First to Fly

by Charles Bracelen Flood

  “The Englishmen, on the other hand, one notices that they are of Germanic blood. Sportsmen take easily to flying, and Englishmen see in flying nothing but a sport. They take a perfect delight in looping the loop, flying on their back, and indulging in other sports for the benefit of our soldiers in the trenches. All these tricks may impress people who attend a Sports Meeting, but the public at the battle-front is not as appreciative of these things. It demands higher qualifications than trick flying. Therefore, the blood of English pilots will have to flow in streams.”

  As for his overall philosophy of victory in the air, Richthofen repeated his belief in taking the offensive: “The aggressive spirit, the offensive, is the chief thing everywhere in war, and the air is no exception.” He combined his iron determination with a chivalric fatalism, saying, “Fight on and fly on to the last drop of blood and fuel—to the last beat of the heart and the last kick of the motor: a death for a knight—a toast for his fellows, friend and foe.”

  When Richthofen was fatally shot down on April 21, 1918, Udet, already the victor in forty-two dogfights, was on leave at home in Munich, nursing an ear infection and becoming reacquainted with his childhood sweetheart, Eleanor Zink, known as “Lo,” whom he later married. Despite his doctor’s advice that his ear had not healed and he should postpone any flying, he returned to the front and was one of the pilots saved by the recent introduction of the parachute. On June 29, 1918, he jumped as his plane was going down after being disabled by gunfire from a French fighter. Udet’s luck was with him again: His parachute harness became entangled with his plane’s rudder, and he reached up and broke off the tip of the rudder just in time for the parachute to open, 250 feet above the ground. He survived with a broken ankle.

  That August Ernst Udet reached his zenith, bringing down twenty more enemy planes, most of them British. In a dogfight on September 28, 1918, a bullet wounded him in the thigh. He was still recovering when the war ended six weeks later. Udet had outlived the other great ones: With sixty-two victories, second only to Richthofen’s eighty, he was alive, whereas Max Immelmann, the pilot who devised the tactic known as “The Immelmann Turn”; Otto Boelcke, whom Richthofen considered to be his mentor and tutor; and Richthofen himself, were dead. While Udet was gone, another noted fighter pilot ace named, Hermann Goering, a man who shot down twenty-two Allied planes, had taken command of the “Flying Circus.”

  Twenty-one years later, Colonel General Ernst Udet was second-in-command of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, led by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, in a Germany controlled by Adolf Hitler, who in 1918 was an obscure penniless Austrian serving as a lance-corporal in the Bavarian Army.

  Despondent over Goering’s lies to Hitler about Germany’s aircraft production and then his blaming of material shortages on Udet, as well as what he saw as Hitler’s fatal decision to attack the Soviet Union, Udet committed suicide by shooting himself in the head on November 17, 1941. The Nazi authorities released the news of his death in stories saying that he had died while testing a new weapon. Ernst Udet was buried next to Manfred von Richthofen in a Berlin cemetery.

  Fig 21. Captain Hermann Goering, the famous fighter pilot and future number two Nazi who took command of von Richthofen’s unit when the leading ace was killed. At his throat he has the Pour le Mérite, Germany’s highest medal for valor, also won by von Richthofen and Boelcke.

  The Lafayette Escadrille was officially dissolved on February 18, 1918. Some of its members who had joined the American Air Service in 1917 wanted to keep their lion mascots Whiskey and Soda, but were informed that they were to be sent to the Paris Zoo. Edward Hinkle, the oldest of the Escadrille pilots, who had developed bronchial problems and was on nonflying status, remembered the parting:

  “Luf and Whiskey were great pals, so Luf volunteered to take Whiskey to the Paris Zoo. I went along. It was a great lark for Whiskey, who loved to ride. He sat between us in the front of the truck. It was a sad thing to see the cage door close on him. We visited Whiskey whenever we had Paris leave, and he always recognized us. [Another account said that Soda lived in the same cage, and that the lions would roll over on their backs to have their stomachs scratched.] Both Whiskey and Soda died soon after the war of rheumatism, or maybe loneliness.”

  Twenty-six

  Yvonne!

  The most confusing and contradictory part of Bert Hall’s wartime story involves his movements in 1917 and 1918. In addition to everything else he did, this was apparently the time during which he wrote “En l’Air!” In light of the circumstances under which he left the Escadrille, he displayed a remarkably generous attitude toward his former squadron mates. In a chapter titled “My Pals,” he praised thirteen of them by name, and closed the chapter with, “Wouldn’t any American be proud to have lived and fought with a bunch like this!”

  According to Hall, after he’d traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railway, he crossed the Pacific on a freighter, spent several months in the United States, and arrived back in France at the port of Le Havre on January 19, 1918. Other records indicate that he was still in the United States at that time and later, but his diary has a certain Bert Hall-ish quality that seems authentic. Reaching Paris two days later, he wrote this: “Of all people, who should I see today but Lufbery. He was standing at the desk in the Grand Hotel. Of course, we talked, and talked. He said I had been reported as dead.” They had time to do a few days of intensive partying before Luf went back to his flying in the new American squadron to which he now belonged.

  Lufbery not only continued to knock down German planes, but led the American Air Service pilots who were new to the front on their first combat patrols. Among them was Lieutenant Eddie Rickenbacker, on his way to being the foremost American Expeditionary Force ace. He would later say, “Everything I learned, I learned from Lufbery.”

  When Hall got back to the Western Front himself after being debriefed at French Army headquarters in Paris, he was reassigned to Escadrille SPAD-3, the best of the five best French squadrons, all of whose members were known as the “Cigognes,” or “Storks.” He wanted to get back to serious fighting in the air, and was allowed to do a few days of that, but both the French and American authorities now saw him as doing something more useful than acting as additional aerial cannon fodder.

  The French summoned him back to headquarters. Because he was a man who still had to take orders, no matter what he thought of them, he went. Dispiritedly, he wrote this in his diary:

  “They have placed me at the disposal of the Intelligence Section of the French Air Service, and I am to do counter-espionage. I asked one of the lieutenants at Headquarters if he had any idea how this had come about. I had known him long ago, back in 1915 in the Champagne country.

  “He said, ‘Yes, that’s easy. Your record as a pilot is very good—excellent, in fact. You did fairly well in Russia, to spy on them for six months and come away with all their ­decorations—alive in the bargain. You speak several languages, and then as a liar you’re quite versatile. So, with that, they decided to make you a counter-espion [counterspy]. Voila!’

  “After that, the Lieutenant and I went and had lunch.”

  The French wanted Bert Hall for counterespionage, but the Americans had a different plan for him. After he engaged in some more intense aerial combat in a French squadron, the Americans asked him to report to the American Air Service headquarters in Paris. He wrote in his diary, “They told me that I was to do a motion picture and take it to America for the purpose of encouraging recruiting in the Air Section.” During yet another session, he was told that he was to go back to the United States and sell the Liberty Bonds then being sold in support of the war.

  Hall had sensed that both the French and the Americans saw him as their property, but that the Americans did not intend to make him the subject of a bureaucratic wrangle. That proved to be the case. Thus he was able to divide his time between combat flying near Amiens in
northern France and working as a counterespionage agent for the French. He had a lot of flexibility in his schedule; after four years of war and his intelligence work, he knew a lot about how the war was progressing. His ability to move around behind the Western Front led him into an interesting relationship, which he began to record in his diary.

  “By previous arrangement, I went over to a little hut not far from the village of Lamotte and had dinner tonight with some English aviators. The place is run by a snotty-nosed old woman with a limp and a bleary eye, and a very beautiful young waitress. The waitress is, of course, named Yvonne. She would be named Yvonne. And, she’s good lookin’! She’s as pretty as the old female is ugly.

  “I ordered the dinner in French, of course, and while we were waiting, the Limey got to lapping up a little red ink. One of the lads got rather oiled up and called the old girl in to tell her exactly how he wanted his rations. He talked in English, throwin’ in a little bad French now and then. Finally the old wench nodded her head and went away. The pilot I know best in the outfit (his name is Binner) said:

  “‘Edgar, all your chaff was lost on the old ’un. She knows as little about the King’s English as a sow does about spicin’ a puddin’!’

  “‘Is that so!’ said a voice behind us, and there stood the old wench with a handful of knives and forks—dribbly nose and all! ‘Is that so!’ and her English accent was quite upper class. ‘Well, young man, if your luck is as sharp as your tongue, you might live long enough to find out you’re mistaken!’ And she went on cooking our dinner.

  “I discovered later that Yvonne was the old woman’s niece. And all of us discovered that Yvonne speaks English—not awfully well, but well enough. I shall go back to that place. That Yvonne person is a whiz-bang. She has a complexion like an unplucked peach and her teeth are clean too.

  “The dinner was considered to be a great success. I don’t know whether I like this spy gag or not, but I suppose I’ll have to like it—they’ll make me like it.”

  The next day Bert Hall flew the dawn patrol, and later recorded what he did after that.

  “Lieutenant Binner, several other Limey pilots, an Aussie flier named McCormick, and I went over to Yvonne’s place tonight. Yvonne was more radiant than ever. The other lads are keeping hands off in favor of me. Just why, I don’t know, but I suppose they are just giving a gauche American a chance to queer himself before they start making their hypnotic passes. This may be unkind, but who can tell.

  “Yvonne’s last name is Dacree; she was born in France of a French father and an English mother. Both parents have been bumped off since the beginning of the war. The old bleary-eyed aunt is named Patterson, and she was originally English. They have an estate and rather a fine one up near Cambrai. It’s inside the English lines, but the war is a bit too hot for the women folks just now, so the Government sent them back as far as Amiens.

  “On the way, the old girl started up this little restaurant. If the war lasts long enough the Patterson-Dacree family will recoup their losses because the little restaurant is damned successful . . . How old lady Patterson gets the raw materials for the things she puts out is the one unsolved mystery of the war.”

  As so often happened, the weather brought flying operations to a halt. Hall began a diary entry with: “Dud weather—no ceiling at all—fog right down on the ground.” For Bert Hall, being the man he was, the fog presented an opportunity.

  “I went over to visit with Binner and together we went to old lady Patterson’s for lunch. I told Yvonne that I was going to Paris and asked her what she wanted me to bring back in the way of a little gift. She said she wanted a special kind of comb for her hair and a pair of colored silk stockings. I told her I’d bring two pairs if she would give me the top of one stocking after she had worn it, so I could wear it under my helmet for luck.

  “Binner is a smart bastard. All the while this conversation was going on, he appeared not to listen and then afterwards, he said:

  “‘Christ, laddie, how you Americans do clear the hurdles with a woman! You cover the first ninety-nine obstacles in one leap. How do you do it, now really!’

  “I said, ‘Oh, that’s nothing; it’s just what you fellows call “getting on with the jolly old war.”’

  “He said, ‘Of course, you mean to do right by the little peach!’

  “And I said, ‘Listen, brother, I mean to do quite as right by the little peach as the little peach means to do right by me and if you’ve lived in France any time at all, particularly during the war, you know what I’m getting at.’

  “Binner seemed to know. He simply said, and very English-like, ‘Oh, yes, yes, old man, of course, of course.’

  “. . . Nevertheless, Yvonne is a darling and I’m going to bring her the silk socks, if I go broke doing it, and the hair ornament too.” After a leave in Paris combined with bringing back a new SPAD to fly at the front, Hall wrote this:

  “Had dinner at Yvonne’s. She was radiant about her ‘coming back’ gift. Ate alone though. Binner is finished off. They got him the afternoon of the 15th . . . Both Yvonne and old lady Patterson shed tears as they told me of it.

  “I finally convinced Yvonne that she must wear one pair of the stockings before she cut off the top as a return souvenir to me. She said:

  “‘Very well, if I must. I shall wear them and wash them all nice and clean and then you can make a stocking cap out of the top.’

  “Of course, she was all wrong. There would be no washing. It was a rather delicate matter to explain. I wanted her to give me something she had worn next to her skin, so that I could wear it next to my skin—and without washing too. When she finally understood, she blushed the most beautiful blush I have ever seen and that was all. She knew and I knew, and that’s all that mattered.

  “As I left, she went to the door with me. At the door, I caught her arm and together we went outside into the darkness. She knew what would happen. And it did! There were only two sentences spoken. She said I must fly carefully and I told her good night. But there was a space of time when nothing was said.”

  Two days later, Hall wrote about impending German offensives and the need to bring more planes from Paris because “we are not going to be caught without equipment.” Then this:

  “I have the top of Yvonne’s stocking. The bottom can still be used, she tells me. It seems that I got a very long length. The top was all crumpled up and smelled faintly of some kind of perfume. I asked her why it was crumpled up and she said I was being too naïve. She said how did I suppose a girl kept her stockings from falling down, and then I understood. The top had been wrapped around her garter; she called it ‘the elastic.’

  After all, there is no fool like an old fool. Here I am a hardened old woman chaser, eating out of a twenty-year-old girl’s hand, and liking it too, and loving it too. If I could only invent some way of getting Yvonne away from the old gorgon for a little while! Yvonne is more than willing, but the old girl has eyes like two hawks. Tonight, as we were standing outside in the dark, Yvonne told me that her lips were curiously hungry for me. It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to talk like that. These school girls are surely alive when it comes to making love. An old man never realizes how antique his technique is until he encounters one of these youngsters.”

  In a sense, the war kept playing a capricious role in Bert Hall’s love life. Here he was, gambling for the highest stakes—his life—in a supremely perilous occupation, while Yvonne saw it as an interesting flirtation with an older man. Three days after noting that Yvonne said that “her lips were curiously hungry for me,” he flew a mission in which he said he “ran into an archy [antiaircraft] burst and just made a landing field by the skin of my teeth. Was wearing Yvonne’s stocking top too. It must have been the stocking off the wrong leg. Plane shot full of holes—will have to have a new one.”

  As if near-fatal German antiaircraft shells were not enough of a pro
blem, the next day Hall encountered this: “At Headquarters, they tell me that I’m not a very good counter-espion, because they say I’m too obvious. I told ’em I didn’t ask for the job and that they could climb a tree with the Intelligence Service and stay there with it, but they decided not to go to that much trouble. I’ll possibly [be ordered to] go back to the trenches.”

  Soon the veteran gambler thought his hand of cards might be filling in better than he had thought it would. He was told to go to Paris and pick up a new plane, and thought he could include Yvonne in the short leave he was given to do that.

  “At last I have Yvonne into the notion of going to Paris for a brief holiday. She has convinced the old gorgon that it’s the thing to do. I, of course, am not in the picture at all. Yvonne has some very near relatives (on her father’s side) in Paris and the old gorgon seems to think that Yvonne might visit them to the advantage of all concerned. I see the little dear secretly—at least I hope it’s secretly. One can never tell, with such a sharp-eyed bird as Madame Patterson snooping around all the time.

  “I’m supposed to go up to Paris on the 27th and if my luck holds out, Yvonne will be on the same train. I am not planning beyond the train. We could stop off at Clermont, but I suppose it’s best to let events take care of themselves.

  “Since my tough luck of the 23rd [with antiaircraft shells], I’m not so sold on Yvonne’s stocking top. It would appear that I had better luck before I took on that bauble, but then war is not all good luck.”

  The following day, this:

  “Short hop this a.m. and later a visit to Yvonne’s place. She thinks it’s better for me to come over and eat dinner now and then to keep the old girl from getting suspicious. I don’t mind. Tomorrow we take off for Paris. I am to meet the girl on the train. Somehow, I don’t believe it will happen, but tomorrow will tell. Incidentally, I do not go to the trenches.”