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Updated: June 4, 2025
The morning on which the Brighton boys left the base airdrome with their squadron saw the first sunshine that that part of France had known for several days. The line of light motor trucks which served as their transport skimmed along the long, straight roads as if aware that they carried the cavalry of the air. "France is a pretty country. I had no idea it would look so much like home.
A month after the Brighton boys had commenced their duties at the airdrome at the old Frisbie place, they would have been missed by more than one person about the camp if they had failed to put in an appearance some morning. It was astonishing to see how much routine work could pile up around the headquarters' offices. The machines arrived in some numbers.
Never had there been such a machine before, he thought. At last the home airdrome came into sight far below. Many a time thereafter was Jimmy to feel glad he was nearing home, but never more sincerely than on the afternoon of that first battle. He made a good landing. His mechanics were waiting for him, and wheeled the machine toward the hangar, while Jimmy walked off to headquarters to report.
The colonel had from the first insisted that they should have the Sundays to themselves and they had got into the habit of going to church each Sunday morning in uniform, with the army men, who always turned out in some force. Sunday afternoons generally found them at the airdrome, and often they might be found at work, but they were considered free to do as they chose.
For there at one side stood the very counterpart of their own airplane, differing only in the name painted upon its sides and under its big hollow wings. These letters spelled "Clarion"! Our friends exchanged glances. The brow of every one of them contracted into so plain a frown that Mr. Masters, the superintendent of the airdrome, could not help noticing it.
He felt that he was more "part of the show," as he would have put it if he had been asked to describe his feelings. Jimmy was the first of the Brighton boys to take part in a real fight in the air. A couple of days after his arrival at the airdrome he was assigned to duty with an experienced aviator named Parker.
"The other victim started up, taxied toward the other side of the field that served for an airdrome, and lifted too late, with the result that he caught the wheels of his chassis in the tall hedge and came down in mighty nasty fashion on the other side, just out of sight. That is, he was out of sight. The tail of his plane stuck up to show what a real header he had taken.
From high above, and a little to the east, came the throbbing sound of German motors that in a few more seconds would be over the airdrome. Indeed, they might be circling now, getting their bearing and making sure of location. At that moment one of the large motor mounted searchlights near the hangar began combing the sky. "Go tell those saps to cut that light!"
We captured a very decent German flier once, who got lost in a fog and ran out of petrol. When he had to come down he found he was right near our airdrome, so he volplaned right down on our field. We were surprised to see him. He was in an Albatros of a late type, too. As you can imagine, we gave him a very hearty greeting. He took it pretty well, considering everything.
All the next morning they pored over these, consulting the wonderfully complete set of photographs of the enemy country which could be found in the photograph department of the airdrome. Practice flights took up the afternoon, and Joe Little and Jimmy Hill tried to outmaneuver one another at fairly high altitudes.
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