[7] All numerals relate to stories herein told, not to chapters in the
original books.
"FLYING FOR FRANCE"--HERO TALES OF BATTLES IN THE AIR
_With the American Escadrille at Verdun_
_Told by James R. McConnell, Sergeant-Pilot in the French Flying Corps_
The story of how Jim McConnell, the young North Carolinian, went to
France and gave his life to the cause of human liberty, is a noble
tribute to young Americanism. His heroic deeds at the battle of
Verdun when he fought with the American aviators in a sea of clouds
is a classic that would do credit to the ancient Greeks. A comrade
tells this story: "One day in January, 1915, I saw Jim McConnell in
front of the Court House at Carthage, North Carolina. 'Well,' he
said, 'I am all fixed up and I am leaving on Wednesday.' 'Where for?'
I asked. 'I have got a job to drive an ambulance in France,' was his
answer. And then he went on to tell me, first, that as he saw it the
greatest event of history was going on right at hand. 'These sand
hills,' he said, 'will be here forever but the war won't--and so I
am going.' So he went. He joined the American Ambulance Service in
the Vosges, was mentioned many times in the Orders of the Day for
conspicuous bravery in saving wounded under fire, and received the
much-coveted Croix de Guerre." As a Sergeant-Pilot in the Lafayette
Escadrille of American Aviators, McConnell was killed in March, 1917,
in an encounter with two Boche-driven aeroplanes. It was his hope
that he might lead a United States Army Aero Corps on the French
front. He, indeed, had a part in great deeds and left the best
description yet published of the most terrific battle in the war
up to the time of his death. His book, titled "Flying for France,"
is published by _Doubleday, Page and Company_, Copyright 1916-17.
Some of his experiences herein related are presented with their full
authority in this collection of stories.
[8] I--STORY OF THE AMERICAN AIRMEN
Beneath the canvas of a huge hangar mechanicians are at work on the
motor of an airplane. Outside, on the borders of an aviation field,
others loiter awaiting their aërial charge's return from the sky.
Near the hangar stands a hut-shaped tent. In front of it several
short-winged biplanes are lined up; inside it three or four young men
are lolling in wicker chairs.
They wear the uniform of French army aviators. These uniforms, and the
grim-looking machine guns mounted on the upper planes of the little
aircraft, are the only warlike note in a pleasantly peaceful scene. The
war seems very remote. It is hard to believe that the greatest of all
battles--Verdun--rages only twenty-five miles to the north, and that
the field and hangars and mechanicians and aviators and airplanes are
all playing a part therein.
Suddenly there is the distant hum of a motor. One of the pilots emerges
from the tent and gazes fixedly up into the blue sky. He points, and
one glimpses a black speck against the blue, high overhead. The sound
of the motor ceases, and the speck grows larger. It moves earthward in
steep dives and circles, and as it swoops closer, takes on the shape
of an airplane. Now one can make out the red, white, and blue circles
under the wings which mark a French war-plane, and the distinctive
insignia of the pilot on its sides.
"_Ton patron arrive!_" one mechanician cries to another. "Your boss is
coming!"
The machine dips sharply over the top of a hangar, straightens out
again near the earth at a dizzy speed a few feet above it and, losing
momentum in a surprisingly short time, hits the ground with tail and
wheels. It bumps along a score of yards and then, its motor whirring
again, turns, rolls toward the hangar, and stops. A human form,
enveloped in a species of garment for all the world like a diver's
suit, and further adorned with goggles and a leather hood, rises
unsteadily in the cockpit, clambers awkwardly overboard and slides down
to terra firma.
A group of soldiers, enjoying a brief holiday from the trenches in a
cantonment near the field, straggle forward and gather timidly about
the airplane, listening open-mouthed for what its rider is about to say.
"Hell!" mumbles that gentleman, as he starts divesting himself of his
flying garb.
"What's wrong now?" inquires one of the tenants of the tent.
"Everything, or else I've gone nutty," is the indignant reply,
delivered while disengaging a leg from its Teddy Bear trousering. "Why,
I emptied my whole roller on a Boche this morning, point blank at not
fifteen metres off. His machine gun quit firing and his propeller
wasn't turning and yet the darn fool just hung up there as if he were
tied to a cloud. Say, I was so sure I had him it made me sore--felt
like running into him and yelling, 'Now, you fall, you bum!'"
The eyes of the _poilus_ register surprise. Not a word of this
dialogue, delivered in purest American, is intelligible to them. Why is
an aviator in a French uniform speaking a foreign tongue, they mutually
ask themselves. Finally one of them, a little chap in a uniform long
since bleached of its horizon-blue color by the mud of the firing line,
whisperingly interrogates a mechanician as to the identity of these
strange air folk.
"But they are the Americans, my old one," the latter explains with
noticeable condescension.
Marvelling afresh, the infantrymen demand further details.
They learn that they are witnessing the return of the American
Escadrille--composed of Americans who have volunteered to fly for
France for the duration of the war--to their station near Bar-le-Duc,
twenty-five miles south of Verdun, from a flight over the battle front
of the Meuse. They have barely had time to digest this knowledge when
other dots appear in the sky, and one by one turn into airplanes as
they wheel downward. Finally all six of the machines that have been
aloft are back on the ground and the American Escadrille has one more
sortie over the German lines to its credit.