This officer during the course of his service at the Front not only contributed exceptionally distinguished personal services over the lines and as an operations officer but he also contributed ideas and suggestions of considerable value in the development of Air tactics and Air strategy, and as I have mentioned before he had the proud record of successfully executing every mission which he undertook during his entire service at the Front with the single exception of the mission he was on when he was shot down by superior enemy forces.
With entire frankness Major Haslett has told the story of how he succeeded in getting an assignment as an observer and in later getting duty with Colonel Brereton’s squadron at the Front. And by his own account he has shown with equal frankness that he had no hesitation in overcoming obstacles to this accomplishment by any means that came to hand. Perhaps some of the fastidious may find something to criticize in this. But Major Haslett’s all-impelling motive was to serve his country by meeting his country’s enemies on the battlefield. And it was this same all-impelling motive which gave inspiration to the personnel of the American Air Service, which brought to the Air Service proud achievement and dauntless courage in action. Service against the enemy is a good soldier’s ambition. This motive carried Major Haslett to the very front rank of all American observers, and gave him the adventure of which he tells in “Luck on the Wing.”
William Mitchell,
Brigadier-General United States Army.
Washington,
Feb. 24, 1920.
LUCK ON THE WING
I
BEGINNER’S LUCK
We had been up with the French Squadron for about three weeks and it had rained every day or something else had happened to prevent flying. We had a wonderful social time, but our flying had been so postponed that I actually began to think that the French did not want us to fly, probably lacking confidence in our ability, so, one day I walked up to the Captain and by means of his imperfect English and my perfectly inelegant French we managed to perfect some close, cordial and personal liaison. I told him that we appreciated the long, drawn-out dinners and the very excellent quality and quantity of the red wine and the white wine, but that actually we came up to take our first trips over the line and learn a little about observation. He shrugged his shoulders and said that he felt quite sure that we would be there for three or four months and that there was absolutely no hurry. I told him he did not know the American Army, for while I would admit that we had not shown much speed up to the present time in getting squadrons on the Front, or in the manufacture of our ten thousand airplanes a month, or our five thousand Liberty Motors, at the same time, somewhere, someplace, somehow, someday, we were going to make a start and that I was quite positive that we were not going to have any observers unless the French got busy and trained some for us, and that in my mind we would be leaving mighty soon and it might look sort of suspicious on paper if we had been with the squadron a month and had never taken a trip over the lines.
This sort of impressed the Captain and dear, old fellow that he was, he immediately ordered “Mon Lieutenant Dillard,” who was his Operations Officer, to arrange for me to accompany the next mission over the lines, as a protection. This was scheduled for the next day. A French Lieutenant by the name of Jones was to do an adjustment of a battery of 155’s, and I was to accompany him in another plane to protect him from any attack by German airplanes.