_DOWN IN FLAMES_
"The Boche is coming back," a man yelled into the entrance of the
cellar. A second later I was above ground and with my head at the
sky-scraper angle. There he was! Like a great homing pigeon he was
streaking it for his own lines after an observation-flight far behind
ours. He was high, but not high enough to hide the telltale crosses
on the under side of his wings, and the churn of his engine was
unmistakable.
When my eyes brought him into focus, he was at least a mile away, but
in half a minute he was directly overhead. The guns were roaring all
about; shrapnel bursts surrounded the pirate bird. Ah! that one broke
near! For just an instant he faltered, but on he came.
I stepped into the doorway of an old shattered stone house to find
cover from the falling shrapnel and stray pieces of shell. The Boche
was flying as the eagle flies when his objective has anchored his
eye; he turned neither to the right nor to the left. He quickly and
constantly changed his elevation, however; but the batteries were doing
splendidly, and that he escaped destruction is a miracle. Two minutes
more, and he was out of hearing and virtually safe.
There was a chorus of disgust; strong words in lurid splashes filled
the air. Particularly fluent were the men when they passed comment upon
the French fliers.
"Where are they?" they inquired in derision.
"Taking in the side-shows on the Milky Way!" one husky volunteers.
Another added: "Always the same story, 'No speed, no pep.' 'Dutchmen
come and Dutchmen go, but we stay down forever.' They'll come along
presently like blind pigs looking for an acorn."
I knew the symptoms, and spared any comment. It had been noticeable,
however, that the German airmen, on our sector at least, commanded
swifter scout-planes than we did. In straightaway bursts they left our
French brothers at the post. At the time of this particular incident
only a few Americans were flying, and these were associated with French
aviators, and were using French machines.
Sure enough, two minutes more brought the "silver queens," as the boys
called them, although the name "silver queen" really belongs to the
great British aluminum dirigibles. There were three of them, and the
sunlight flashing upon their white pinions was a gallant sight. These
"queens" are hard to follow because of their color, and we kept them
located by the angry buzzing of their motors--an altogether different
sound from that given out by the visitor from Germany--and by the light
flashing from their wings. They were like angry hornets that had been
disturbed early in the morning and were now furiously looking for their
tormentor. The men continued to "grouse," but their tones indicated
expectancy.
In the meantime all was quiet across the way, and our guns had been
silent ever since the elusive foe roared out of range. The Frenchmen
were circling high above us. Suddenly and with something of a shock I
noticed that the circle was widening, that each new circumference was
nearer the enemy's lines. Our airmen were inviting battle. They were
prepared to go clear across to get it, and were challenging the foe
to come out, or rather up. He was not eager. Indeed, I never saw him
when he was. Perhaps his orders do not allow of the initiative that
the Allies possess; but German airmen, as a class, rather than German
aëroplanes, are inferior to those who so often hurl to them, without
acceptance, the gage of battle.
Our little fleet was well "over" and drawing anti-aircraft fire before
its invitation was acknowledged. Then up they came, five in all; and
the deadly tourney was on. In spite of the odds, not an inch did the
"silver queens" recede. The conflict was so far away that its fine
details were lost to us; we could not distinguish the sound of the
machine guns in the air from those in the front-line trenches below
us, and only the sunlight flashing on the silver wings told that "our
flag was still there."
It was a swirling vortex of currents that held to no fixed course.
The war-birds swooped and climbed; puffs of smoke and streaks of
fire marked their way. A dozen times machines seemed to collide; a
dozen times we saw planes plunge as if to destruction, only to right
themselves and return to the fray. Out of a nose-dive one Frenchman
came when so near the ground that I had closed my eyes to avoid seeing
the crash. A score of times men looped the loop and "tumbled." But not
an inch did those Frenchmen give! And listen to these "grousers" now!--
"_Come back! Come back!_ They'll not come back unless _five more_ get
up, _until something happens_! They're hungry, man! Those Frenchies
eat 'em up. They haven't had a chance like this for five days." It was
five days before that eighteen planes were in battle behind our lines
only two miles back. In this affair two Germans were shot down without
the loss of an Allied wing. "And, when they kiss the Hun good-by this
morning, he'll have blisters on his mouth."
But such struggles simply cannot long endure. This one ended far more
quickly than it began. With the speed of express-trains two machines
drew away from the whirlpool. Their course paralleled the lines. We
saw the "silver queen" on the tail of the Taube. Bitterly the German
fought to outposition his rival, but his pursuer anticipated his every
manoeuvre. For once at least the German had no advantage in speed. They
looped the loop together and almost as a double plane. In a second it
was all over. As the warriors slid to the bottom of the great circle,
the Frenchman poured a veritable stream of steel into his hapless
enemy. A trail of smoke came away; then a ball of fire hung in the
air; and then like a dead sun the crumpled skyship fell to the earth.
The victor paused for a second above his triumph, and then flew to
re-enforce his hard-pressed comrades.
We had forgotten the other six. When we looked at them again, the six
were eight or ten; at the distance from which we observed them we
could not be exact. But the odds were too great even for Frenchmen,
and anyway they had "dined." They were not pursued beyond our advanced
trenches. The Germans did not bring themselves into the range of our
batteries, although they outnumbered our fliers at least two to one. As
for France, _three went over and three came back_!
I cannot describe my feelings as I saw that German die in his burning
chariot, but a flying man has described them for me. He was speaking
at a patriotic meeting in western New York. Very handsome he was in
the uniform of the Lafayette Escadrille, and he was very young, the
youngest man ever allowed to wear that uniform. Already he had been
cited for bringing down three enemy planes. He was recovering from a
severe wound, and while convalescing in America was giving some of his
time to platform work.
Again and again the men at his table (it was a dinner affair) urged him
to tell of one of his battles. He was reluctant to do so. His consent
was finally secured, but only after pressure that was hardly allowable
had been brought to bear.
The tale was told without the slightest attempt at oratorical effect.
He described his success in outmanoeuvring his opponent, or rather his
_two_ opponents, for two men were in the enemy plane; the buckling of
the German machine; the shooting of the observer from his seat, and how
he hurtled through the air; the explosion and the fire. Then he said,
"I stopped there in the sky, and all that I could think was, 'Do they
feel it?'"
The lad's eyes--for his face and his years were those of a lad, though
he had done already a man's stern work--were wistful as he spoke.
_These men are not killers._
But it was not at the front that I found the horror of aërial warfare.
One afternoon I stepped from the American Y. M. C. A. headquarters in
London, at 47 Russell Square, walked a little way, and found stones red
with the blood of children. When I left Europe, not a single military
objective had been found by an aërial bomb in all the raids over the
capital of the United Kingdom. In the very nature of things it is not
likely that a bomb will reach such an objective. The night-raider must
have a large target. Twenty minutes sees him across the Channel and at
the estuary of the Thames. He follows the silver trail into the heart
of the city, and drops his "eggs." But of course a military programme
is not intended. Imperial Germany built her aërial plans about the
theory that terrorizing a people will destroy a nation's morale.
But Imperial Germany blundered again. Early one morning, following
the sounding of the "all-clear" signals, a great company crowded
against the ropes that the omnipresent "Bobby" had thrown about a
lodging-house. Many murdered and maimed had been left behind by the
Bluebeard of Berlin. A gray-haired man was lifted by the carriers.
Surely he was dead; the top of his head was like a red, red poppy.
But no. He raised his thin, white hand, and waved it feebly to the
crowd below. Such a roar went up from that multitude as man seldom
hears,--_the roar of the female lion standing over her cubs_.
One night I reached Paris simultaneously with an air-raid warning.
Later I stood--very foolishly, but I was ignorant of the danger
then--on the roof of the Gibraltar Hotel, and watched first the
star shells and the barrage at the city's edge, the flashing of the
signals from the defending planes, and the long arms of the mighty
searchlights as they policed the sky. So effective were the French that
night that the enemy got no farther than the suburbs.
Many excruciatingly funny things happen during a raid, as for instance
the raising of an umbrella by a gentleman who suddenly found shrapnel
falling about him. He kept it up, too, while he galloped straight down
the middle of the street instead of finding cover.
A very prominent gentleman, who is a friend of the writer, had been
looking forward with some misgivings to his wartime trip abroad. He
found his first night in Paris enlivened by a visit from Germany. He
had made diligent inquiry and learned the exact location of the abri,
had several times traversed the route between his room and the cellar,
and had been particular to make himself familiar with the signals
of alarm. He was restless when he first retired; but the long and
wearisome journey was a sure sleep-producer, and it was out of profound
slumber that the whistle and cries awoke him.
You may be sure that he lost no time in getting under headway; he even
forgot his dressing-gown and the slippers by the side of his bed. He
sacrificed all impedimenta for speed. I do not know whether he used
the banisters or not, but I have reason to believe that nothing was
left undone to cover the maximum of distance in the minimum of time.
Afterwards he remembered the amazed countenances of the people in the
halls as he flashed by. However, their indifference (indeed, they were
not even bound in the direction of the cellar) did not deter him. What
he regarded as carelessness due to long exposure and many similar
experiences did not blind him to the obligations he owed to his own
family and profession.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN AIRMAN RETURNING TO HIS POST AFTER A DAY'S
WORK IN THE SKIES
Copyright by Committee on Public Information.]
The cellar was cold, but he was no quitter! He was the only one in it,
but company was not his chief concern! However, even a man of iron
needs more than pajamas and bare feet to hold him steadfast through an
unwarmed February night in a Paris abri. Before two hours had passed
the cautious American was fully decided to risk all for warmth. He was
a human iceberg when he crept up the quiet stairs and into his bed. The
next morning he discovered that the signals he obeyed were the "All
clear," that he had failed to hear the warning, and that he had slept
through the raid.
But a few weeks later the German came clear in. Again I happened to be
in the Gibraltar Hotel, _in_ the hotel this time. I sat in the parlor
with Dr. Robert Freeman of Pasadena, a master of the intricacies of
Christian service in this war. The windows were iron-shuttered, and we
listened in comparative safety. The guns of the defensive batteries
roared about us, and above the sound of them crashed again and again
the bombs of the city's despoilers. Explosions came quite near that
night. A bloody night it was for women and babies.
Again I say it: there is and has been no excuse of even barbarous
military science for the murder trips to London and Paris. In one abri
that night, a shelter in a great station, nearly a hundred died.
Among those killed in a hospital was Miss Winona Martin of Long Island.
She had been in France only a few days, having come across to serve
as a Y. M. C. A. canteen worker. She was the first American Y. M. C.
A. representative to die in action. "The devil loves a shining mark,"
but even frightfulness overshot its mark that night. Dr. Freeman
conducted the funeral of the quiet woman who had travelled far to be a
messenger of cheer and comfort. There was no sermon. On Miss Martin's
record-card, in her own handwriting, are the words, "For the duration
of the war and longer if necessary." Another has said:
"Her sacrifice spoke more eloquently than words. Longer than the
duration of the war will linger the memory of the girl, the first
American woman in Paris to lay down her life in this struggle against
wrong, the first martyr among those wearers of the triangle who may be
found living in every camp and trench of France."