PLUNGED THREE THOUSAND FEET TO DEATH
WHILE PURSUING BOCHE PLANE
HEROIC TRIUMPH PRECEDES HIS TRAGIC END
Wreaks Vengeance in the Clouds Before He Falls.
Vow to Kill Hun Who Bombed American Hospital
Kept in Thrilling Victory in the Skies
The War Department confirmed today the Associated Press report of the loss of Thomas Slade, aviator, in the fighting west of Rheims, while in pursuit of an enemy plane. Slade, who was known among his comrades as “Thatchy,” was exceptionally popular and his tragic fate has cast a feeling of gloom throughout the section where he had been lately stationed. His superiors in the Rheims section had no hesitancy in describing his last exploit as unquestionably showing skill and daring of the first order, and his loss will be keenly felt in the service.
Further details of Slade’s end are awaited, but it is feared that little more than the bare facts of this sensational climax of his career will be forthcoming. A strong touch of human interest characterizes his final part in the war by reason of an announcement the youthful flier is said to have made to some of his comrades. When the Germans crossed the Marne in their recent advance a Boche machine dropped bombs upon a Red Cross hospital near Epernay, killing two women nurses. Slade himself was a patient in the hospital at the time, recovering from a slight wound he had received near La Chapelle. He was on the veranda of the little hospital at about dawn, following his restless habit of wandering about within the prescribed limits, and chafing under a convalescence which he believed was needlessly keeping him from service. He saw the Boche plane drop the bombs in the first light of dawn and watched it escape while two French fliers pursued it. One of the nurses, a French girl, had cared for the young American, and his comrades in the hospital are said to have recalled that his sorrow and anger were so great that he expressed the resolve to find and kill this Hun messenger of frightfulness if he lost his own life in doing so.
This resolve was kept in the dramatic combat which ended Slade’s career.
By what means he identified the enemy machine is not known, but he is known to have pursued it till both machines disappeared in the clouds over the enemy lines. The character of the tragic conflict which took place in the concealment of that dizzy height can only be conjectured, but the enemy plane was seen to fall, and the strong wind which had blown up in the west brought it into the little village of La Toi, just within the Allied lines. The machine was a total wreck and though its pilot was quite dead and frightfully mangled from his tremendous fall, it was evident from a wound on his forehead that he had paid the penalty of his cowardly and despicable act before he fell less than five minutes after his fall Slade’s machine was seen to descend, first coasting, then fluttering as if without control, and when still more than a thousand feet in the air it plunged headlong to the ground. Its occupant was seen falling separately and both are known to have struck upon the rocky hillside where the Germans made such stubborn resistance in the fighting of last Tuesday. It is a matter of deep regret that the body of the gallant young American, crushed and mangled as it must have been, did not fall within the American lines.