Fighting the Flying Circus

by Captain Eddie V. Rickenbacker

  Full of misgivings I walked out to the field and watched the four pilots get away. I noted the time on my watch, saw that a heavy wind was in the wrong direction and would increase their difficulties in returning, blamed myself for permitting them to influence me against my judgment. The next two hours were miserable ones for me.

  The weather grew steadily worse, rain fell and the wind grew stronger. When darkness fell, shortly after four o'clock, I ordered all the lights turned on the field and taking my seat at the mouth of our hangar I anxiously waited for a glimpse of the homecoming Spads. It was nearing the limit of their fuel supply and another ten minutes must either bring some word from them or I should know that by my orders four pilots had sacrificed themselves needlessly after hostilities had practically ceased. I believe that hour was the worst one I have ever endured.

  Night fell and no airplanes appeared. The searchlights continued to throw their long fingers into the clouds, pointing the way home to any wandering scouts who might be lost in the storm. Foolish as it was to expect them I could not order the lights extinguished and they shone on all through the night.

  The next day was Sunday and another Decorations Ceremony was scheduled to take place at our field at eleven o'clock. A number of pilots from other aerodromes were coming over to receive the Distinguished Service Cross from the hands of General Hunter Liggett for bravery and heroic exploits over enemy's lines. Several of our own Group, including myself were to be among the recipients.

  The band played, generals addressed us and all the men stood at attention in front of our line of fighting planes while the dignified ceremony was performed. Two more palms were presented to me to be attached to my decoration. The Army Orders were read aloud praising me for shooting down enemy airplanes. How bitter such compliments were that morning nobody suspected. Not a word had come from any one of my four pilots that I had sent over the lines the day before. No explanation but one was possible. All four had been forced to descend in enemy territory—crashed, killed, or captured—it little mattered so far as my culpability was concerned.

  In fact a message had come in the night before that a Spad had collided in air with a French two-seater near Beaumont late that afternoon. A hurried investigation by telephone disclosed the fact that no other Spads were missing but our own—thus filling me with woeful conjectures as to which one of my four pilots had thus been killed in our own lines.

  At the conclusion of the presentation of decorations I walked back to the hangar and put on my greatcoat, for it was a freezing day and we had been forced to stand for half an hour without movement in dress tunic and breeches. The field was so thick with fog that the photographers present could scarcely get light enough to snap the group of officers standing in line. No airplanes could possibly be out today or I should have flown over to Beaumont at daybreak to ascertain which of my pilots had been killed there.

  I was invited to mess with 95 Squadron that noon and I fear I did not make a merry guest. The compliments I received for my newly received decorations fell on deaf ears. As soon as I decently could get away I made my adieus and walked back across the aerodrome. And about halfway across I saw an airplane standing in the center of the field. I looked at it idly, wondering what idiot had tried to get away in such a fog. Suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks. The Spad had a Hat-in-the-Ring painted on its fuselage—and a large number “3” was painted just beyond it. Number “3” was Fauntle-roy's machine!

  I fairly ran the rest of the way to my hangar where I demanded of the mechanics what news they had heard about Captain Faunt-leroy. I was informed that he had just landed and had reported that Lieutenant Dewitt had crashed last night inside our lines but would be back during the course of the day. And to cap this joyful climax to a day's misery I was told five minutes later at Group Headquarters that Major Kirby had just telephoned in that he had shot down an enemy airplane across the Meuse this morning at ten o'clock, after which he had landed at an aerodrome near the front and would return to us when the fog lifted!

  It was a wild afternoon we had at 94 mess upon receipt of this wonderful news. Cookie too was later heard from, he having experienced a rather more serious accident the previous afternoon. He had attacked an observation balloon near Beaumont. The Hun defenses shot off one blade of his propeller and he had barely made his way back across the lines when he was compelled to land in the shell holes which covered this area. He escaped on foot to the nearest American trench and late Sunday afternoon reached our mess.

  Major Kirby's victory was quickly confirmed, later inquiries disclosing the fact that this first remarkable victory of his was in truth the last airplane shot down in the Great War! Our old 94 Squadron had won the first American victory over enemy airplanes when Alan Winslow and Douglas Campbell had dropped two biplane machines on the Toul aerodrome. 94 Squadron had been first to fly over the lines and had completed more hours flying at the front than any other American organization. It had won more victories than any other—and now, for the last word, it had the credit of bringing down the last enemy airplane of the war! One can imagine the celebration with which 94 Squadron would signalize the end of the war! What could Paris or any other community in the whole world offer in comparison?

  And the celebration came even before we had lost the zest of our present gratitude and emotion.

  The story of Major Kirby's historic victory can be told in a paragraph. He had become lost the night before and had landed on the first field he saw. Not realizing the importance of telephoning us of his safety, he took off early next morning to come home. This time he got lost in the fog which surrounded our district. When he again emerged into clear air he found he was over Etain, a small town just north of Verdun. And there flying almost alongside of his Spad was another airplane which a second glance informed him was an enemy Fokker! Both pilots were so surprised for a moment that they simply gazed at each other. The Fokker pilot recovered his senses first and began a dive toward earth. Major Kirby immediately banked on his tail, followed him down to within fifty feet of the ground firing all the way. The Fokker crashed head on, and Kirby zoomed up just in time to avoid the same fate. With his usual modesty Major Kirby insisted he had scared the pilot to his death. Thus ended the War in the Air on the American front.

  While listening to these details that evening after mess, our spirits bubbling over with excitement and happiness, the telephone sounded and I stepped over and took it up, waving the room to silence. It was a message to bring my husky braves over to the 95 mess to celebrate the beginning of a new era. I demanded of the speaker, (it was Jack Mitchell, Captain of the 95th) what he was talking about.

  “Peace has been declared! No more fighting!” he shouted. “C'est le finis de la guerre.”

  Without reply I dropped the phone and turned around and faced the pilots of 94 Squadron. Not a sound was heard, every eye was upon me but no one made a movement or drew a breath. It was one of those peculiar psychological moments when instinct tells every one that something big is impending.

  In the midst of this uncanny silence a sudden BOOM-BOOM of our Archie battery outside was heard. And then pandemonium broke loose. Shouting like mad, tumbling over one another in their excitement the daring pilots of the Hat-in-the-Ring Squadron sensing the truth reached into trunks and kitbags, drew out revolvers, German Lugers, that some of them had found or bought as souvenirs from French poilus, Very pistols and shooting tools of all descriptions and burst out of doors. There the sky over our old aerodrome and indeed in every direction of the compass was aglow and shivering with bursts of fire. Searchlights were madly sweeping across the heavens, paling to dimness the thousands of colored lights that shot up from every direction. Shrill yells pierced the darkness around us, punctuated with the fierce rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of a score of machine guns which now added their noise to the clamor. Roars of laughter and hysterical whoopings came to us from the men's quarters beside the hangars. Pistol shots were fired in salvos, filled and emptied again and again until the we
apon became too hot to hold.

  At the corner of our hangar I encountered a group of my pilots rolling out tanks of gasoline. Instead of attempting the impossible task of trying to stop them I helped them get it through the mud and struck the match myself and lighted it. A dancing ring of crazy lunatics joined hands and circled around the blazing pyre, similar howling and revolving circuses surrounding several other burning tanks of good United States gasoline that would never more carry fighting airplanes over enemy's lines. The stars were shining brightly overhead and the day's mist was gone. But at times even the stars were hidden by the thousands of rockets that darted up over our heads and exploded with their soft 'plonks, releasing varicolored lights which floated softly through this epochal night until they withered away and died. Star shells, parachute flares, and streams of Very lights continued to light our way through an aerodrome seemingly thronged with madmen. Everybody was laughing—drunk with the gushing of their pent-up emotions. “Yve lived through the war!” I heard one whirling Dervish of a pilot shouting to himself as he pirouetted alone in the center of a mud hole. Regardless of who heard the inmost secret of his soul, now that the war was over, he had retired off to one side to repeat this fact over and over to himself until he made himself sure of its truth.

  Another pilot, this one an Ace of 27 Squadron, grasped me securely by the arm and shouted almost incredulously, “We wont be shot at any more!” Without waiting for a reply he hastened on to another friend and repeated this important bit of information as though he were doubtful of a complete understanding on this point. What sort of a new world will this be without the excitement of danger in it? How queer it will be in future to fly over the dead line of the silent Meuse—that significant boundary line that was marked by Archie shells to warn the pilot of his entrance into danger.

  How can one enjoy life without this highly spiced sauce of danger? What else is left to living now that the zest and excitement of fighting airplanes is gone? Thoughts such as these held me entranced for the moment and were afterward recalled to illustrate how tightly strung were the nerves of these boys of twenty who had for continuous months been living on the very peaks of mental excitement.

  In the mess hall of Mitchell's squadron we found gathered the entire officer personnel of the Group. Orderlies were running back and forth with cups brimming with a hastily concocted punch, with which to drink to the success and personal appearance of every pilot in aviation. Songs were bellowed forth accompanied by crashing sounds from the Boche piano—the proudest of 95's souvenirs, selected from an officers' mess of an abandoned German camp. Chairs and benches were pushed back to the walls and soon the whole roomful was dancing, struggling and whooping for joy, to the imminent peril of the rather temporary walls and floor. Some unfortunate pilot fell and in a trice everybody in the room was forming a pyramid on top of him. The appearance of the CO of the Group brought the mass to its feet in a score of rousing cheers to the best CO in France. Major Hartney was hoisted upon the piano, while a hundred voices shouted, “SPEECH-SPEECH!” No sooner did he open his lips than a whirlwind of sound from outside made him pause and reduced the room to quiet. But only for an instant.

  “It's the Jazz Band from old 147!” yelled the pilots and like a tumultuous waterfall they poured en masse through a doorway that was only wide enough for one at a time.

  Whooping, shrieking and singing, the victors of some 400-odd combats with enemy airmen encircled the musicians from the enlisted men of 147 Squadron. The clinging clay mud of France lay ankle deep around them. Within a minute the dancing throng had with their hopping and skipping plowed it into an almost bottomless bog. Someone went down, dragging down with him the portly bass drummer. Upon this foundation human forms in the spotless uniforms of the American Air Service piled themselves until the entire Group lay prostrate in one huge pyramid of joyous abandon. It was later bitterly disputed as to who was and who was not at the very bottom of this historic monument erected that night under the starry skies of France to celebrate the extraordinary fact that we had lived through the war and were not to be shot at tomorrow.

  It was the “finis de la guerre!” It was the finis d'aviation. It was to us, perhaps unconsciously, the end of that intimate relationship that since the beginning of the war had cemented together broth-ers-in-arms into a closer fraternity than is known to any other friendship in the whole world. When again will that pyramid of entwined comrades—interlacing together in one mass boys from every state in our Union—when again will it be formed and bound together in such mutual devotion?

  OFFICIAL VICTORIES OF THE Q4TH AERO SQUADRON

  eISBN: 978-0-307-48478-9

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 65-10612

  Copyright © 1965 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

  Copyright 1919 by David Edward Rickenbacker and

  William Frost Rickenbacker

  All Rights Reserved

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