The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots

by Jon E. Lewis

  If I was running the war the first thing I would do would be to get control of the air no matter what it cost. That’s what’s saved England all these centuries – control of the seas. And her fleet is big enough to keep control without fighting. The Air Force would do the same thing.

  August 21st

  More rumors of more battles. We were in the Folkestone in Boulogne and Henry told us that there is going to be a big push shortly. Push? What’s a push to us? That’s for the Poor Bloody Infantry to worry over. We push twice a day, seven days in the week. We go over the top between each meal. Oh, yes, the flying corps is the safe place for little Willy – that is as long as he doesn’t have to go near the front!

  Nigger and I flew up for tea with Springs. He was not too good. He and Bim have had tombstones made for themselves. They are hollow and if they go down on the Hun side, they are to be filled with high explosive and dropped over, if they are killed on this side, they are to be filled with cognac so it will leak on them.

  Mac is back with a new version of the widow of Malta.

  Hilary Rex has been killed. He was in a fight with a Fokker and his machine was disabled and he had to land. He landed all right and got out of his plane. The Hun dove on him and shot him as he was standing by his plane.

  Armstrong is in the hospital with an explosive bullet in his back.

  August 27th

  We’ve lost a lot of good men. It’s only a question of time until we all get it. I’m all shot to pieces. I only hope I can stick it. I don’t want to quit. My nerves are all gone and I can’t stop. I’ve lived beyond my time already.

  It’s not the fear of death that’s done it. I’m still not afraid to die. It’s this eternal flinching from it that’s doing it and has made a coward out of me. Few men live to know what real fear is. It’s something that grows on you, day by day, that eats into your constitution and undermines your sanity. I have never been serious about anything in my life and now I know that I’ll never be otherwise again. But my seriousness will be a burlesque for no one will recognize it. Here I am, twenty-four years old, I look forty and I feel ninety. I’ve lost all interest in life beyond the next patrol. No one Hun will ever get me and I’ll never fall into a trap, but sooner or later I’ll be forced to fight against odds that are too long or perhaps a stray shot from the ground will be lucky and I will have gone in vain. Or my motor will cut out when we are trench straffing or a wing will pull off in a dive. Oh, for a parachute! The Huns are using them now. I haven’t a chance, I know, and it’s this eternal waiting around that’s killing me. I’ve even lost my taste for licker. It doesn’t seem to do me any good now. I guess I’m stale. Last week I actually got frightened in the air and lost my head. Then I found ten Huns and took them all on and I got one of them down out of control. I got my nerve back by that time and came back home and slept like a baby for the first time in two months. What a blessing sleep is! I know now why men go out and take such long chances and pull off such wild stunts. No discipline in the world could make them do what they do of their own accord. I know now what a brave man is. I know now how men laugh at death and welcome it. I know now why Ball went over and sat above a Hun airdrome and dared them to come up and fight with him. It takes a brave man to even experience real fear. A coward couldn’t last long enough at the job to get to that stage. What price salvation now?

  No date

  The worst thing about this war is that it takes the best. If it lasts long enough the world will be populated by cowards and weaklings and their children. And the whole thing is so useless, so unnecessary, so terrible! Even those that live thru it will never be fit for anything else. Look at what the Civil War did for the South. It wasn’t the defeat that wrecked us. It was the loss of half our manhood and the demoralization of the other half. After the war the survivors scattered to the four corners of the earth; they roamed the West; they fought the battles of foreign nations; they became freebooters, politicians, prospectors, gamblers, and those who got over it, good citizens. My great-uncle was a captain in the Confederate Army and served thruout the war. He became a banker, a merchant, a farmer and a good citizen, but he was always a little different from other men and now I know where the difference lay. At the age of seventy he hadn’t gotten over those four years of misery and spiritual damnation. My father used to explain to me that he wasn’t himself. But he was himself, that was just the trouble with him. The rest were just out of step. My father used to always warn me about licker by telling me that uncle learned to drink in the army and it finally killed him. I always used to think myself that as long as it took forty years to do it, he shouldn’t speak disrespectfully of uncle’s little weakness. And as the old gentleman picked up stomach trouble from bad food in the campaign of ’62, I always had a hunch that perhaps the licker had an unfair advantage of him.

  The devastation of the country is too horrible to describe. It looks from the air as if the gods had made a gigantic steam roller, forty miles wide and run it from the coast to Switzerland, leaving its spike holes behind as it went.

  I’m sick. At night when the colonel calls up to give us our orders, my ears are afire until I hear what we are to do the next morning. Then I can’t sleep for thinking about it all night. And while I’m waiting around all day for the afternoon patrol, I think I am going crazy. I keep watching the clock and figuring how long I have to live. Then I go out to test out my engine and guns and walk around and have a drink and try to write a little and try not to think. And I move my arms and legs around and think that perhaps to-morrow I won’t be able to. Sometimes I think I am getting the same disease that Springs has when I get sick at my stomach. He always flies with a bottle of milk of magnesia in one pocket and a flask of gin in the other. If one doesn’t help him he tries the other. It gives me a dizzy feeling every time I hear of the men that are gone. And they have gone so fast I can’t keep track of them; every time two pilots meet it is only to swap news of who’s killed. When a person takes sick, lingers in bed a few days, dies and is buried on the third day, it all seems regular and they pass on into the great beyond in an orderly manner and you accept their departure as an accomplished fact. But when you lunch with a man, talk to him, see him go out and get in his plane in the prime of his youth and the next day someone tells you that he is dead – it just doesn’t sink in and you can’t believe it. And the oftener it happens the harder it is to believe. I’ve lost over a hundred friends, so they tell me – I’ve seen only seven or eight killed – but to me they aren’t dead yet. They are just around the corner, I think, and I’m still expecting to run into them any time. I dream about them at night when I do sleep a little and sometimes I dream that someone is killed who really isn’t. Then I don’t know who is and who isn’t. I saw a man in Boulogne the other day that I had dreamed I saw killed and I thought I was seeing a ghost. I can’t realize that any of them are gone. Surely human life is not a candle to be snuffed out. The English have all turned spiritualistic since the war. I used to think that was sort of far fetched but now it’s hard for me to believe that a man ever becomes even a ghost. I have a sort of a feeling that he stays just, as he is and simply jumps behind a cloud or steps thru a mirror. Springs keeps talking about Purgatory and Hades and the Elysian Fields. Well, we sure are close to something.

  When I go out to get in my plane my feet are like lead – I am just barely able to drag them after me. But as soon as I take off I am all right again. That is, I feel all right, tho I know I am too reckless. Last week I actually tried to ram a Hun. I was in a tight place and it was the only thing I could do. He didn’t have the nerve to stand the gaff and turned and I got him. I poured both guns into him with fiendish glee and stuck to him tho three of them were on my tail. I laughed at them.

  I saw Springs the other day in Boulogne. He said his girl at home sent him a pair of these Ninette and Rintintin luck charms. Since then he’s lost five men, been shot down twice himself, lost all his money at blackjack and only gotten one Hun. He says he judges fro
m that that she is unfaithful to him. So he has discarded them and says he is looking for a new charm and that the best one is a garter taken from the left leg of a virgin in the dark of the moon. I know they are lucky but I’d be afraid to risk one. Something might happen to her and then you’d be killed sure. A stocking to tie over my nose and a Columbian half dollar and that last sixpence and a piece of my first crash seem to take care of me all right, tho I am not superstitious.

  The diary ends here due to the author’s death in combat.

  PRISONER OF WAR

  JAMES NORMAN HALL

  During World War I “Jimmie” Hall served in both the French Lafayette Escadrille (which was composed of American volunteers for the Tricolour) and the 94th pursuit squadron of the US Army Air Service. He also found time to write up his aerial exploits for Atlantic Monthly. On May 7th 1918, after scoring six victories, Hall crash-landed behind German lines when the fabric on the wing of his Nieuport tore off during a dive. He escaped with a broken ankle, and saw out the remainder of the war in a POW camp. A letter of Hall’s written from Offiziers Kriegsgefangenen Lager, Karlsruhe, Baden, Deutschland, is reprinted below.

  July 27 1918

  I’ve been wondering about the ultimate fate of my poor old “High Adventure”19 story, whether it was published without those long promised concluding chapters which I really should have sent on had I not had the misfortune to be taken prisoner. I hope the book has been published, incomplete as it is. Not that I am particularly proud of it as a piece of literature!

  I told you briefly, on my card, how I happened to be taken prisoner. We were a patrol of three and attacked a German formation at some distance behind their lines. I was diving vertically on an Albatross when my upper right plane gave way under the strain. Fortunately, the structure of the wing did not break. It was only the fabric covering it, which ripped off in great strips. I immediately turned toward our lines and should have reached them, I believe, even in my crippled condition; but by that time I was very low and under a heavy fire from the ground. A German anti-aircraft battery made a direct hit on my motor. It was a terrific smash and almost knocked the motor out of the frame. My machine went down in a spin and I had another of those moments of intense fear common to the experience of aviators. Well, by Jove! I hardly know how I managed it, but I kept from crashing nose down. I struck the ground at an angle of about 30 degrees, the motor, which was just hanging on, spilled out, and I went skidding along, with the fuselage of the machine, the landing chassis having been snapped off as though the braces were so many toothpicks. One of my ankles was broken and the other one sprained, and my poor old nose received and withstood a severe contact with my wind-shield. I’ve been in hospital ever since until a week ago, when I was sent to this temporary camp to await assignment to a permanent one. I now hobble about fairly well with the help of a stick, although I am to be a lame duck for several months to come, I believe.

  Needless to say, the lot of a prisoner of war is not a happy one. The hardest part of it is, of course, the loss of personal liberty. Oh! I shall know how to appreciate that when I have it again. But we are well treated here. Our quarters are comfortable and pleasant, and the food as good as we have any right to expect. My own experience as a prisoner of war and that of all the Frenchmen and Englishmen here with whom I have talked, leads me to believe that some of those tales of escaped or exchanged prisoners must have been highly imaginative. Not that we are enjoying all the comforts of home. On the contrary, a fifteen-cent lunch at a Child’s restaurant would seem a feast to me, and a piece of milk chocolate – are there such luxuries as chocolate in the world? But for prisoners, I for one, up to this point, have no complaint to make with respect to our treatment. We have a splendid little library here which British and French officers who have preceded us have collected. I didn’t realize, until I saw it, how book-hungry I was. Now I’m cramming history, biography, essays, novels. I know that I’m not reading with any judgment but I’ll soon settle down to a more profitable enjoyment of my leisure. Yesterday and to-day I’ve been reading “The Spoils of Poynton,” by Henry James. It is absurd to try cramming these. I’ve been longing for this opportunity to read Henry James, knowing that he was Joseph Conrad’s master. “The Spoils of Poynton” has given me a foretaste of the pleasure I’m to have. A prisoner of war has his compensations. Here I’ve come out of the turmoil of a life of the most intense nervous excitement, a life lived day to day with no thought of to-morrow, into this other life of unlimited bookish leisure.

  We are like monks in a convent. We’re almost entirely out of touch with the outside world. We hear rumors of what is taking place at the front, and now and then get a budget of stale news from newly arrived prisoners. But for all this we are so completely out of it all that it seems as though the war must have come to an end. Until now this cloistered life has been very pleasant. I’ve had time to think and to make plans for a future which, comparatively speaking, seems assured. One has periods of restlessness, of course. When these come I console myself as best I may. Even for prisoners of war there are possibilities for quite interesting adventure, adventure in companionship. Thrown into such intimate relationships as we are here, and under these peculiar circumstances, we make rather surprising discoveries about ourselves and about each other. There are obvious superficial effects which I can trace back to causes quite easily. But there are others which have me guessing. By Jove! this is an interesting place! Conrad would find material here which would set him to work at once. I can imagine how he would revel in it.

  Well, I’m getting to be a very wise man. I’m deeply learned in many kinds, or, better, phases, of human psychology and I’m increasing my fund of knowledge every day. Therefore, I’ve decided that, when the war is over, I’ll be no more a wanderer. I’ll settle down in Boston for nine months out of the year and create deathless literature. And for vacations, I’ve already planned the first one, which is to be a three months’ jaunt by aeroplane up and down the United States east and west, north and south. You will see the possibilities of adventure in a trip of this sort. By limiting myself somewhat as to itinerary I can do the thing. I’ve found just the man here to share the journey with, an American in the British Air Force. He is enthusiastic about the plan. If only I can keep him from getting married for a year or so after getting home!

  I had a very interesting experience, immediately after being taken prisoner on May 7th. I was taken by some German aviators to their aerodrome and had lunch with them before I was sent on to the hospital. Some of them spoke English and some of them French, so that there was no difficulty in conversing. I was suffering a good deal from my twisted ankles and had to be guarded in my remarks because of the danger of disclosing military information; but they were a fine lot of fellows. They respected my reticence, and did all they could to make me comfortable. It was with pilots from this squadron that we had been fighting only an hour or so before. One of their number had been killed in the combat by one of the boys who was flying with me. I sat beside the fellow whom I was attacking when my wing broke. I was right “on his tail,” as we airmen say, when the accident occurred, and had just opened fire. Talking over the combat with him in their pleasant quarters, I was heartily glad that my affair ended as it did. I asked them to tell me frankly if they did not feel rather bitterly toward me as one of an enemy patrol which had shot down a comrade of theirs. They seemed to be surprised that I had any suspicions on this score. We had “a fair fight in an open field.” Why should there be any bitterness about the result. One of them said to me, “Hauptmann, you’ll find that we Germans are enemies of a country in war, but never of the individual.” My experience thus far leads me to believe that this is true. There have been a few exceptions, but they were uneducated common soldiers. Bitterness toward America there certainly is everywhere, and an intense hatred of President Wilson quite equal in degree and kind to the hatred in America of the emperor . . .

  NORMAN HALL

  A REGULAR DOG-FIGHT AND T
HE STRAFING OF A DRACHEN

  EDDIE V. RICKENBACKER

  Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was the “ace of aces” of the US Army Air Service in World War I, shooting down 26 German aircraft over the Western Front in an operational career that spanned a mere eight months. Throughout he flew with the “Hat-in-the-Ring” 94th Aero squadron USAAS, eventually becoming its commanding officer. With the conclusion of the war, he formed the Rickenbacker Motor Company, which carried as its marque the old “Hat-in-the-Ring” insignia of the 94th Aero Squadron. Later Rickenbacker ran Eastern Air Lines. He died at the age of 82 in 1973.

  On the afternoon of October 10th [1918] the 94th Squadron received orders to destroy two very bothersome enemy balloons, one of which was located at Dun-sur-Meuse, the other at Aincreville. The time for this attack was fixed for us at 3.50 P.M. sharp. A formation of defending planes from 147 Squadron was directed to cover our left wing while a similar formation from the 27th was given the same position on our right. I was placed in command of the expedition and was to arrange all minor details.