Lest We Forget: World War Stories

by John G. Thompson; Inez Bigwood

I was interested in reading the other day James Norman Hall's funny description of how he learned at last to master the penguin. He felt triumphant, but he says, "But no one had seen my splendid sortie. Now that I had arrived, no one paid the least attention to me. All eyes were turned upward, and following them with my own, I saw an airplane outlined against a heaped-up pile of snow-white cloud. It was moving at tremendous speed, when suddenly it darted straight upward, wavered for a second or two, turned slowly on one wing, and fell, nose-down, turning round and round as it fell, like a scrap of paper. It was the vrille, the prettiest piece of aërial acrobatics that one could wish to see. It was a wonderful, an incredible sight.

"Some one was counting the turns of the vrille. Six, seven, eight; then the airman came out of it on an even keel, and, nosing down to gather speed, looped twice in quick succession. Afterward he did the retournement, turning completely over in the air and going back in the opposite direction; then spiraled down and passed over our heads at about fifty meters, landing at the opposite side of the field so beautifully that it was impossible to know when the machine touched the ground."

There is nothing in all the experiences of life like what one feels in flying through the air, especially at a great height and with no other machines in sight. There is a loneliness, unlike any other kind of loneliness; there is a feeling of smallness and weakness; a sense of the immensity of things and of the presence and nearness of God. It is surprising that in doing that in which man has shown his greatest power over the forces of Nature, he feels most his littleness and how easily he could be destroyed by the very forces he has conquered.

Lieutenant Roberts, an American flying in France, described not long ago an experience that came just after his first flight. He was up in the air, higher than anybody had ever been before, when the machine suddenly broke into little pieces, which, as he was tumbling down through the air, he vainly tried to catch. Just as he hit the ground and broke every bone in his body, he woke up on the floor beside his bunk.

The Englishmen are the most daring of all the flyers, take the most risks, and do the most dangerous "stunts." Not so much is heard of them because their exploits and their scores are not announced by the British army. Bishop, who has just been ordered from the flying field to safer work, is said to have brought down nearly eighty German planes, and on the day he learned of his recall, went up and brought down two.

The Americans are daredevils, too. I took one of them one night as a "guest," when I went over Metz on a bombing expedition. One of the bombs stuck. He thought it might cause us trouble when we landed, possibly explode and kill us, so he crawled out over the fusilage and released it. He certainly earned his passage.

With several other Americans we formed what we called the American Escadrille; but as the United States was neutral at that time, we were obliged to change the name to the Lafayette Escadrille.

Since joining the squadron, I have used all sorts of machines, and there are many of them, from the heavy bombing machine to the swift little swallow-like scouts.

My first important work was reconnoissance, in which I carried an observer. I managed the machine, and he did the reconnoitering. We went out twice a day and flew over into German territory, sometimes as far in as fifty miles, observing all that was going on, the movements of troops and supplies, and the building of railroads and defensive works. We also took photographs of the country over which we flew.

Reconnoissance is dangerous work, and is constantly growing more so, as anti-aircraft guns are improved. These guns are mounted on a revolving table, upon which is a mirror in which the airplane shows as soon as it comes within range of the gun. With an instrument designed for the purpose, the crew get the flyer's altitude; and with another, the rate at which he is traveling. They aim the gun for the proper altitude, make the correct allowance for the time it will take the shell to reach him, and as they have an effective range of over 30,000 feet, there is reason to worry. Yet by zig-zagging and other devices, the aviators are rarely brought down by anti-aircraft guns. The small scout machines with a wing spread of not more than thirty feet are not visible to the naked eye when at an altitude of over 10,000 feet, and are therefore safe from these guns at this height.