He headed the plane toward home and away from the Boches. I knew what the people on the ground would think at our performance after we had once started after that Boche. They would be too ashamed of us to say anything. I was thoroughly disgusted and angered to the highest degree. Unmolested, except by local defenses, the Hun burned the second balloon and triumphantly flew back into Germany.

The “Greenhorn” was unbalanced by horrors he had seen. The morning had his goat, for he kept on looking back, time and time again, as if he were sure that he would be the next one to go down in flames.

That ride back to our airdrome was the wildest I ever got in my life as a flyer. The boy lost his head completely and I was absolutely helpless, not having a dual control, though I do not know much what I would have done at that time even if I had been fortunate enough to have had a dual control plane. We would take sudden jerks in which I would go half way out of the cockpit, nothing holding me in but my belt. I knew the boy was getting worse and I was figuring how I would look after the fall. When we got directly over our own airdrome, to my surprise he called back to me in a frantic voice, “I’m lost. Which way now?”

“Take it easy,” I replied, “our airdrome is right beneath us.”

The lad came down like a streak from the sky and I knew we were going to hit the ground in one grand smash. The “Greenhorn” tried to land and couldn’t, so he gave her the gun again, circled the field, and in attempting to land almost hit one of the huge hangars with the tail. Death looked like a sure proposition to me. I felt like jumping—anything to get down to earth. In this second attempt he had a good chance to effect a good landing, but for some reason or other he kept on going. Then he foolishly did a vertical bank and came in with the wind, intending to land. To land with the wind is one of the most dangerous things a pilot can do, but it did not seem to affect our hero. Did he land with the wind? I’ll say he did. As we neared the ground I was sweating blood, for I knew what was sure to happen. Perspiration was flowing from my entire body with the freedom that it rolls from the winner of the fat man’s race at the old county fair. We hit the field in the center, took a two-story bounce; the wind caught us and as the wheels hit again, S-P-L-O-W! We rolled over on our nose. Good fortune alone kept us from doing worse. We stopped, and I was up in the cockpit about twelve feet from the ground, though I expected to be found underneath the engine about ten feet under ground—and the ambulance came rushing to pick up our remains.

They got me another plane ready and after considerable hard luck I finally got the mission completed with the help of a very wonderful pilot named Lieutenant Weeks. Late that afternoon the “Greenhorn” came around and asked me if I would mind going with him again to-morrow. I was forced to decline. He was relieved from further duty at the front. It was his first and only trip over. I don’t think the “Kid” was a coward—he simply could not stand the gaff of air fighting.

There is nothing more nerve-racking or terrifying than a ride in an airplane with a pilot at the stick in whom you have no confidence, and especially so when at war and in an active sector where the enemy has control of the air. There are many times in my young and blameless life in which I have been actually scared, but never one in which I have been carried in that state of fear and terror for such a long stretch as in that two hours, twenty-one minutes and eighteen seconds in a Salmson airplane in the Argonne Forest on September 26, 1918, with a green Lieutenant, fictitiously named “Greenhorn.”

VII
EILEEN’S INSPIRATION

Shortly after the great Argonne Offensive commenced, the Fifth Corps Air Service was visited by a small troop of Y. M. C. A. entertainers. I was at their airdrome at the time. In the party were two young ladies, one blonde and the other a brunette. As I was a sort of special boarder myself, I was very fortunately a guest at the Headquarters Mess, and at the head of the table sat Lieutenant Colonel A. R. Christie, who was the commander-in-chief of the Corps Air Service. I had heard early in the afternoon that these girls were coming, and it had been so long since I had seen a real American girl that my enthusiasm over their prospective arrival was not exceeded by a country lad’s anticipation of his first circus.

As luck would have it, at the dinner table I was seated next to the brunette, which was just what I had wanted. I must say she was a “Queen.” She had eyes that were all eyes, and when she smiled it seemed, as the poet would say, just like the flooding of a dark and desolate dungeon with the glorious light of day. She wore a daintily scented perfume that made it all seem to be just like the environment of a wonderful rose garden and this girl was the loveliest rose of them all.