“Think down to the gunners. That will help a lot. It's a game after that: your skill against theirs. I couldn't do it at first, and shell fire seemed absolutely damnable.”
“And you want to remember that a chasse machine is almost never brought down by anti-aircraft fire. You are too fast for them. You can fool 'em in a thousand ways.”
“I had been flying for two weeks before I saw a Boche. They are not scarce on this sector, don't worry. I simply couldn't see them. The others would have scraps. I spent most of my time trying to keep track of them.”
“Take my tip, J. B., don't be too anxious to mix it with the first German you see, because very likely he will be a Frenchman, and if he isn't, if he is a good Hun pilot, you'll simply be meat for him—at first, I mean.”
“They say that all the Boche aviators on this front have had several months' experience in Russia or the Balkans. They train them there before they send them to the Western Front.”
“Your best chance of being brought down will come in the first two weeks.”
“That's comforting.”
“No, sans blague. Honestly, you'll be almost helpless. You don't see anything, and you don't know what it is that you do see. Here's an example. On one of my first sorties I happened to look over my shoulder and I saw five or six Germans in the most beautiful alignment. And they were all slanting up to dive on me. I was scared out of my life: went down full motor, then cut and fell into a vrille. Came out of that and had another look. There they were in the same position, only farther away. I didn't tumble even then, except farther down. Next time I looked, the five Boches, or six, whichever it was, had all been raveled out by the wind. Éclats d'obus.”
“You may have heard about Franklin's Boche. He got it during his first combat. He didn't know that there was a German in the sky, until he saw the tracer bullets. Then the machine passed him about thirty metres away. And he kept going down: may have had motor trouble. Franklin said that he had never had such a shock in his life. He dived after him, spraying all space with his Vickers, and he got him!”
“That all depends on the man. In chasse, unless you are sent out on a definite mission, protecting photographic machines or avions de bombardement, you are absolutely on your own. Your job is to patrol the lines. If a man is built that way, he can loaf on the job. He need never have a fight. At two hundred kilometres an hour, it won't take him very long to get out of danger. He stays out his two hours and comes in with some framed-up tale to account for his disappearance: 'Got lost. Went off by himself into Germany. Had motor trouble; gun jammed, and went back to arm it.' He may even spray a few bullets toward Germany and call it a combat. Oh, he can find plenty of excuses, and he can get away with them.”