The pilot put the machine into a side slip toward the British line. This fanned the flames away from his feet. The observer squirted the fire extinguisher on the burning wood near the pilot's feet, and thus enabled him to keep control of the rudder bar.
They were now within fifteen hundred feet of the ground, but the heat was almost unbearable. The right wing was beginning to burn. Down, down, they went, and luckily towards a fairly good landing place. One landing wheel struck the ground with such force that it was broken off, and the airplane bumped along on the other for a short distance until it finally crashed on its nose and left wing.
Both pilot and observer were unhurt. They sprang to the ground and hurried away from the burning wreck just in time, for a few seconds later the gasoline tank exploded. They looked at each other without a word, but neither of them regretted that he had stayed up until the job had been finished.
Such is the life and the danger of the flyers; but thousands of the finest young men of all the nations at war eagerly seek the service, for the aviators are the eyes of the armies and will determine always more than any other branch which side shall be finally victorious.
ALAN SEEGER[9][ToC]
As England and the world lost Rupert Brooke, so America and the world lost Alan Seeger. English poetry and lovers of beauty expressed in verse are losers to a greater extent than we can ever know.
It is not strange that these two young poets should have enlisted at the very beginning of the war, for they recognized what high-minded men mean by noblesse oblige. Much having been given you, much is expected from you. Those of the highest education should show the way to those less favored. So Rupert Brooke enlisted in the English navy, and Alan Seeger enlisted in the French army as one of the Foreign Legion.