Part 29

“The right-hand machine whirled past him so close that he saw every detail of the pilot’s dress—the fur-fringed helmet, dark goggles, black sweater. He caught his machine out of her downward slide, drove her ahead, steadied her, and brought his sights to bear on the enemy a scant twenty yards ahead, and poured a long burst of fire into her. He saw the bullets break and play on and about the pilot and fuselage. Then came a leaping flame, and a spurt of black smoke whirling out from her; Ricky had a momentary glimpse of the pilot’s agonized expression as he glanced wildly around, and next instant saw a trailing black plume of smoke and the gleam of a white underbody as the enemy nose-dived down in a last desperate attempt to make a landing before his machine dissolved in flames about him.

“With a sudden burst of exultation Ricky realized his changed position. A minute before he was in the last and utmost desperate straits, three fast and well-armed adversaries against his single hand. Now, with two down, it was man to man—no, if he wished, it was all over, because the third hostile had swung left, had her nose down, and was ‘hare-ing’ for home and down toward the covering fire of the German anti-aircraft batteries. Already she was two to three hundred yards away, and the first German Archie soared up and burst with a rending ‘Ar-rrgh’ well astern of him. But Ricky’s blood was up and singing songs of triumph in his ears. Two out of three downed; better make a clean job of it and bag the lot.”

MAKING A CLEAN JOB

“His nose dipped and his tail flicked up, and he went roaring down, full out, after his last Hun. A rapid crackle of one machine gun after another struck his ear before ever he had the last hostile fully centered in his sights. Ricky knew that at last the flight had arrived and were joining in the fight. But he paid no heed to them; his enemy was in the ring of his sights now, so with his machine hurling down at the limit of speed of a falling body plus all the pull of a hundred and odd horsepower, the whole fabric quivering and vibrating under him, the wind roaring past and in his ears, Ricky snuggled closer in his seat, waited till his target was fully and exactly centered in his sights, and poured in a long, clattering burst of fire.

“The hostile’s slanting nose-dive swerved into a spin, an uncontrolled side-to-side plunge, back again into a spinning dive that ended in a straight-downward rush and a crash end on into the ground.

“Whether it was Ricky or some other machine of the flight that got this last hostile will never be known. Ricky himself officially reported having crashed two, but declined to claim the third as his. On the other hand, the rest of the flight, after and always, with enthusiastic unanimity, insisted that she was Ricky’s very own, that he had outplayed, outfought, and killed three Huns in single combat with them—one down and t’other come on. If Ricky himself could not fairly and honestly claim all rights to the last Hun, the flight did. ‘_Three!_’ they said vociferously in mess that night, and would brook no modest doubts from him.

“As the last Hun went reeling down, Ricky, in the official language of the combat reports, ‘rejoined formation and continued the patrol.’ He pulled the stick toward him and rose buoyantly, knowing that he was holed over and over again, that bullets, and explosive bullets at that, had ripped and rent and torn the fabrics of his machine, possibly had cut away some strut or stay or part of the frame. But his engine appeared to be all right again, had never misbehaved a moment during the fight, was running now full power and blast; his planes swept smooth and steady along the wind levels, his controls answered exactly to his tender questioning touch. He had fought against odds of three to one and—he had won out. He was safe, barring accident, to land back in his own ’drome; and there were two if not three Huns down on his brazen own within the last—how long?

“At the moment of his upward zoom on the conclusion of the fight he glanced at his clock which had not been hit by the enemy fire, could hardly believe what it told him, was only convinced when he recalled that promise to himself to turn back at the end of that minute, and had his belief confirmed by the flight’s count of the time between their first hearing shots and their covering the distance to join him. His clock marked exactly noon. The whole fight, from the firing of the first shot to the falling away of the last Hun, had taken bare seconds over the one minute. That pilot was right; in air fighting ‘you don’t get time to think.’”

“THE PICTURES ARE GOOD”

That’s All That Observation Pilot Miller Cared About When the End Came

Among the men killed at Château-Thierry was John Q. Miller, of Fairview, N. C., first lieutenant of the air service, shot down July 24, 1918. He was one of the airmen of whom the public had probably not heard, for his courage and daring were not as spectacular as the bravery of Luke, Rickenbacker or Lufbery. At the time of his death he was the greatest observation pilot on the front, according to the story of Major Elmer R. Haslett in an issue of _United States Air Service_, the official publication of the Army and Navy Air Service Association.

The unsung, silent heroes of the air are the observation pilots, who at the risk of life go forward into impossible places to get pictures of enemy positions and come back with their machines riddled with shrapnel from “archie” fire. At the outset Miller, says Major Haslett, attracted attention for the serious way in which he took his work. He took assignment after assignment when he might have stayed back in the barracks, and never failed to complete his mission. Momentarily driven off by hostile aircraft or by too heavy “archie,” he would return to the job and come back with his pictures or observations, and his plane so full of holes that it had to be salvaged.

IN SPITE OF WOUNDS

Six Germans finally brought Miller and his observer down on his last trip over the lines, but not until the photographs had been made. Badly wounded, Miller pulled his plane out of a spin and landed his observer with the pictures. Major Haslett says:

“He gave the plane the gun, and they took off on Johnny’s last ride. The plane accompanying was piloted by Lieut. Baker and an observer by the name of Lieut. Jack Lumsden, both of whom were the very finest of our personnel. On this mission Thompson, I believe, was taking photographs—oblique views—which must be taken very low, in fact, dangerously low, in order that the advancing troops may see from the photographs exactly what is in front of them. It was a very poor day, and the clouds were low.

“As they were just finishing this perilous work, a drove of eleven Huns swooped out of the clouds and made for them. Five attacked Lumsden and Baker, and six attacked Thompson and Miller. Our boys were about two or three kilometers within the enemy’s lines, and, with such a superiority of numbers, of course, were immediately outclassed.

“The Hun planes surrounded Thompson and Miller, pouring in lead from all sides. Thompson, who had shot down a Boche before and had been in a number of scraps, was giving them the fight of his life. Miller was heading toward No Man’s Land. It is hard in such a fight to know exactly one’s location, and it is better to pick out one’s general direction when at such a low altitude, and be sure the plane is on the friendly side of the line before hitting the ground.

“While still about a kilometer within German territory, a bullet struck Miller in the chest and another in the arm. Thompson told me that Miller put his hand over the fuselage as if semi-conscious, then the plane started to go from right to left, climb and dive as if partly under control.

“As Thompson described it, it seemed as if Miller were doing his best to keep up his strength to go on with the flight. They crossed the lines, and as they did so Miller motioned to him in one of his conscious moments as if to point to home. He then put the plane into a dive.

“One of the German planes had dropped out of the combat, but the others were determined upon putting the plane down in flames or out of control. In these last few seconds they closed in with every gun concentrated on Miller. This fighting was so close that Thompson was aiming point blank. Miller was shot again; he made some sort of a motion as if falling forward.

MILLER’S RALLYING FEAT

“In a moment Thompson scored a direct burst into one of the planes; it made a sudden climb, then went into a tail spin from which it never recovered. Thompson swung his tourrelle round to get the one coming up on his tail. While himself falling, by sheer good fortune Thompson, fighting to the end, turned loose all he had, and the plane underneath his tail ceased firing, dived and fell within a hundred yards of the other he had just got.

“The three remaining Huns followed Miller down. One of them got Thompson in the arm and leg with an explosive bullet. The plane was out of control. By some miracle, Thompson says, as they were about to strike earth, Miller came out of his forward position, pulled the stick back, and the plane landed without a crash.

“Thompson had enough strength to jump out of the cockpit and run around to Miller, who, with a strength that was superhuman, was climbing out of the cockpit, bleeding profusely, his face ghostly white.

“He reached his arms up, man-like, and let them rest limply on Thompson’s shoulders. With closed eyes, and with a voice barely audible, he mumbled: ‘Thompson, God bless you! They got me, but I got you home, boy—and we brought the pictures back. Get a motorcycle, Tommy, and take them to headquarters. You write a report—I can’t, Tommy; you see I can’t, Tommy. And be sure to put in it that the pictures are good—that the mission was successful.’

“These were his last words, and he fell over unconscious. His wounds were of a hopeless nature, and he died without regaining consciousness a few minutes later in a sort of improvised dressing station in the front lines.

“Well, those are incidents in the life of the observation game.

“The official records credit Johnny Miller with the destruction of two enemy planes, and the French Government has bestowed upon him posthumously the Croix de Guerre with Palm, but those of us who had the pleasure of serving with him and who have lived to tell the tale credit Johnny Miller with having been just a plain, ordinary, brave fellow, who gave his life with all willingness to insure the successful completion of the mission to which his country assigned him.”

SUBDUING THE TURK

When Captain Butt, the British Ace, Found Bakshish a Cure of Captivity

When the war broke out, Alan Bott was one of the younger set of newspaper men in London. Soon after England cast in her lot with France, Bott was training with the airmen. Right speedily he became a fighting flyer and anon an Ace, with seven German planes to his credit. He won the Victoria Cross, and the rank of Captain. Readers may remember having heard him lecture when he made a tour of this country early in 1919, and gave very impressive pictures of adventures in the air. Not many aviators had the varied experiences that fell to the fortune of Captain Bott, for though he was for a time with his fellows of the Royal British Air Force operating in France, he was transferred to the East later and many of his thrilling adventures were in the Holy Land. He gave an account of one of these soon after his arrival in this country. He said:

“It all began when I fell out of the clouds from a height of six thousand feet and bumped my nose after a fight with a Boche plane. It wasn’t exactly a fight with one plane, either. I was chasing a Boche who had a machine nearly as fast as mine, and by the time I caught up with him we were forty miles behind the enemy lines and above some rough, rocky, partly wooded hills.

“I was just beginning to pepper the Boche when two enemy scout planes I had not seen literally dropped from the clouds right above and shot me up, especially the petrol tank. I whirled and crashed down, and the next thing I knew it was moonlight and my leg was paining like the deuce, held down by part of my engine. It was a very lonely, desert spot, and I figured that hill would be my last resting-place. I figured they would name it after me.

“Whether fortunately or not a bunch of Arabs came along, sort of bandits, I suppose, and found me. As far as I could make out, after they lifted the engine off me they were tossing up whether they should kill me or turn me over to the Turks and get some bakshish, which is a popular pastime in that part of the country. They used to say that with £1,000 you could bribe the Grand Vizier himself.

“While they were drawing lots to see whether I would live or die, a party of Turkish soldiers came along and chased the Arabs off, but detained me. In fact, they were decent enough to take me to an Austrian hospital at Afion-Kara-Hisson, about seventy miles from our base at Jaffa. It was three weeks before I could get around much, and then I foolishly tried to escape. My leg was so bad that the attempt was a foozle, as the guards caught me up before I had gone very far.

IN JAIL AT NAZARETH

“Finally, I was taken to Nazareth and put in a criminal jail with murderers and brigands, all filthy brutes. At first I was put in an underground dungeon, with one other man, an Arab, whose great penchant was chasing cooties. There were other English prisoners there, and we were all treated pretty badly. Our food consisted of a bowl of soup and a loaf of bread each day. It was some bread!

“Several of us planned to escape and tried several stunts, none of which appealed to the Turks, until I selfishly hit on the scheme of becoming temporarily insane. I was very crazy, for a few days, and then the highly ornate boss of the jail shook his head seriously and said he would have to send me to Constantinople.

“We finally began to rumble across the desert in a very slow train, and I decided to drop off at the first convenient way-station and cut across lots for Jaffa. We were quite near Constantinople before an opportunity came, and then, at the psychological moment, there was a very opportune train wreck, and I walked away and hid in among some rocks.

“When night came I met a Turkish officer dressed in a German uniform, and then worked the popular game of bakshish, which is really the national game of Turkey.

“I gave the officer a couple of Turkish pounds and he peeled the uniform. He put on mine and I have no doubt he was duly captured by the guards. I went to Constantinople and was saluted very regularly by Turkish and German soldiers. It took a lot of dodging to keep clear of the Germans in Constantinople, but I managed to get along, having a lot of fun sometimes in the cafés, listening to the gossip and plotting.

A STOWAWAY ON A “HELL SHIP”

“It appeared at that time that Turkey had been ready for quite a while to sign a separate peace, but the Allies couldn’t get the idea. My greatest desire was to get out of Constantinople, and I finally stowed away on a little rusty cargo-steamer bound for Odessa. We were rolling around the Black Sea one day when the crew were seized with Bolshevism and went on strike.

“It was great on that ship with the engines dead. We rolled and rolled for days on end. I had bought a Russian sailor’s uniform by that time and so could go about without fear of capture. The main thing was to get a crust of bread and cup of water. It was a hell ship and no mistake, with the sun beating down all day and the officers and crew in continual fights.

“Finally they patched up a truce and we made Odessa, the trip taking almost three weeks. It was bad in Odessa and when we heard that Bulgaria had made a separate peace I decided to make a try for the Bulgarian coast. I stowed away aboard another cargo steamship and finally reached Bulgaria and my British countrymen.”

A DARING PURSUIT

In An Ordinary Plane Aviator Bone Chased a German Sea-Plane Over Sea

On Sunday, March 19, 1916, four German sea-planes sailed over East Kent, England, in a bombing raid upon defenseless towns—Deal, Margate, Ramsgate—and arrived over Dover about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and dropped more than a dozen bombs, doing a considerable amount of damage. One bomb went through the roof of a Home where there were a large number of children; fortunately, the children, at the first sound of the raiders, had been taken to the shelter of the basement. Several children going to Sunday school were killed or injured. A woman walking along the street was blown into a doorway of a shop and badly hurt. The invaders were given very little time to do their work. British aeroplanes rose in pursuit. A sharp fight followed, both attackers and defenders using their machine guns freely in the air. One British airman particularly distinguished himself. Flight Commander R. J. Bone, R. N., pursued one of the German sea-planes out to sea for nearly 30 miles, in a small single-seater land machine. There, after an engagement lasting about a quarter of an hour, he forced it to descend, the German machine having been hit many times, and the observer disabled or killed. For this, Flight Commander Bone received the D. S. O.

The commander left the aerodrome while the enemy machine was still in sight, and making no attempt to climb steeply, kept the enemy in view. After a pursuit of nearly 30 miles he rose to 9,000 feet, 2,000 feet above the enemy. Rapidly overhauling the other machine, he attempted to make a vertical dive for it, both sides firing vigorously. Then he maneuvered ahead of the other and steered straight at him, diving below him and turning with a vertical right-hand bank immediately under him.

BROUGHT HIM DOWN

The German pilot swerved his machine to the left before they met, and the Englishman as he passed could see the German observer hanging over the right side of the fuselage, apparently dead or severely wounded. The gun was cocked at an angle of 45 degrees. Continuing his courageous maneuvers, Flight-Commander Bone brought his machine within 15 or 20 feet of the enemy, and poured in five or six bursts of six rounds until the enemy dived deeply, with smoke pouring from his machine. The propeller stopped, but the pilot kept control and succeeded in landing safely on the water. Here the English airman had to leave him, as he could not come down on a land machine, and his engine showed signs of giving out.

One machine apparently escaped from the fight at Dover and rapidly made its way to Deal, where it dropped seven bombs, doing considerable damage to property, but not killing or injuring any persons. A second pair of sea-planes appeared over Ramsgate at 2.10 p.m. and dropped bombs on the town. Four children on their way to Sunday school were killed, and a man driving a motor-car near by was also killed. A hospital for Canadian troops was damaged, but no one in the building was hurt, and the nurses went out in the streets to assist in the work of tending the injured. One of the sea-planes traveled on from Ramsgate to Margate, where it dropped a bomb, damaging a house. The German aircraft were now all pursued by British machines and driven out to sea.

THE ROOSEVELT BOYS

Four Sons of a Famous Fighter Gather Their Own Laurels of War

The Roosevelts are not the only family to have given four sons to the cause of their country, and those other sons have fought as bravely as Archibald and Theodore and Kermit, and died as daringly as Quentin. It isn’t, then, because the sacrifices of the Roosevelts are unique that they have become so dear to the hearts of Americans. The Roosevelts would be the first to decry any attempt to single out their deeds as any nobler than the deeds of their millions of comrades in arms. It seems only fair, however, to the traditions of our democracy that having recounted so many exploits by heroes who before the war were not known outside their little towns, we should include a few of the many, many names which proved that connection with more noted families did not make them any slower to welcome the dangers which war brought alike to rich and poor.

ARCHIE GOES TO FRANCE

Back in June, 1917, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., went across with Archie. Theodore was a Major then; Archie a Captain. Both were assigned to General Pershing’s staff. In August it was reported that the two, anxious for real action, had been transferred to the 26th Infantry. So anxious was Archie to get into line duty that he accepted a reduction to Second Lieutenancy in order to get into the trenches.

All this had happened quickly. It was only in April that Archie had been engaged to Grace Lockwood. Some five days after that he had passed his examination for the Officers’ Reserve Corps. By April 15 he had married. June 20 he left Plattsburg with confidential orders. June 25 his father announced that Archie and Theodore had left for France.

Archie did not stay long as a Second Lieutenant. By Christmas, following distinguished service in leading patrols in No Man’s Land, General Pershing recommended that Archie be promoted. In February Archie was made a Captain. One month later Captain Archie was wounded in the arm and leg by shrapnel. He received the French War Cross while lying on the operating table. “He lay wounded for fourteen hours unattended,” writes an American surgeon in a letter home. In May Archie was reported able to walk again.

His wounds did not make Archie callous to the suffering of others. In July (1918) we read that “Archie’s request for aid for Sergeant F. A. Ross whose hand was amputated will be heeded by Colonel Roosevelt.”

A shrapnel wound of its nature usually results in more serious complications than an ordinary bullet wound. On July 13 the Captain had to undergo another operation for partial paralysis of the left arm. His spirit never wavered. When wounded he had directed that the wounded men in his command be attended first. Archie was hurt worse than he knew. It would take eight months, at least, for him to recover. In September he was brought back to the United States for special treatment.

THEODORE, THE IDOL OF HIS MEN

In the meantime Theodore was making himself feared, loved and famous. He was a Major, we said. He had been a Major once before, but under what different conditions—a Major in the Connecticut National Guards. He got into action from the very start. You could find him at the head of the most dangerous charges. In June (1918) he was cited for bravery after he had been gassed in the fight at Cantigny.