“Then there was the case of Lester Harter, of the 11th Squadron. He
went out and his machine caught fire. Harter jumped, just as Major
Lufbery did and as other aviators have done, and fell many thousand
feet to his death. When awe-stricken peasants ran from the fields to
his crushed body they found in his hand a scrap of paper, and on it was
written in hurried, jerky letters, ‘Lester Harter.’
“Fearing lost identity among the dead, Lester Harter must have written
his name on that piece of paper before he jumped from his machine.
“Then there were Kinne and McElroy, of the 99th Aero Squadron. Only a
piece of the tail of their machine was found. Their plane came down
in flames between Cunel and Nantillois. Both jumped. One day their
squadron commander joined in the search for their bodies. He hunted for
hours in a thick wood. And he gave up. He was standing on the edge of
a covered shell-hole, discouraged. Some impulse caused him to stir the
earth in the shell-hole with his foot. And there he found the body of
young McElroy. Near by they later found Kinne.
“There are many such stories that Captain Zinn can tell.
“From the information he gathers, Captain Zinn writes personal letters
to the relatives of the dead aviators, telling in simple words how and
where they went to their deaths. His letters usually give the first
true account of the manner in which the fighters of the air met their
ends. Sometimes those letters destroy cherished hopes that the aviators
reported as ‘missing’ by the War Department might some time, somehow,
turn up. But it is better so, says Captain Zinn.”