Winged Warfare Read Online Free Page B

my ears. I felt the tail of my machine suddenly shoot up into the air, and I fell about three hundred feet before I managed completely to recover control. That shot, strange to relate, was the closest I have ever had from anti-aircraft fire. The smoke from the exploding shell enveloped me. But close as it was, only one piece of the flying steel fragments hit my machine. Even that did no damage at all.
    After recovering control I looked about hastily for the rest of my formation, and discovered that by now they were at least half a mile away, and somewhat higher than I was. Terrified at being left alone, I put my engine on full and by taking a short cut, managed to catch up with them. Much relieved, I fell in under the formation, feeling safe again, and not so alone in the world.
    We continued to patrol our beat, and I was keeping my place so well I began to look about a bit. After one of these gazing spells, I was startled to discover that the three leading machines of our formation were missing. Apparently they had disappeared into nothingness. I looked around hastily, and then discovered them underneath me, diving rapidly. I didn’t know just what they were diving at, but I dived, too. Long before I got down to them, however, they had been in a short engagement half a mile below me, and had succeeded in frightening off an enemy artillery machine which had been doing wireless observation work. It was a large white German two-seater, and I learned after we landed that it was a well-known machine and was commonly called “the flying pig.” Our patrol leader had to put up with a lot of teasing that night because he had attacked the “pig.” It seems that it worked every day on this part of the front, was very old, had a very bad pilot, and a very poor observer to protect him.
    It was a sort of point of honour in the squadron I that the decrepit old “pig” should not actually be I shot down. It was considered fair sport, however, to frighten it. Whenever our machines approached, the “pig” would begin a series of clumsy turns and ludicrous manoeuvres, and would open a frightened fire from ridiculously long ranges. The observer was a very bad shot and never succeeded in hitting any of our machines, so attacking this particular German was always regarded more as a joke than a serious part of warfare. The idea was only to frighten the “pig,” but our patrol leader had made such a determined dash at him the first day we went over, that he never appeared again. For months the patrol leader was chided for playing such a nasty trick upon a harmless old Hun.
    During my dive after the three forward machines, I managed to lose them and the enemy machine as well. So I turned and went up again where I found two of my companions. We flew around looking for the others, but could not find them, so continued the patrol until our time was up and then returned to the aerodrome. The missing ones arrived about the same time and reported they had had a great many fights, but no decisive ones.
    About this time the Germans were beginning in earnest their famous retreat from the country of the Somme. There had been days upon days of heavy fogs and flying had been impossible. A few machines went up from time to time, but could see nothing. The wily old Hun had counted upon these thick days to shield his well-laid plans, and made the most of them. Finally there came a strong breeze from the southwest that swept the fog away and cleared the ground of all mist and haze. This was on that wonderfully clear March day just before the Germans evacuated Bapaume and left it a mass of ruins. We were early in the air and had no sooner reached our proper height to cross the lines than we could see something extraordinary was happening behind the German trenches. From 15,000 feet we could see for miles and miles around. The ground was a beautiful green and brown, and slightly to the south we could see the shell-pitted