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If you don't care, I'll fly that Fokker over our lines before morning and manage to bring some help. Neither of you are strong enough to go and I understand Fokkers pretty well. What say?" "That won't do at all," exclaimed Erwin, making another violent effort not only to stand but to walk. All at once he tottered and would have fallen, but Brenda caught him, placing him back on the cot.
Little of import happened till January 23, 1916, when two squadrons of French aeroplanes, comprising twenty-four machines, bombarded the railway station and barracks at Metz. They dropped 130 shells. The aeros were escorted by two protecting squadrons, the pilots of which during the trip engaged in ten combats with giant Fokkers and aviatiks.
It is a favourite Boche manoeuvre to detail some of his slow machines to entice our fighters away from the main body, and when this has been accomplished, to attack the remainder with Fokkers, which dive from aloft onto the bombing machines. This trick is now well-known and the fighters rarely leave their charges until the latter are in comparative safety.
Let those fresh arrivals who had plenty of ammunition attend to the fighting Fokkers and other battling planes that had arrived so inopportunely. By this time the anti-aircraft guns were getting in their work. With the targets so close, though darting hither and yonder with bewildering speed, two of the German fighting planes were soon zigzagging towards the ground.
The Fokkers turned to flee, but it was too late for all but two of them. These managed to elude the American and French cloud-fighters and disappeared in the mist in the direction of the German lines. It was presumed they reached there safely. One after another the German machines were sent down, though at a price, for three Frenchmen were killed and another American went to his death.
The bold Pégoud had several times fought with too enterprising Fokkers or Aviatiks; Captain Brocard had forced down one of them in flames over Soissons; and the latest recruit of the escadrille, this youngster of a Guynemer, was burning to have his own Boche.
On came the Fokkers and Gothas, the black iron crosses painted on the wings of the machines standing out in bold relief in the clear air. The sun glinted on the red craft which were in the lead, and besides Tom, who headed for one of these, a French ace darted down from a height to engage the red planes.
Due to the British and French squadrons at Luxeuil, and the threat their presence implied, the Germans had to oppose them by a large fleet of fighting machines. I believe there were more than forty Fokkers alone in the camps of Colmar and Habsheim. Observation machines protected by two or three fighting planes would venture far into our lines.
The advance of the American army had been halted, at least temporarily, by a sudden attack from a large number of German aëroplanes. The Fokkers had arisen from far enough back of the place where the American shells were falling to escape them.
The other plane, now spiraling upward, came within range of the Fokkers, and altogether the united firing from the two big biplanes was too much for the Boches, so they gradually retired with a loss of one plane, whose pilot Erwin had disposed of, as we have seen. Half an hour later they quietly dropped down at the aerodrome.
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