At the end of six months Jimmie was due for leave. His orders read that he was to catch the leave-boat for England on a certain afternoon. A car was leaving the squadron at eleven o’clock in the morning which would take him to the coast.
It was an unwritten law that pilots need do no flying on the day that a Channel boat is to take them to England and comparative safety.
However, by this time Jimmie’s whole life was flying and fighting. As his kit bag was all packed, he decided to go off with the morning patrol for just one more look at the war.
It was a morning when their part of the front was comparatively clear of clouds. Off to their left, as they climbed, they could see banks of broken clouds that became thicker and heavier toward the horizon where England lay.
As they crossed the pock-marked and broken and torn country where men were living like so many rabbits, Jimmie sighted up in the sun a group of specks, looking as if a handful of pebbles had been tossed up there. They had not long to wait to discover whether they were friend or enemy.
Six Fokkers, their noses pointed down, their motors going full blast, swept down upon them. Jimmie could see the sun reflecting upon their brightly painted wings.
Jimmie’s flight was out-numbered, for one of the S.E.’s had found it necessary to turn back with engine trouble just before they arrived at the lines.
The fight that followed had no new aspects for Jimmie. It had happened many times before. The familiar dryness was in his mouth. He felt the old thrill and tingle of the uncertainty of it as he pulled over and did a half-roll, making the first Fokker miss him on its dive.
In the confused minutes that followed he had no time to follow his friends in their efforts. They were all veterans like himself, and he felt relieved that Campbell, the new man with the squadron, had left them because of his dud engine before the fight started.
Jimmie was having his own troubles with a fellow in a Fokker with blue wing-tips. They were evenly matched until another Fokker, heavily camouflaged, had streaked a line of tracer bullets through Jimmie’s struts, while his entire attention had been given to focusing his sights on the blue wing-tips.