“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.”
Shortly before his death Ball wrote to a friend: “You will be pleased
to hear that I have ten more Huns, and that my total is now 40—two in
front of my French rival. Oh, I’m having a topping time! To-day or
to-morrow I’m being presented to Sir Douglas Haig. Am very pleased. I
just want to get a few more if I can.”
Ball’s wish was gratified. He got more than a few more and then—died as
he had so often lived—fighting against great odds, for when last seen,
on the evening of May 7, 1917, he was high above the enemy’s lines
engaging three German machines at once.
What slender hope had been left for him was shattered by the War Office
intimation that Ball had been killed. The brave young officer lost his
life at a village 5½ miles east of La Bassée.