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Updated: May 31, 2025
Drew knew what it meant to be wounded and falling out of control. But his Spad held together. He had a chance for his life. Supposing the German to have been merely wounded An airman's joy in victory is a short-lived one. Nevertheless, a curious change takes place in his attitude toward his work, as the months pass. I can best describe it in terms of Drew's experience and my own.
They were just hoping that something would transpire to give them a starting point. "We'll have to leave it to luck for a while," said Torn. "Or fate," added Jack. "Well, fate plays no small part in an airman's life," returned Tom. "While we are no more superstitions than any other soldiers, yet there are few airmen who do not carry some sort of mascot or good-luck piece. You know that, Jack."
Aeroplane engines are far superior in horse-power to those fitted to motorcars, and consequently their structure is more intricate. But if an airman's engine suddenly stopped there would be no reason whatever why he should tumble down head first and break his neck. Strange to say, too, the higher he was flying the safer he would be.
In vain and as he started in the downward rush, the hurrying wind carried the frenzied whisper: "The cross, dear God, the cross!" Not far as the crow flies from the scene of the German airman's catastrophe, but with its presence hidden from general knowledge, was the Grosses Hauptquartier, the pulsing heart and brain of the Imperial fighting forces.
So then, even an airman's vision was limited when it came to describing a great battle. Of course he always did what he was assigned to do. He kept in contact, or in communication, with his own certain batteries, or his infantry division, directing the shots of the former and the advance of the latter.
On the morning of the great battle of September 15th the presence of the tanks going into action excited all the troops along the front with a sense of comical relief in the midst of the grim and deadly business of attack. Men followed them, laughing and cheering. There was a wonderful thrill in the airman's message, "Tank walking up the High Street of Flers with the British army cheering behind."
Then catching a bleak gleam in my eyes, she hastily added: "And afterward Peggy, if Captain March will take her up." Father hesitated, but the newspapers and people at the Embassy ball who knew all about Eagle March had spoken so highly of the machine, that it seemed an insult to a famous airman's skill to refuse.
A round journey of 200, or even more miles is considered a mere jaunt; it is the long distance flight which counts, and which contributes to the value of an airman's observations. The general impression is that the fighting line or zone comprises merely two or three successive stretches of trenches and other defences, representing a belt five miles or so in width, but this is a fallacy.
It is a kind of roving commission without any definite aim in view beyond the collection of general intelligence. This work, while productive and valuable to a certain degree, is attended with grave danger, as the German airmen have repeatedly found to their cost. Success is influenced very materially by the accuracy of the airman's judgment.
An aviator cannot see the dangerous currents and eddies into which he may be steering his craft; and so it was not surprising, in those days when aircraft were frailer than they should have been, and cross-country flights were first being made, that machines broke often while in flight and that the airman's enemy, the wind, claimed many victims.
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