THE PRACTICE DRILL
About the time that Corporal Orris Erwin was able to take his place
again as a fighting aviator, Sergeant Blaine, returning from a long
scouting raid over in the enemy's territory, met the boy in the broad
drive of the aerodrome looking about him rather strangely. He threw an
arm over Orry's shoulder, and drew him along to the door of the Aero
Club.
"Been in here?" he asked. "It is great! They asking 'bout you the day
we left. Heard about Cheval?"
Orris, not feeling like talking, shook his head, vouchsafing:
"Nothing only that he went along with your squadron at the last
minute."
"Poor chap! He won't raid with us again. He went down near Essen.
There was where we were to unload most of our bombs. But Archie got
him. Down he went -" Blaine's eyes grew moist at the memory.
Erwin understood. "Nothing more?" he ventured.
"Nary thing, except that we gave the Krupp works hell for about fifteen
or twenty minutes. You should have seen the explosions."
"That part was good. Say, Blaine," Orris, was looking, thoughtful,
"has it ever struck you how terribly uncertain a thing life is --"
"Oh, rats!" Blaine shook his smaller companion as they neared the club
door. "Stow that sort of talk and thought! Don't do you a bit of good
or those that hear you. See?"
"Still, since my last flight with you, these thing will run across my
mind. What is up now ? You in on anything yet?"
"I've heard -- but don't whisper a word -- that we're on for a job of
sausage driving next. Nothing sure, though."
Sausages is the slang term for gas observation balloons which go up at
certain points and observe the enemy's positions or maneuvers before
and during battle on the earth below. Sausages do not fight back much
but are protected by support battle planes and in other ways.
Reaching the clubroom door, they entered, Blaine pushing his comrade
forward and saying with mock politeness:
"Let me present my comrade Erwin, or Orry, I like to call him. While
doing the Boches the other day at Appincourte Bluff, the Boches came
mighty nigh doing him. But here he is, what's left of him. Jolly him
a bit. He feels bad!" The last tweak in allusion to Orry's remark on
the uncertainty of life.
'There were a dozen or more of the air lads in the room and cigarette
smoke tinged the air. Towards Erwin, now recovered after nearly a
three week's "lay-off" on account of his burns and other wounds, there
was a general rush of friendly hands and voices.
"Oh, you bully l'ill boy! If I hadn't been kept so busy would have
gone round to jolly you up a bit. But I kept hearin' from you all the
same."
This from Milton, or "Milt" Finzer, a Louisville lad, now in the Royal
Flying Corps for more than a year. "Don't it seem wallopin' to see you
in the clubroom again!"
"Orry, you stale mutt," this from an Americanized Pole, without a trace
of foreign accent, "I'm too glad to see you to talk much about it.
When we bombers got back from the raid that night and neither you nor
Lafe had showed up, I felt bad enough. Later when Lafe came in with a
German plane and a half dead Boche inside, we felt better. But we
missed you, Orry."
"Did you really and truly miss me?" Erwin asked, this not in a spirit
of doubt or incredulity, but only to hear his friend reemphasize it.
One likes at times to have welcome truisms reechoed over again. It is
human nature I suppose.
"Look here, Lex Brodno, you're a Pole --"
"Don't spring that on me again, even in joke I am an American, it my
folks did come over from Warsaw."
"Bully! We're all one over here. That's the way to talk!" Erwin was
getting back his old-time spirits. "All one in the good old U.S. All
one over here -- eh? Oh, you sinner!" The two walked over to a table,
interrupted at every turn by those who wanted to welcome Orry back to
the club again.
The following morning Erwin resumed his daily stunt of practice, but
was heightened mightily in spirit by noticing in the hangar where he
had usually gotten his machines a bright new scouting plane, small,
with a tail like a dolphin's, an up-to-date machine gun mounted along
the top, just where the one pilot at the wheel could handily squint
through the sights.
"Why, it's British -- one of their latest makes," informed Erwin, much
pleased. "It's -- let's see." He was squinting at the monogram.
"B-X-3. No. 48."
Just then Blaine and Finzer strolled up.
"Going out for a little spin, Orry?" queried Blaine, throwing open
wider the hangar door. "Look at 'em! Ain't they beauts?"
There was a row of eight of these snug-built machines, all the same
type and monogram, all with machine guns strapped solidly to the
fuselage of each, and with motors of great power and pliability.
"You can do anything with these chaps," remarked Milt, "except fly to
the moon. But these motors would take you a long way. As for stunts
like diving, circling, dipping, playing dead and the like, you never
saw the like. I only hope we go out soon. I learn there's a new raid
on the taps."
Blaine was nosing about one of the machines that was like the others,
only a trifle larger and had an observer's seat behind the pilot's.
"That's your, Sergeant?" queried Erwin, slightly emphasizing the last
word.
"Bet your bottee wootees, Corporal!" Another slight emphasis on the
last word. "As for yours, take your pick. They're all exactly alike.
We must go into preliminary practice today."
For an answer Erwin mechanically rolled out the machine he had first
examined, and prepared for a short flight.
"After all, all, these are much like the planes we used at Vimy last
year."
"Some improvements and stronger motors added thought," said Blaine.
"Going to give it a try-out?"
"Yep! Thought I'd like to get my hand in a bit before we go out in
squad formation." He nimbly vaulted into his seat over the rim of the
fuselage, or the body of the machine, as two mechanics pushed forward
behind the wings.
An upward flip and the alert planes rose gently into the air, and Erwin
was off. His head was cool, his brain active, and more than all his
hands were steady.
About this time Finzer had rolled out another plane and almost
immediately rose behind Orris.
The two were at once climbing high, higher, until at an elevation of
two to three thousand feet they began to circle, climb and dip in a way
that reminded one of two high-flying birds playing at tag far up in the
blue expanse of sky above.
Then Erwin's machine did a flip, bringing it above the other machine
and "onto its tail," the favorable position for aerial attack.
Suddenly Finzer turned his nose earthward and began a whirling dive.
Erwin followed; the other coming at once into horizontal poise, turned
his nose towards Erwin -- the perfect position for pouring a rain of
shot as the other passed.
Of course all this was mere practice, the full handed exercise of the
fighting aviator, through which he keeps brain, eye and hand in trim
against the perilous, heroic few seconds when he must fight to save his
life and machine.
Meantime Blaine, along with Brodno, the Americanized Pole, and one or
two others, strolled about, lazily watching the maneuvers above, and
telling stories more or less related to their and fighting experiences
flying.
Presently down came the two fliers, each with heightened color and full
of that fresh buoyancy which short, lively flights are apt to create.
Both were flippantly arguing as to which one had got the best of the
other.
"I own up that I am a little bit stale, Milt. But you wait until we go
out for squadron practice. I'll show you!"
"Yes, you will," replied Finzer, good-naturedly caustic. "Perhaps I'll
show you another trick or two then."
And so the chaffing went on as the lads adjourned to the eating-house
for lunch.
This meal over, a bugle sounded from the parade ground near the grove
of trees. It was the general summons for squadron practice. As the
boys filed out, each in full flying rig, they saw Commander Byers on
the field, watching the mechanics roll out the machines. There were a
dozen or more of the fighting planes, like those which Erwin and Finzer
had used for morning practice. In the east, from over a monotonous
expanse of scarred and war-torn country, came the sullen roar of
artillery at the front, a stern reminder that real war was close at
hand.
Each aviator at once mounted his own machine, Blaine as squad
sergeant in the one he had indicated to Erwin earlier in the day.
Erwin took his, while Finzer, Brodno, and a real American lad from
Butte, Montana, were assigned to others of these fast, nimble, scouting
planes that are really the wasps of the air, carrying their sting with
them, always ready and willing to bite.
Meanwhile at each machine two mechanics, under the eye of the airman,
went carefully over the mechanism until all were satisfied. Up they
went, singly or in pairs, gyrating playfully, always climbing, and
swooping higher, higher, until to the naked eye they became mere dots
in the clear sky.
By this time it was noticeable that they had somehow divided into two
squads or escadrilles; and at a signal from Commander Byers down below
they began maneuvering like two hostile squadrons about to engage in
aerial battle. Thereupon ensued a display of battle tactics that would
have been bewildering to an unaccustomed spectator.
These vicious little fighting planes reminded one more of air insects
than of birds. In their forward rushes many of them were doing more
than two miles a minute.
"Watch out!" said the Commander, his glass at his eyes. "The Sergeant
is going to loop."
True enough, Blaine's machine took a nose flip. He was riding upside
down. Then he was level again. The rest of his squad followed suit,
then followed their leader at a daring angle, all of them straight and
level again. The first plane in the other line, driven by Erwin, began
to loop the loop sidewise, rolling over and over, not unlike a horse
rolls over when turned out to grass. The others behind him began much
the same tactics while the first line drew away as if preparing for
counter moves.
Beyond, in the further sky, two opposing machines having detached
themselves from the rest were playing with each other like kittens with
wings. One was making rapid evolutions, the other following, and
clinging to the set course in a series of whirls with its own wing-tip
as a pivot.
Below, the comments went on from the staff surrounding the Commander,
who would say now and then:
"Look you there! Was that not fine?"
"Hard to beat," seemed to be the general verdict. "Fritz will have to
open his eyes tomorrow."
And so the show above went on. A flock of little birds chirped and
flopped past the group below. What pikers they seemed by comparison,
with the show going on above -- far above! And now they were
descending in long spirals, each squad by itself, yet preserving the
mathematical distance required, both from the opposing squad and at the
same time keeping the line prescribed for such tactics during drills at
the home grounds.
Particularly did Blaine distinguish himself in the daring of his
stunts. Erwin was hardly behind him. They looped again, they rolled,
they did the wing and tail slides, doing the last until they fell
almost perpendicularly a thousand feet. Finally they righted hardly
two hundred feet above the earth; then shot upward again at almost
incredible speed.
And now the two leaders circled slowly as their respective squads
followed on towards the ground, some falling, drifting like dead
leaves, others slanting lazily as they passed the leaders, and on down,
alighting at last each in his appointed place or thereabouts.
And then the two leaders began circling and swooping more and more
rapidly until those below felt the whirring rush of air as the two
planes swept by so low that one imagined that an arm would nearly touch
them.
All hands knew it was rivalry -- the rivalry of stunts. Yet to stand
below and watch those steel engines falling down on you from the skies
took the same kind of nerve to keep from dodging as only airmen
themselves are gifted with by practice.
Finally all this drew to a close. The machines at last ranged
themselves at opposite extremes of the landing stage and with a final
swoop both were apparently upon the spectators as with the rush of a
whirlwind. Yet, dizzy as it looked, it was mathematically timed. The
two planes flattened as if by magic; they rose, dipped again and,
passing each other in the down grade, saluted methodically as they
passed the Commander. Ten seconds later their wheels dropped gently on
the gravel at either end of the parade ground two tired looking
aviators left their the waiting mechanics and walked soberly to the
others.
The stunts were over for the day.