He was decorated for bravery in action in the Toul sector. He attacked
many enemy observation balloons. He was shot down in his plane several
times.]
“The hostile’s slanting nose-dive swerved into a spin, an uncontrolled
side-to-side plunge, back again into a spinning dive that ended in a
straight-downward rush and a crash end on into the ground.
“Whether it was Ricky or some other machine of the flight that got
this last hostile will never be known. Ricky himself officially
reported having crashed two, but declined to claim the third as his.
On the other hand, the rest of the flight, after and always, with
enthusiastic unanimity, insisted that she was Ricky’s very own, that
he had outplayed, outfought, and killed three Huns in single combat
with them—one down and t’other come on. If Ricky himself could not
fairly and honestly claim all rights to the last Hun, the flight did.
‘_Three!_’ they said vociferously in mess that night, and would brook
no modest doubts from him.
“As the last Hun went reeling down, Ricky, in the official language
of the combat reports, ‘rejoined formation and continued the patrol.’
He pulled the stick toward him and rose buoyantly, knowing that he
was holed over and over again, that bullets, and explosive bullets at
that, had ripped and rent and torn the fabrics of his machine, possibly
had cut away some strut or stay or part of the frame. But his engine
appeared to be all right again, had never misbehaved a moment during
the fight, was running now full power and blast; his planes swept
smooth and steady along the wind levels, his controls answered exactly
to his tender questioning touch. He had fought against odds of three to
one and—he had won out. He was safe, barring accident, to land back in
his own ’drome; and there were two if not three Huns down on his brazen
own within the last—how long?
“At the moment of his upward zoom on the conclusion of the fight he
glanced at his clock which had not been hit by the enemy fire, could
hardly believe what it told him, was only convinced when he recalled
that promise to himself to turn back at the end of that minute, and had
his belief confirmed by the flight’s count of the time between their
first hearing shots and their covering the distance to join him. His
clock marked exactly noon. The whole fight, from the firing of the
first shot to the falling away of the last Hun, had taken bare seconds
over the one minute. That pilot was right; in air fighting ‘you don’t
get time to think.’”
“THE PICTURES ARE GOOD”