On a certain morning, just after sunrise, Don Hale, in his fur-lined
combination suit, leather aviation helmet, and provided with heavy
goggles and gloves, was strapped in his machine. It was one of a row of
six, which, in almost perfect alignment, were ready to go aloft.
There was the greatest activity and noise about the flying field. The
air was filled with the roar, the drone and the hum of many motors; and
in this sea of sound the reverberations of the distant guns were, for
the time being, completely lost.
Don had received his instructions to fly at the rear of a formation of
six machines, following one another at a distance of fifty metres. This
_vol de groupe_ would patrol the German lines for a period of several
hours.
Don Hale found himself murmuring over and over again: “At last!” And
though he tried his best to still the rapid pulsations of his heart—to
control a hand that had an extraordinary tendency to tremble, it was
without avail. He was going up to face peril of the gravest sort.
Was anything going to happen?
Just then he felt almost afraid to think of what the fates might hold in
store for him.
Presently he saw the captain wave his hand as a signal, and a moment
later the leader of the patrol rose in the air. The others followed.
There was just an instant more of waiting for Don Hale, and then he,
too, was rolling over the ground.
As readily as a leaf borne aloft by a gust of wind the Nieuport answered
to the controls and began spiraling upward.
The six machines rose directly over the field, and at a height of about
two thousand feet the leader headed toward the east, the others taking
up their respective places in the formation.
Higher and higher the fleet of wonderful little machines ascended, and
Don Hale glancing over the side of the cockpit, saw a wonderful panorama
of the rapidly-receding earth, which the early morning sun was tinting
with a soft and poetic glow. The most delicate tints of brown and green
were broken here and there by darker notes of a purplish hue, indicating
patches of woods. Crisscrossing the earth in all directions were the
roads—thread-like lines of palish gray, and, as though some giant hand
had scattered them carelessly about at widely distant points, were
clusters of little glistening dots—villages, or what remained of
villages. Now and again the boy’s eyes caught sight of pools, mirroring
on their surfaces the delicate tones of the sky or the clouds above, and
presently the river Meuse came into view—a faint and hazy line.
His practice in the school at Pau had taught Don how to preserve his
place in the _vol de groupe_, which, when the tremendous speed of the
Nieuport is considered, is far from easy, and he had never made a better
effort than at the present time. The new member of the Lafayette
Squadron remembered vividly the stories he had heard concerning the fate
of youthful and venturesome pilots who had disobeyed the commander’s
orders.
Eagerly, he kept his eyes open for enemy planes. He could not see any,
but he did perceive, far below him, on both sides of the line, numbers
of grotesque-looking observation balloons, or sausages, as they have
been jocularly christened.
Now the altimetre registered a height of over ten thousand feet—they
were approaching the battle-front. Don Hale was about to get his first
view of “Germany.”
The boy, however, was too excited—too absorbed in the contemplation of
the singular scene below him, and, at the same time, so occupied in
handling his plane that he did not feel any tingling sensation of fear.
The battle-ground was covered with a thin veil of purplish smoke, and
where the delicate shadows lay thickest on the earth he could
occasionally distinguish the flashing lights of the guns or of exploding
shells. But it all seemed very distant—very remote. The clouds of smoke
from the bursting projectiles and innumerable batteries were but tiny
spots amid the surrounding haze. Don realized that a vigorous
bombardment from both sides was going on and that a devastating hail of
missiles was creating havoc and destruction in the opposing trenches and
far to their rear. Then he had a swift glimpse of that irregular
brownish stretch of land running between the hostile forces—“No Man’s
Land,” the most sinister, the most barren, the most mutilated strip of
earth that has ever existed since the world began.
The patrol leader was now mounting higher, and the reason became almost
instantly apparent. The air straight ahead had become filled with round
puffs of viciously-spurting black smoke. The “Archies” were according
the early morning visitors their usual warm reception.
A second more, and not so many yards away there suddenly appeared the
largest and wickedest-looking puff of all, and, above the roar of the
motor, the startled Don Hale could hear the explosion of the shrapnel
shell launched by the German gunners.
The next instant he felt a terrifying thrill. His airplane was falling
through space.
Almost stifled by the air rushing past, with a horrifying vision of
impending catastrophe, the boy, nevertheless, managed to keep his wits
about him. But escape seemed impossible. A perfect hail of “Archies”
popped up in the air to the rear, to the side and to the front of the
falling machine, the control of which he was desperately trying to
regain.
Though his agony of suspense seemed long drawn out it was but a moment
when the terrifying descent was over and the machine again flying
parallel to the earth.
It was almost miraculous that it had not been riddled with the fragments
of the bursting shrapnel shells. The din of their almost continuous
explosions was ringing in the aviator’s ears, and in the
violently-disturbed air the Nieuport was rocking and plunging like a
boat in a heavy sea.
“Never fly in a straight line” was the advice which had been given to
Don before setting out on the expedition, and after the first few
moments of suspense had passed Don Hale managed to sufficiently calm his
jumping nerves and follow this instruction. He turned the nose of his
machine upward, and, in a zigzagging flight, shot like a rocket into the
blue depths above.
A little later he found an infinite relief in seeing the black
thunderbolts exploding hundreds of yards below.
But where was the rest of the patrol? They seemed to have utterly
vanished. A strange sense of loneliness such as he had never known
before took possession of him. And then, like a flash, he recalled
George Glenn’s words: “The Germans have a habit of pouncing down upon
any stragglers they may happen to see.”
Were there any enemy scouts about?
He cast a swift, comprehensive glance over the vast expanse of sky.
A number of planes were to be seen far to the rear of the German lines,
but whether friends or enemies the new combat pilot could not possibly
determine. At any rate, he was sure his companions must have ascended to
the cloud level, now close overhead.
Still thrilled at the thought of his narrow escape, he sent the biplane
climbing higher aloft. Nothing in his school days could be compared to
this flight, a flight in which danger threatened every moment
Plunging into a cloud, the machine became enveloped in soft and fleecy
masses of vapor. Not a thing could Don see in any direction. It was a
most weird and curious sensation, he found, to be sailing so far above
the earth, in the midst of the fog; and though he experienced a certain
sense of freedom from danger he had an unpleasant feeling of half
suffocation, which impelled him to escape as soon as possible from their
enfolding embrace.
Now, through a jagged opening he caught a glimpse of the earth, and just
a moment afterward something happened which gave him the greatest scare
he had yet had in his brief flying career.
A shadowy object—so faint as to be scarcely discernible—flashed into
view to his right, and, while he gazed toward it as though fascinated,
in a second of time it had grown into an object of seemingly gigantic
proportions, though still so faint in outline that he could scarcely
take in its exact form.
Another instant and the phantom-like plane had swept past with lightning
speed, leaving in its wake powerful currents o wildly swirling vapor,
while the airplane, caught in the eddy, staggered and shook.
“Whew! That was another close call!” breathed Don. “Sure enough!—this
isn’t a game for weak nerves. Hello—goodness gracious!”
The Nieuport had shot above the strata of clouds.
Even though his nerves were still tingling, his pulse throbbing
violently, the combat pilot could not repress a gasp of admiration as he
gazed out over the immense expanse of billowy forms that stretched in
every direction in a vast circle against the soft blue field of sky.
It was still early, the sun had not risen high, and its rays, falling
upon the clouds, tinted them with the most delicate of rosy hues.
“I almost seem out of the world,” murmured Don, a trifle awesomely.
“And how perfectly safe it looks I—just as though one could float about
on the clouds and be in no danger of taking a header to the earth. But
where am I in this curious world above? And, more important than all,
where are the other planes? I’d be in a nice position, shouldn’t I, if
some of Captain Richtofen’s Red Squadron should happen to come along!
What shall I do?”
The boy found that skimming close to the fleecy, ever-changing billows,
sometimes dipping into them, was a fascinating sport. Up there
everything was peace, loneliness and quietude. It seemed almost
incredible that only a few miles below, on the earth he had just left, a
terrible war was being waged and that every moment tragedies and horrors
were taking place.
But the time for decisive action had come.
Boldly, though not without some trepidation, he plunged back into the
clouds. Then came a brief period of dense obscurity, followed by a
weird, spectral illumination, as the daylight struggled to pierce the
masses of moisture-laden air; and presently the Nieuport was again in
full view of the shell-torn, battle-scarred earth, far over a hostile
country.
Many planes could now be seen, some below, some faint and hazy in the
distance, others comparatively near
And while Don was scanning each in turn, hoping to recognize the
familiar Indian’s head on the fuselage, he suddenly became conscious of
the fact that not very far away a fight in the air had begun. Probably
half a dozen or more combat pilots were engaged; and, almost forgetting,
in his interest and excitement, the danger of his position, Don Hale
watched the wonderful spectacle, with his nerves at the keenest tension.
Every acrobatic performance which he himself had learned at the advanced
school at Pau was being used by the rival airmen.
Now and again one or another went down in a spinning nose dive, as
though the machine were totally out of control; but instead of crashing
to the earth it would right itself, and, with almost incredible speed,
rise again to the attack. Fairly leaping over one another, flashing this
way and that, narrowly avoiding collisions, they soared upward or
swooped down, as a flock of enraged birds fighting among themselves
might have done, and, faintly, the enthralled Don Hale could hear the
vicious crackling of the machine guns, steadily spurting forth their
messenger of death, and see the faint smoking lines left by the tracer
ballets.
Were any members of the Lafayette Squadron engaged in the conflict?
The boy mentally voiced this query over and over again as he flew around
in a sweeping circle, keeping far above the contenders.
He felt an almost irresistible impulse to join in the fray, and but for
the fact that the squadron commander had explicitly ordered him to act
only on the defensive probably would have done so. He had seen many a
fight from the ground, but then the thrills were of a decidedly
different nature from those which came while he was in the pilot’s seat
of an airplane.
A moment more, and, just as suddenly as the battle had begun, it ended.
One of the combat planes began to fall, turning over and over in the
air, now and then the dull gray wings with the Maltese crosses clearly
outlined against the floating masses of smoke below.
Into these it plunged and disappeared from view.
Thankful that neither his compatriots no any of the Allied airmen had
been the victim, yet shuddering at the thought of the human life which
had been sacrificed to the greed of the God of War, Don Hale headed for
the west, having satisfied himself that the Allied planes, now rapidly
retreating, belonged to a French air squadron.
The black, sputtering “Archies” were beginning to burst beneath him
again, one coming so dangerously near that once more a sort of
consternation gripped him.
“This won’t do at all!” he muttered. “A little bit nearer the ceiling
for me!”
He was approaching the lines and “No Man’s Land” and following its
tortuous course with his eyes he observed in many places the sudden
bursts of smoke which told of the explosions of high-calibre shells. All
about him the atmosphere was hazy and the distance entirely obscured.
Now rapidly becoming familiar with the new game, Don began to feel more
like himself. For the first time he could understand how it was that the
experienced pilots learned to treat with comparative indifference the
angry shrieks of the attacking “Archies.”
At length Don Hale discovered the patrol of Lafayette machines flying in
a perfect formation just over the enemy’s line.
After facing the dangers of the sky alone the sense of relief and
pleasure that the sight of friends near at hand afforded him was
delightful indeed. He felt like uttering a whoop of joy.
“Considering all such experiences as I’ve just had once is too much!” he
muttered to himself. “And this time you can just bet I’ll not get
separated.”
Nor did he. The patrol, which was only policing the air, led him into no
further danger, and, consequently, when the two hours was over and they
headed for the aviation field, nothing had occurred to add more thrills
to those he had already received.
Don Hale, however, was thoroughly glad to see the great encampment
coming into view; and equally glad when he had spiraled down to the
earth and made an almost perfect _atterrissage_.
Waiting machinists helped him out of the cockpit; and as he answered the
questions fired toward him the boy felt as proud and happy as any of the
“aces” whose fame has spread throughout the world.
His first reconnaissance over the enemy’s line was something he could
never forget