I challenge you to a man-to-man fight to take place this afternoon at two o'clock. I will meet you over the German lines. Have your anti-air craft guns withhold their fire, while we decide which is the better man. The British guns will be silent.
Ball.
Presently thereafter this answer was dropped from a German airplane:
Captain Ball:
Your challenge is accepted. The guns will not interfere. I will meet you promptly at two.
Immelman.
The word spread far and wide along the trenches on both sides. Tacitly all firing stopped as though the bugles had sung truce. Men left cover and clambered up on the top to watch the duel. Punctually both flyers rose from their lines and made their way down No Man's Land. Let an eye witness tell the story:
From our trenches there were wild cheers for Ball. The Germans yelled just as vigorously for Immelman.
The cheers from the trenches continued; the Germans increased in volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.
Ball, thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was doing the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and was apparently making no effort to get above him, thus gaining the advantage of position. Rather he was swinging around, this way and that, attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.