THE old days when armies ceased fighting to watch their two champions
in single combat have come back again. It was on the Western front,
and the engagement that resulted in the death of Immelman the Falcon,
Germany’s most distinguished Ace, was in very truth a duel—no chance
meeting of men determined to slay one another, but a formally arranged
encounter, following a regular challenge, and fought by prearrangement
and without interference. The battle was witnessed with breathless
interest by the men of both armies crouched in the trenches,
separated by only a few feet of No Man’s Land, while the fire of the
anti-aircraft guns on both sides was stilled.
The victor in the spectacular fight was Captain Ball, the youthful
English pilot who has only two notches less on the frame of his
fighting machine than had the Falcon, who was credited with fifty-one
“downs.” The story of the duel, which was declared to have been one of
the most sensational events of the war, is told in a letter written by
Col. William Macklin, of the Canadian troops, to a friend in Newark,
N. J. Colonel Macklin, who was one of the eye-witnesses of the fight,
writes in his letter, which is printed in the New York _Tribune_:
One morning Captain Ball, who was behind our sector, heard that
Immelman the Falcon was opposite.
“This is the chance I’ve been waiting for; I’m going to get him,”
declared Ball.
Friends tried to dissuade him, saying the story of Immelman’s presence
probably was untrue. Ball would not listen.
Getting into his machine, he flew over the German lines and dropped a
note which read:
“Captain Immelman: 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-aircraft guns withhold their fire while we decide
which is the better man. The British guns will be
silent.
“BALL.”
About an hour afterward, a German aviator swung out across our lines.
Immelman’s answer came. Translated it read:
“Captain Ball: Your challenge is accepted. The German
guns will not interfere. I will meet you promptly at
two.
“IMMELMAN.”
Just a few minutes before two o’clock the guns on both sides ceased
firing. It was as though the commanding officers had ordered a truce.
Long rows of heads popped up and all eyes watched Ball from behind
the British lines shoot off and into the air. A minute or two later
Immelman’s machine was seen across No Man’s Land.
The letter describes the tail of the German machine as painted red “to
represent the British and French blood it had spilled,” while Ball’s
had a streak of black paint to represent the mourning for his victims.
The machines ascended in a wide circle, and then:
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.
We saw the German’s machine dip over preparatory to starting the nose
dive.
“He’s gone now,” sobbed a young soldier at my side, for he knew
Immelman’s gun would start its raking fire once it was being driven
straight down.
Then, in the fraction of a second, the tables were turned. Before
Immelman’s plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his machine
into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting loose with his gun
and smashing Immelman by a hail of bullets as he swept by.
Immelman’s airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball, from above,
followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out and raced
for home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back, and released a
huge wreath of flowers almost directly over the spot where Immelman’s
charred body was being lifted from a tangled mass of metal.
Four days later Ball, too, was killed. He attacked single-handed four
Germans. He had shot one down and was pursuing the other three when two
machines dropped from behind the clouds and closed in on him. He was
pocketed and was killed—but not until he had shot down two more of the
enemy.