You've seen that "falling leaf" stunt that the trick fliers do, haven't you—where the machine just flops from side to side as it comes down, swinging this way and then the other way? Well, that's what my old R. E. P. was doing. Then she'd loop. Some chaps who saw me coming down said she looped nine or ten times. I'd looped before, but never involuntarily. I was strapped in of course, or I'd have beaten the old bus down to the ground.
IV—"I DROPPED 12,000 FEET FROM CLOUDS"
I don't know how long it takes to drop 12,000 feet. The scientists can figure it out. But, believe me, it doesn't take very long. I was in a sort of a daze from the time I was struck, but it seemed only a couple of seconds before I saw the ground right under me, and—I couldn't believe it then—I was right side up and on a decent angle for landing. I lifted her nose a little bit just before striking, and, so help me, Bob, I got her on the ground with scarcely a bump.
About a quarter of a mile off were a lot of soldiers in gray uniforms. They began to run toward me. "Well, I'll give you German beggars a little row before you stick me in one of your filthy prison camps," I said to myself. As soon as I got the old bus to a standstill I unstrapped myself and jumped out. When the gray-backs got within a hundred yards of me I let drive at them with my service revolver. I slammed all seven shots at 'em, but missed.
I must have been a bit balmy in the bean, for I didn't notice that they weren't firing at me. Then I did a nutty stunt. You know we carry "light pistols." They're things that you use to shoot colored balls of fire with at night, for signalling purposes, when you're going to land, and all that. It happened that I grabbed my light pistol as I jumped out of the seat, so I thought, "I'll give you this, too, you dirty Boches!" And I shot half a dozen beautiful balls of fire at them. I was raging mad.
Then they surrounded me. I'm pretty husky, you see. I've got 180 pounds, and at that time I was hard as nails; so a couple of them, you can bet, took some good wallops before a dozen or so piled on top of me and pinned me down. They began shouting things at me in some language that I didn't understand.
Finally one of them said in English: "We're not your enemies. We're not Germans. This is Holland and we're Dutchmen."
Only then did I stop scrapping with them. They let me up and stood around me with their bayonets ready to give me a jab in case I started anything more. It was some little time before I was able to stop puffing and give a look around at the scenery. Only fifty yards away was the border line between Belgium and Holland, marked by a heavy barbed-wired entanglement and two or three cables through which ran high powered electric currents.
On the other side of the fence were a hundred or more Boches—patrols who had hoped to capture me if I alighted on their side of the barbed wire. But I just beat them to it by a few measly feet. A close shave, what? And weren't they sore. They yelled over the fence at me, and shook their fists and guns; but I swore back at them just as hard as they cussed me.