I did week after week of scout work, driving over Belgium with
observers who noted the movement of German troops from place to place,
or took photographs of the trenches and the fortifications back of
them, or plotted out the exact location of supply stations and the
like, for the purpose of bombing them later.
That's a snappy sport--bombing--but you've got to watch your step, as
you say in the States. You mustn't forget to let go all of your bombs
before you come down, or you'll be smashed up yourself. I knew one poor
chap who made a landing with two bombs he'd forgotten to drop. That was
the end of him and his machine. There wasn't much left of either.
It was on a bombing expedition that I met my big adventure--the one
that landed me in this country, technically a prisoner.
It was on Oct. 3. Three of us set out with orders to let go a few
T-N-T's on some hangars and supply sheds the Germans had at Zeebrugge,
some forty odd miles up the coast from our station at Dunkirk. Each of
us had six 75-pound bombs under the body of our machine. Pretty deadly
things those 75-pounders. They'll make quite a smash. Then I had a
dozen or more little hand-bombs, five or six pounders. They're nasty
beggars, too. You don't want to be too close to the spot where they
land.
We got away in the dark, about 4 o'clock, and, back of our own lines,
climbed till we were about 10,000 feet up. Then we headed up the coast
and got over the town of Zeebrugge just as daylight was appearing.
We located the sheds we wanted, and one after the other of us let go
at them. It's a great thing to pull your lever, let the old bomb go
whizzing down for nearly two miles, and then wheel around and wait to
see what she'll do when she hits. Of course, you can't hear anything,
but you see a puff, a burst of earth, and, if you're lucky, maybe
you'll see a building go to smash.
Well, it didn't take long for them to know that we were over them, and
they began to let drive with their Archies. The shells began to burst
pretty close to my old R. E. P.--a fast, single-passenger monoplane I
was driving that day--but I stuck around and let drop all six T-N-T's
and hand-bombs. I was separated from the other chaps by this time, and
didn't see them, in fact.
I heard in a roundabout way afterward that one of my bombs killed
fourteen men and four horses. I don't know whether that's true or not.
The story had it that several of the men killed were Belgians. I hope
that part of it's wrong. But that's the luck of the game.
Pretty soon a bomb bullet burst only a couple of hundred feet away
from me, and right on my level, although my gauge showed me that I was
pretty close to 11,000 feet. I said to myself: "You'd best stick her
nose up, Boydie, or they'll get you. These Archies must be new ones,
for they're throwing steel higher than any I ever saw before." So I
climbed and climbed, circling around, until I was a few hundred feet
over 12,000. There I felt absolutely safe, and began to look around to
see where I was. I had passed completely over Zeebrugge and was pretty
well up the coast toward a sort of a strait. I thought I'd best turn
around and make back for home while the making was good. So I wheeled
and began to think about breakfast. The only thing in my mind at the
moment was that I was hungry.
The next thing I knew there was a blinding smash right in front of
me. I realized two things--that my propeller was gone and that I was
falling like a stone. They'd got me at last. I didn't know whether
I'd been hit anywhere or not. I just gave everything up and began to
see pretty little pictures of Toronto and New York and my girl in
Cleveland, and all that sort of thing. Believe me, I was a scared
Canadian. It looked like curtains for J. Errol Dunston Boyd.
But--you know how it is: if a fellow falls into the water he tries to
swim anyhow, even if he can't. He does something instinctively to help
himself. So I kept on trying, working my levers without half knowing
what I was doing.
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.