Major General, Commanding.
After this mission Brereton, himself, classified both Schnurr and me as “sufficiently hardboiled.” The boys took up the refrain and thus, after assuming the attitude necessary, I finally acquired the title and had the emoluments and incidental responsibility thrust upon me.
III
MY FIRST SCRAP
The early days in the Toul Sector are remembered by the aviators in the observation end of the game as quiet ones. All the time I was there with the Americans I had never even seen a Boche plane. I understand they were around all right, but all of our young pursuit pilots of the 94th and 95th Squadrons were so determined, individually, to become the first American Ace that they scoured the sky from daylight to dusk, and to such a degree of success that the Boche thought it rather risky to even leave their own airdrome.
About the middle of June the Rainbow Division was down in the Bacarrat-Lunéville Sector and having been there some time without aviation, it was decreed that the 12th Aero Squadron, which had done most remarkable work in the Toul Sector, should proceed at once to a little place called Flin, near Bacarrat, to work with the 42nd Division—the Rainbow—in order that they might have more experience in aerial coöperation.
We still had our famous old A.R. training busses, although we had been again promised everything from Spads to Salmsons. So, with our eighteen pilots and eighteen observers and our eighteen A.R. busses we started for our new station, which was about one hundred and fifty kilometers distant.
We were supposed to begin work on the following day, just as in actual battle, for we were simulating a real, active battle move. Our trucks left in the afternoon about three o’clock and without mishap, should have arrived there about midnight. The planes were to wait until the next morning and fly down. The truck train got there all right, and got busy fixing up quarters and getting ready for immediate operations. We expected to see our famous eighteen planes arrive in a well organized, close formation at about eleven o’clock that morning, but at eleven they did not arrive and we heard nothing from them until about three o’clock, when one of our young pilots came from somewhere out of the sky and landed. We asked about the other seventeen, to which question he showed the greatest surprise, and explained that he had been detained by motor trouble and had been unable to get off with the main formation which had taken off four or five hours before him. Immediately Dame Rumor stepped forth, and the absence of the other planes was attributed to everything from being lost in Germany to being shot down by a German plane.
While we were discussing the matter some one noticed two planes very high in the air. We thought, of course, that they were our planes and were probably lost. Ideas were rampant as to how we were going to signal them to get them down, when suddenly we heard the splutter-splut-splut, intermittently, of machine guns way up in the sky. This was new to us. We thought, of course, that some one was merely trying out his guns. These ideas were soon dispelled for following this short, intermittent sound we heard one, steady, singing stream of sound—then we knew that an air fight was on. We did not have time to realize exactly what was happening for the steady stream of fire suddenly ceased and we saw one of the planes falling, out of control. It was swaying back and forth like a falling leaf, and filling the air with a miserable swish-swish sound. The horrible speed of the fall caused both wings to collapse and fold, and the compact mass soon came diving toward earth like a huge torpedo. It crashed with a terrible thud on the very edge of our own field. When the awful horror of the moment passed, we all started to run to see the Boche that had been shot down.
We dragged two crushed and lifeless bodies from the debris and in contrite and humble reverence to our hostile brothers of the air we removed our caps, while the Surgeon began to take off their flying garments in order to find their names. It is hard to imagine the ghastly horror of the shock we received, when, upon unfastening the collar of the outer-garment the green uniform of the German aviator was not revealed, but instead the Royal Seal of the Crown of England. Two brave, British lads had made the Supreme Sacrifice. It is a memory that will never be obliterated from my mind, and I can well remember how the sentiment of the crowd changed like a burning slap, from icy but human feeling to one of fiery hatred and cold-blooded revenge. High in the sky above the victor was winging his way back to the land of the Hun. Young Davidson was the only pilot we had there and we had only one A.R. on the field. It was the one in which Davy had just landed. We knew it would be foolhardy to send that Antique Rattletrap up against that Hun, but every man in the Squadron from the Chief Mechanic to the Major’s orderly and the second cook wanted to go with Davy to avenge our British brothers. Davy and his Observer, however, took off but only got several hundred feet when the motor stopped. We had no more gasoline, but the Hun was already too far toward home and our A.R. could never have climbed the altitude at which the Boche was flying, so we were obliged to give it up.
There was no loss of morale, however. Matters were too serious to even think of that. The thing that was worrying us was what had happened to our other seventeen planes. Had they all met the fate of the British Tommies? Had they too been caught unawares, for a lot of them had flown with mechanics at the observers’ guns. They had undoubtedly lost their formation and in straggling about it was quite easy to suppose that they, too, had become an easy prey for the Hun in the Sun. Believe me, we worried. Not very long afterwards a French soldier came along and handed us some messages which had been received at the French telegraph exchange in a nearby village. They were all from our aviators and the wires indicated that they were scattered all over that country from Nancy to Chaumont, and from Colombey-les-Belles to Lunéville. The whole bunch had gotten lost and in trying to pick their separate ways they had certainly made a mess of it. I expected to hear of some landing at Paris or Bordeaux, but while they did not do that, after we finally plotted their various locations on our map, take it from me, it was a study in polka-dots. One by one they drifted in and outside of one valuable plane that had to be salvaged, in a couple of days we were able to work.