s machine dip over preparatory to starting the nose dive.
“He’s gone now,” sobbed a young soldier at my side, for he knew Immelman’s gun would start its raking fire once it was being driven straight down.
Then, in the fraction of a second, the tables were turned. Before Immelman’s plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his machine into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting loose with his gun and smashing Immelman by a hail of bullets as he swept by.
Immelman’s airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball, from above, followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out and raced for home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back, and released a huge wreath of flowers almost directly over the spot where Immelman’s charred body was being lifted from a tangled mass of metal.
Four days later Ball, too, was killed. He attacked single-handed four Germans. He had shot one down and was pursuing the other three when two machines dropped from behind the clouds and closed in on him. He was pocketed and was killed—but not until he had shot down two more of the enemy.