Luck on the Wing: Thirteen Stories of a Sky Spy

by Elmer Haslett

Thus when it came time to pick a leader for offensive operations, General Mitchell knew what he was about when he selected Brereton for the Château-Thierry affair. He wanted a fighter and he got a fighter, for with his characteristic foresight Brereton prepared for any eventuality. He quite well knew that something would likely happen any day and he did not intend to let the observation end fall down if it was humanly possible to prevent it. His job was to accomplish the impossible; our “quiet sector” units must be prepared for a great and long offensive, and they must be gotten ready quick.

Brereton selected Lieutenant Ben Harwood as his Liaison Officer, Lieutenant Mathis as his Information Officer and put me in charge of the Operations, so, we were gone from morning until late at night, traveling between the squadrons, corps headquarters and the various divisional headquarters, getting proper coöperation worked up and, in fact, getting some semblance of organization. The covetous eye of the Hun already looked on Paris. It was only a question of days until the German hand would be extended to grasp what the eye had seen.

The Huns held complete supremacy of the air. They dominated in the ratio of five to one and flew about in droves of fifteen and twenty. Where a fight on a mission had previously been the rare exception to our flyers it was now the common rule. We were very short of pursuit planes. Our Pursuit Squadrons—four in number—were trying to take care of not only our own Corps area, but also other areas held by the French and which adjoined us. As a result, very little direction protection was furnished to the Observation planes. So, the boys knew pretty well when they went out for a mission that it meant a scrap.

There was only one time at Château-Thierry when the Boche did not have the complete supremacy of the air. This was on July first at the Battle of Vaux, at which place Johnny Miller and I did the preliminary adjustment and Brereton and I did the artillery control for the Americans during the battle. We had every American pursuit and observation plane we could get off of the ground. There were not less than ninety-six planes in that formation—their mission being to protect the Infantry plane and to protect Brereton and me, who were doing the artillery work. There was such a swarm of planes above us that we practically never looked into the sky, but kept our attention entirely on the work before us. This was my idea of real protection. It was the nearest we ever came to our big threat to literally blacken the skies by droves of American airplanes. However, none of these were American airplanes, although the aviators were Americans. This was the first time in the war that the doughboy was brought to realize that there were really other American aviators than those famous ground flyers who took off and landed so often at the famous Hotel Crillion Bar Airdrome in Paris and who were so accurately described by Irvin Cobb.

The Vaux affair seemed to me just like the practice control of artillery fire that I once did on the blackboard in school exercises. It was really one of the easiest jobs I ever did and for which I probably received more credit. The previous day I had passed over the town and was happy for the poor peasants that it had been spared, for even though in the hands of the enemy it was practically intact. Now it was a shell-torn blot of destroyed homes, made more desolate by the scattered bodies of the German dead—and I had been one of the guiding masters of its ruin.

The village of Vaux during the Battle of Vaux, July 1, 1918

From the first of July to the fifteenth we were continuously engaged in making the best possible preparations for what we knew must come. On the morning of the fifteenth it came. It came from Château-Thierry along to Rheims. The first day we did not worry a great deal for we confidently felt that the Germans would never be able to cross the Marne as all the bridges had been blown up, but on the morning of the sixteenth day things were mighty blue. An American pursuit plane immediately after daylight, reported that the Germans had constructed pontoon bridges in different places and were already sweeping across the Marne.

This flight by a pursuit plane and the resulting information was, I think, unquestionably one of the greatest flights of the entire war. I did not learn until several days later who the aviator really was. No one seemed to know, nor could we find any record on the regular reports. The French Army Commander told me the source from which he had gotten this timely information as to the presence of the pontoons. It seems that General William Mitchell, who commanded all American Aviation at the Front, had been at the French Army Headquarters during the night of the fifteenth, getting the reports from the Front and making his aërial dispositions accordingly. An hour before daybreak on the morning of the sixteenth he left the French Headquarters and without telling any one his intended movements he drove his high-powered automobile, with all haste, to the American Pursuit Airdrome about fifty kilometers away. Climbing into a single place Spad, the General hastily drew out a pocket notebook and scribbled a few words to his chief of staff, and handed this note to his mechanic. Then the General headed his plane into the wind and with whirring motor sailed off into the somber darkness. At the first glimpse of dawn he was over Fere-en-Tardenois, fifteen miles within the German lines. He saw the glare of the village, but the usual whiteness of the roads was not there—they were of a greenish hue, like the morning mist surrounding them. It was hard to comprehend the magnitude of this view. Heading south for five miles, the roads presented the same aspect. From fifteen thousand feet the General swept down to three thousand. Here he could realize the awful fact of what was taking place below him—the whitened roads were green with the thousands of German troops driving on toward the Marne with the steadiness and determination of a huge caterpillar. On south he flew—the Germans were everywhere—infesting the whole salient like a plague of locusts. Reaching the Marne, it was certain the inevitable had happened—one, two, three, four, five—five pontoon bridges already across and the onrushing Huns were marching across in terrible precision.

It was singularly fortunate that the man who undertook this hazardous mission was a rare tactician and strategist. He realized the awful truth where the ordinary airman would not have conceived the possibilities of such a situation. The General knew that the biggest German Army ever concentrated was on the move in a final effort to intimidate and conquer the world.