One day before the Château-Thierry drive I was flying low along the lines and from my map I was quite sure which was our own territory, and which was that occupied by the Germans. I was well in the edge of our own territory when I heard machine guns firing at me from the ground. My first thought was that the Germans had advanced, so I directed the pilot to dive down to investigate. As we dived the machine gunners became convinced that we were going to fire upon them, so they turned loose upon us. As we flew on back, other gun crews having seen those machine guns firing at us, began firing too and although the pilot kept banking the plane up so that they might see our American cocarde, they kept on firing. About a half a kilometer back of the lines we began circling for altitude, and I kept hearing a few shots from a gun. Then, in a few seconds I saw a bullet go through the fuselage. Looking down on the edge of an old trench I saw about three lads with rifles firing at us, and they were good, old Yankee doughboys; I was sure of it.
I felt like turning loose a burst of about fifty rounds, aiming close to this group in order to give them a real scare, then I realized that there might be other troops around who might be grazed by a stray bullet, so I marked the place very definitely on my map, flew back to the airdrome and landed.
This was a serious matter, so I immediately made a trip up to the Front to find out about it. I trudged around the trenches for an hour before any plane came in sight, then one of our own airplanes came along, flying very low. Suddenly I heard a rifle firing close by. I immediately ran in the direction of the shooting and I discovered a half-grown kid surrounded by a couple of his companions, coolly taking pot shots at this American airplane. In a rage I jumped on him with all fours.
“Don’t you know that’s an American plane?” I demanded in a manner neither affable nor pleasant. To my great surprise he responded that he knew it was an American plane.
“Well,” I continued, speaking even more severely, “what do you mean by firing on an American plane?”
This doughboy casually continued chewing his tobacco and looking at the ground for some reason, apparently not from lack of composure, for he would take an occasional spit at an old, rusty helmet about six feet up the trench. The presence of an officer bothered him about as much as the presence of a king affects a bolshevik.
“Well,” I again asked, “where do you get that noise of firing at a friendly plane?”
This was just the opening he wanted, for he threw out his chest in all his independent dignity and said, “There ain’t no friendly planes around here. I ain’t seen any, no how. Them American planes ain’t got no business being back this far from the lines and if them aviators ain’t got nerve enough to go over there and scrap them Boche on their own ground, we’ll force ’em over with our guns and put a little backbone in ’em.”
Then the lad gave me a full explanation as to why they had fired upon these American planes and he claimed the American flyers always ran from the Boche; the Boche came over and shot up the doughboys and he had never seen an American plane going over and shooting up the Boche. Then I asked him if he knew the functions of the airplanes. I wanted him to know that some planes had to stay behind the lines at times.
“Yep,” he said, “they’re all fighters, all of ’em, or supposed to be, but they don’t fight. They stay back here; they’re scared to go over.”