The danger, the romance, the thrill of air fighting, are things that never were known in war until this one called into being vast aerial navies that grappled in the sky and rained upon the earth below “a ghastly dew” of blood.

There are no tales of this war more fascinating than those that have been told by these men.  Courage and modesty being inseparable, our aviators avoid print and cannot be interviewed with any satisfaction.  But sometimes they write home to a mother, a sweetheart or a pal, and these letters now and then come to light.

CHANCE OF LIVING NOW

“I cannot describe my feelings, right off the bat,” said Eddie Rickenbacker, the ace of American aces, the day following the signing of the armistice.  “But I can say I feel ninety-nine per cent better.  There is a chance of living now and the gang is glad.”  Rickenbacker became a captain during the last phase of the war and has twenty-four victories over enemy airmen to his credit.  To Rickenbacker, whose home is in Columbus, Ohio, the allied command gave the honor of making the last flight over the German front and firing the last shot from the air on the morning of November 11, 1918.

AIR PLANE’S TAIL SHOT OFF

In reporting this most remarkable occurrence Edward Price Bell, an American correspondent, wrote as follows from the front: 

A British observer, flying a powerful machine at 16,000 feet over Ostend, had the machine’s tail shot off by the direct hit of a shell—­a very unusual occurrence.  The machine turned upside down, out of control, and the pilot was thrown out of his seat.  By some inexplicable maneuver he managed to clamber on to the bottom of the fuselage of the machine, astride of which he sat as if he was riding a horse.

Though the machine was out of control, owing to the loss of its tail planes, yet by moving forward and backward he so managed to balance it that it glided fairly steadily downward, although upside down.

He successfully brought it across the German lines, and came safely to within a few hundred feet of the ground.  Then he crashed and was injured, but is now recovering in a hospital.

When it is considered that this incident occurred at a height of 16, feet, over hostile territory, and that during the airman’s terribly precarious ride he was subject to antiaircraft fire, and liable to the attack of hostile scouts, it is not too much to say that his was a record achievement.

Recently, another airman was shot down, out of control, from 13, feet, and fell fluttering like a leaf, toward the ground.  At a height of 9,000 feet he fainted.  Shortly afterward he came to and found himself in the machine upside down, in a marsh, absolutely unhurt.  Many airmen, of course, have been through several “crashes” without sustaining so much as a broken collar bone.