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Updated: July 6, 2025
On the way he saw in the distance behind the German lines two French airmen set upon by an overwhelming force of Germans. Instantly he was off to the assistance of his friends, plunging into so unequal a fight that even his coming left the other Americans outnumbered. But he had scarce a chance to strike a blow. Some chance shot from a German gun put him out of action.
Then, feeling sure that the Malays were too much terrified to think of renewing their attack on the junk, he again set his face eastward towards the open sea. Darkness was falling when the airmen came in sight of the chain of small islands running from Java eastward almost to the Australian coast.
A flotilla of Zeppelins shelled Blyth, Wallsend, and South Shields, on the northeastern coast of England on the night of April 14, 1915. This attack was directed primarily at the industrial and shipping centers of Tyneside. Berlin claimed a distinct success, but the British denied that extensive harm had been done. French airmen drove home an attack on April 15, 1915, that had important results.
If he is annoyed by the fire of some distant unseen battery over the hills and far away he sends a man in an airplane who brings back its location, its distance, and perhaps a photograph of it in action. If he suspects that his foe is abandoning his trenches, or getting ready for an attack, the ready airmen bring in the facts. And of course the enemy's airmen serve their side in the same manner.
One imagines that the Austrians must have many twelve-inch howitzers to spare, for there are, to give an example, a couple near Mauthen, beyond the crest of the Carnic Alps, and other heavy artillery in the same district hidden in caverns. In these caverns, which are extremely hard to locate, they are secure against shrapnel and cannot be seen by airmen.
They then shake hands with the German pilots, now heatedly discussing who was chiefly responsible for their success. The captive couple are lunched by the enemy airmen, who see that the wounded observer receives proper attention. At the risk of incensing some of your eat-'em-alive civilian friends, I may say we have plenty of evidence that the German Flying Corps includes many gentlemen.
If an aviator has leave for two or three days in summer he starts in the late afternoon, flashing over that streak of Channel in half an hour, and may be at home for dinner without getting any dust on his clothes or having to bother with military red tape at steamer gangways or customs houses. The airmen are a type which one associates with certain marked characteristics.
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.
From the enclosure one could watch the airmen and their mechanics as the machines were run out from the hangars on to the flying ground. One pilot walked beside his mechanics while they were running the machine to the starting place, and watched his craft with almost fatherly interest.
There is no greater adept at the gentle art of "putting the wind up" people. Few airmen get hardened to the villainous noise of a loud wouff! wouff! at 12,000 feet, especially when it is near enough to be followed by the shriek of shell-fragments.
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