As we sail along the blue sky over green fields and steepled city, my eye constantly roams round in search of enemy aircraft, but thus far with not much luck.
The firing lines are now far behind us, and we are well over into the enemy’s country. One would have thought that before now we should have encountered a stray Aviatik or so, or a patrolling Albatross.
At last! In the far distance and coming towards us at a great speed “down-wind” is a white-nosed machine, which I distinguished as “Fritz,” a single tractor biplane, a hybrid of the Albatross and Aviatik types, fitted with a 225 h.p. Mercedes engine, that gives 90 miles per hour. It has a range of ten hours’ flight, and carries two Maxim guns—one in front, but only firing sideways, and one behind the pilot.
Immediately thoughts of an aerial combat flash across my mind. I had never taken part in one before, but had often watched them from the comfortable security of terra firma: during that first moment I had a bad attack of “cold feet.”
A vision of many a hard-fought battle in mid-air came before my eyes. With the opposing machines darting above and below one another like two great birds, the sun glistening on the whitened planes as they turned and twisted, while all around and silhouetted against the deep blue sky were the little black and flame patches of the bursting shrapnel, it was a gloriously fascinating sight.
The uncertainty held one spellbound. Suddenly one of the machines would put down her nose and descend like a stone to earth; for a moment one’s heart was in one’s mouth until she would right herself and climb up again into the fray. Sometimes these wonderful battles would last as long as forty minutes or an hour, until one or the other would crash down thousands of feet to the earth below.
In a warfare of long-ranging artillery, and the scientific slaughter of an invisible foe many miles away where hand-to-hand combat was practically unknown, these duels in mid-air were a delight to friend and foe alike, for they, and they alone, were favored with the old-time romance of war, daring and adventure.
Men in the trenches would leave their rifles, forget the enemy, and gaze with wide-open eyes at what was going on overhead; drivers of ammunition-wagons would pause on their way in the middle of the road craning their necks, the while red-hatted staff-officers would order their cars to be stopped until the fight was over.
Those two little black specks, suspended thousands of feet above were the cynosure of all eyes, and when the stricken machine came low enough for her nationality to be distinguished, if it were a black cross on either wing a shout of sheer joy would burst forth from many an anxious heart; if on the other hand, it were the three circles of red, white, and blue, a sigh would go down the lines like the rustle of the wind through the trees.
She is almost up to us by this time. I let fire with the machine-gun, but she is still beyond range. Oh, those moments of expectation! Would she fight or turn tail and run?