His fellows and the soldiers in general were devoted to him; and that
their devotion was something profounder than lip-service one incident
of his career, one of his narrow escapes, will attest. It was in
September, 1916. He was far within the enemy lines combating seven
machines when a shot penetrated the radiator of his engine and the
motor stopped. He was then quite fifteen miles distant from his own
lines and about twelve thousand feet in the air. There was nothing for
it but to point his machine for home, with the least practicable slant,
and trust to the glide sustaining him until he could reach home lines.
The turn made, he gave all his attention to his pursuers, who, not
suspecting his plight and having a lively respect for the generalship
of the redoubtable “Ace,” seemed to think discretion the better part of
valor, did not continue the chase but dived for their own quarters. The
machine on its glide fell lower and lower as he approached the trenches
and finally the German gunners recognized the craft as that of the
dreaded young champion and the guns were leveled at him, and he was
gliding through a veritable shower of bursting shrapnel. His machine
was riddled and it was a grave question if it could reach the French
lines. It crossed the German trenches a scant fifty feet above the
heads of the enemy who stood up in the trenches in their eagerness to
send a shot into the tattered plane that would bring it down.
[Illustration:
© _International Film Service._