CHAPTER VIII

THRILLS OF THE UPPER REACHES

To the great delight of the Brighton boys, Will Corwin paid a visit to them one evening, and stayed to dinner at their mess. Will was not much older than his brother Harry, so far as years went, but he looked ten years older. The constant work on the French front had bronzed him and made him leaner and harder than when he left his home in America.

He had many questions to ask the boys about the home folks, and said that he had been trying to get a chance to visit Harry for weeks. Will was particularly interested to hear what had been the experiences of the Brighton fliers in connection with their first real work at the front.

Four of the boys had been over the German lines by that time. Like Jimmy Hill, Joe Little had been out on a hunter machine. His experiences were uneventful, however. His job had been to watch, with another hunter, while a speedy, big bomber dropped hundreds of pounds of explosives on an enemy munition dump.

The whole affair went through like a dress rehearsal, and without a hitch. They flew straight for their objective, found it without the slightest difficulty, deposited a load of high explosives upon it in quick time, and soared away back home without a single encounter with an enemy plane. They were, it was true, severely "Archied," as they called it, but no one of them was the worse for it.

Harry Corwin had been over the Boche lines three times, and had found the experience quite sufficiently exciting, though he had not been in actual combat at close quarters with the enemy as had Jimmy Hill.

His work for three mornings had been to escort a certain observation plane which had been sent each day to watch the development of a reserve line of dugouts well in the rear of the German front line. As a matter of fact, the pilot of the observation machine, a swift triplane, was well known as a dead shot. He needed an escort machine less than Harry did, Harry thought.

That triplane was about as formidable in appearance as any aircraft could be. It was only a two-seater, but it was armed with two machine-guns, singularly well placed. The front rapid-firer was fixed between the two supporting planes, the barrel next to the motor and parallel with it. This front gun was fired by Richardson, the pilot of the triplane, who controlled it with his right hand. This was a radical departure from some of the more usual gun positions, in which the gun was customarily located on the upper plane and operated by the observer.

Having a gun all to himself had pleased Richardson mightily, and he had become a wonderful shot.

The second gun on the triplane was placed on the framework behind the observer's station. It was mounted on a revolving base, and had an exceptionally wide range of fire.

"It is a pure joy, sometimes," Richardson was once heard to say, "to see the way the little major grins when some chesty Boche has thought he had us sure, and comes creeping up behind, only to get a dose right in the nose. That gun of the major's carries further than anything we have run against yet, and he just couldn't miss a Hun to save his life." The major was Richardson's observer.

Another yarn that Richardson was accustomed to tell on his companion of the upper reaches ran as follows: "When they first put me at carting observation planes around I was pretty green. I had but very shortly before done my first solo in England. The British were fairly short of fliers then, or I should not have been sent out. I arrived at the airdrome full of conceit, thinking I was a real pilot.

"The morning after I got there they led me out and stood me alongside a double-seater. The boss of that shop told me he wanted to see me take it around for a try-out, and then it was off and away for the front. He said considerately that I might wait a few minutes until another new arrival had done his little preliminary canter.

"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. I found out later that he got out of that smash with a broken leg and a bad shake-up, but when I was standing there by that machine, waiting to go up, I thought the poor devil who had the tumble must have been killed, sure.

"Then up came the major. He was a captain then. He was going to get into his seat when the boss-man said to him: 'I suggest that you wait until he has done a round or so alone.'"

"The little captain snorted at this, but the boss evidently thought it best, so up I went, alone.

"I did well enough, and after feeling the machine thoroughly, came down, making a fine landing. But fate was out with her ax that morning. No one had said a word to me about a ditch that had been dug on the left side of the field, and, of course, I had to find it. When I saw it, no time was left to avoid it, so in I went. Over toppled the poor plane, and smash went my under-works. In fact, I came out of my seat rather quickly, but wasn't really hurt. The boss chap was a bit mad, but the little captain man just laughed.

"Good thing I waited till he had had his little fun," he chuckled. "now we can off and do our work, I suppose."

"I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. He did not mind my smash a bit. I saw that. He went right on up with me in another machine ten minutes later just as though we had been going up together for years. That is the kind of nerve my major has."

Richardson did not realize how very much cool action of the observation officer had to do with the implanting in the pilot of a good sound confidence in himself. Had Richardson but known it, the captain, as he was then, had never been more apprehensive of trouble. He did not like to trust himself to green fliers, any more than another man would have done. But he knew that quick, sure show of confidence was the only thing that would put confidence into Richardson in turn. Such moments are sometimes the crucial ones. At such times fliers may be made or marred in a manner that may be, for good or for ill, irrevocable.

Sent to watch and assist this pair of doughty warriors, Harry Corwin found most of his time in the air spent in keeping in the position which had been assigned to him. Archies were everyday things to Richardson and his major. They did not by any means scorn them, the anti-aircraft guns, as continual improvement was noticeable, not only in their marksmanship, but in their range. But Richardson was a pastmaster at judging when he was well out of range, and equally clever at getting into such a position.

Once Harry had seen a fascinating duel between Richardson and a Boche plane, in which the latter retired before a decision was reached. Once the two American pilots had been compelled to run from a squadron of hunters, who gave up the chase as soon as they drew near to the Allied territory. But Jimmy Hill's exploit, and the fact that he had not only been the hero of a fight against big odds, but had actually brought down a flier and smashed up a hunter machine, loomed so large with the Brighton boys that the more ordinary experiences of the others paled into insignificance in their eyes.

Bob Haines had been on a photographing trip, and had earned great commendation from the observation officer whom he carried. Bob had taken keenly to the scientific work of trench photography, and spent his spare hours in the photographic workshop, which was a storehouse of wonders to him. He was fast getting sound ideas on subjects in connection with air-pictures, which made him all the more valuable as a pilot of a machine that carried some officer of the photographic department.

He had witnessed a very pretty fight between an American and a Boche not far distant, but he could not take part. His observer was a good hand with a Lewis gun, too. They had on board at that time, however, a set of negatives that were of considerable value, which they had been sent specially to obtain, so their duty was to leave the hunter to fare as best he could, while they scurried home in safety with their negatives.

Thus Will Corwin found that the Brighton boys were fast becoming broken in to practical flying work. Archie Fox had been as busy as any of the rest, tuning up a new machine that had a hidden kink in its anatomy somewhere that defied detection.

Dicky Mann had been selected by the flight commander to work up a special set of maps—-office work that required great care. He had been absorbed day and night, and had cut down his sleeping hours to five or six hours instead of the eight or nine he used to indulge in at Brighton.

It was not so exciting as flying, the commander had told him when
he was selected for the job, "but of equal, if not greater, importance."
At all events, Dicky was at it, heart and soul, and the evening that
Will Corwin made his appearance was the first for some days that
Dicky had joined his messmates for a chat after dinner.

"How do you think we Yanks are making out against the Teutons in the air, Will?" asked Harry. "Do you think they are beginning to recognize that we have 'em beaten?"

Will Corwin grinned. "'Beginning to' is good, but that's along way from the finished realization, and I don't guess that will come for some little time yet. It's up to America and the Allies to keep on turning out planes and fliers at top speed."

"What about the wonderful speed of the German machines, Will?" asked
Joe Little.

"An awful lot of rot is talked about speed, as you boys must know. 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. I had him into my shack for lunch, and we got quite friendly before they took him back to the base. I remember at that time that the usual talk about Boche flying machines on this front would lead you to believe that they were much faster than we were. At home you could hear almost any speed attributed to the German aeroplanes. I think some Americans thought they could do about two miles to the English or French planes' one.

"I was particularly interested in the Fokkers, Walverts and L.V.G. machines, which were the ones we had to fight most. Now, according to that candid young German, who seemed ready enough to talk frankly about things, anyone of those three planes that did one hundred miles an hour at an elevation of ten thousand feet was considered a mighty good plane. If it did one hundred and twenty miles at that elevation it was thought to be a hummer. They were fast climbers for their speed, and usually did most of their fighting, if they had a choice, at thirteen to fourteen thousand feet up. Only the Albatros could be depended upon to beat one hundred and twenty miles an hour regularly. He said he would rather not tell me the speed of the Albatros, I did not press him. The point of all this is that those very machines he was discussing were credited with speeds of anything up to one hundred and thirty-five or one hundred and fifty miles per hour by lots of people who thought they knew all about it. There will never come a day, in our generation, when one hundred and fifty miles an hour at ten thousand feet up will not be mighty good flying."

"You have been at this game some time now, Will," said Joe Little. "Can you think of anything we ought to specially learn that we won't get hold of in plain flying? A tip is often worth a lot, you know."

"From what I hear from you boys, I guess what Joe means by plain flying means pretty well every sort of stunt. I don't think one fellow can tell another much about that sort of thing. Some of it comes natural and some of it has to be learned by experience. I think fliers are born, not made, anyway. There is one thing you might get some tips upon. That relates to cloud formations. You can't know too much about that. I am expecting a book from home on that subject shortly, and when I wade through it I will let you boys have it."

"The state of the atmosphere plays a bigger part in aerial battles than one might think. Calm days, without the least wind, when the sky is covered by large gray clouds, are, as you all probably know, very favorable for surprise attacks. The clouds act as a screen and allow the aviator to hide himself until the very moment he thinks he can drop on his enemy and take him by surprise.

"The Germans have a scheme they worked pretty successfully for a while. When the clouds lie low, one of their machines dashes around below the clouds, only two or three hundred yards up, and in the area into which the Allied planes are likely to come. This sole machine acts, if the scheme works, as a sort of bait. Sometimes they pick a slow machine of an old model for the part, and it looks easy meat. They tell me that the French fliers never could withstand the temptation of seeing such a plane hovering round. The French flier would give chase, even far over the enemy lines, and at the very moment the Frenchman was about to attack under conditions that left but little doubt in his mind of the issue, unexpectedly, suddenly, he would find himself surrounded by three or four enemy planes of the latest model, with full armament.

"You see, the Germans would have been flying above the clouds, watching, the two planes below, and not showing themselves until the decoy plane had drawn the French flier ten or fifteen miles from his base. It pays to be mighty wary of anything that looks too easy in this game, and you can't be too much on the lookout for surprise parties when the clouds lie low."

"Tell us about the most exciting thing you have seen since you have been out here, Will," begged Dicky Mann. "I have been stuck on office work, and don't get a chance to have the fun the rest do. I would like to hear something about a real red-hot scrap that you have been in or seen."

"What work are you on?" queried Will.

"Maps."

"That isn't dull work, by a long shot. You can learn much in the map room that will be worth lots to you one day, too. A good knowledge of the country, the rivers, the canals, the railroads—-the ordinary roadways, for that matter—-has saved more than one chap from making a fool of himself."

"Dicky is as happy as a clam," said Harry. "He knows he is doing good work, and the amount of time he spends over his blessed maps shows well enough that he is out to get some of the map lore stuck in his head. Quit kicking, Dicky."

"All the same, you fellows have the fun," insisted Dicky. "I like the work well enough. I will admit that. And there are things worth picking up in that department, too. A man would be a fool not to see that. But tell us, Will, about the most exciting thing you have seen in the air."

There was a general seconding of Dicky's request, at which Will lit his pipe for the thirtieth time and said thoughtfully: "It is not an easy matter to choose, but the thing I had the hardest time to forget, and about the most spectacular thing a man could see, does not make much of a story. Like many things that take place in the air, it happened so quickly that we were unprepared for it.

"I was out with an observer, a very good pal of mine, on a big pusher-plane that had one of the finest engines in it I had ever seen. I don't know why we haven't had more of those out here. Something to do with the plane itself, I think. I understand the plane did not do so well as the engine, and they are getting out a new thruster to take that engine. When it comes along it will be a daisy. We had been doing what my observer called dog work. By that he meant just plain reconnaissance. We had taken in a given area, and followed all the roads to watch for traffic. We had noted nothing of particular interest, and at last we turned for home.

"We had not gone far when right ahead came a Boche flier pounding for home himself, apparently. It was a two-seater. He evidently liked our looks but little, and started to climb for safety. But we could climb, too. He had never met one of that pusher type, I guess. We kept on going up, getting higher and higher, and gaining on him all the time. It must have been a big strain for the men in that enemy machine.

"I could imagine them discussing us."

"What is it?" one may have asked.

"He will quit soon; we will be at twenty thousand feet before long," the other may have replied.

"It was at just about twenty thousand feet that we at last got within range. We had both been in chases before. We were cool enough about this one, I think. My observer was. He sat there calmly enough waiting till I could get near enough for him to let fly. I was too busy watching the fellow in front to think about much else. I have always thought that he must have miscalculated the distance that I had gained. Maybe something went a bit wrong with his engine that took his attention. He was about as far up as he could get his bus. Twenty thousand feet is nearly four miles, you know. We are likely to forget that. It is a long way up, even now, and it seemed further up then.

"I am afraid I am stringing the story out, rather, but it strung itself out that way. It was 'most all climb, climb, climb, with an eye on the two men in the plane ahead. Then I got him in range, and before I realized it." "Brrr-r-rr-rrr-rrrr!" started the quick-firer behind me. That was the most exciting moment I have gone through out here.

"They moment the machine-gun started something truly extraordinary happened. The Boche pilot, at the very first burst of fire from us, either jumped out of his seat or fell out.

"I could hardly believe my eyes. Yet there could be no mistake. He went over the side of his fuselage and dropped like a man who intended dropping just a few yards. I could see that he fell feet first, head up, and arms stretched up above his head, holding his body rigidly straight. Neither I nor my observer saw him the moment he left his seat, but both of us saw him leave the side of his machine and start down, down, down on that long four-mile drop.

"He disappeared, still rigidly straight, with something about his position that made us both remark afterwards that he looked as though he was doing it quite voluntarily and had planned it all out just that way. It was weird.

"Of course it all happened in a twinkling. The big plane in front of us went on uncannily, without a tremor, apparently. An instant afterwards my observer and I exclaimed loudly together. The observer in the enemy plane had not fired a shot, probably for the reason that his gun was fixed and we were never in range of it. Suddenly we saw him climb out of his seat on to the tail of the plane. My observer had a good target, but his gun was silent. Perhaps that Boche observer had an idea of climbing into the seat vacated so curiously by the pilot, dropping, dropping, dropping, down that trackless four mile path we had come up. If he had such a plan it failed almost before he started to put it into execution.

"He had no more than climbed out on the tail proper than he lost his hold and plunged headlong after his comrade. He went down pawing and clutching into the void below like a lost soul, in horrible contrast to the rigid figure of the pilot. Then the aviatik turned its nose down with a jerk and fell after its human freight, all the long twenty thousand feet to the earth below.

"We did not say a word to each other till we landed. It gave me a nasty shock. I had seen enemy planes go down with enemy fliers in them, but that rigid figure got me. The struggling chap I forgot long before I did the other. We more than once discussed what might have happened to him, and what his idea might have been—-but without being able to frame any explanation. It was just weird. We let it go at that."

As Will ended his story he pulled out his khaki handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. The night was anything but warm, and the room in which they sat was quite cool; but the memory of that scene, four miles up, brought the moisture to Will's brow, after months had passed since the occurrence.

Two young officers in the mess had been interested listeners. One of them, a slight youth named Mason, who hailed from the Pacific Coast, now joined in the conversation.

"There has been an instance of an observer taking control of a plane and effecting a good landing after his pilot had been killed," said Mason. "He came down not a long way from an airdrome where I was stationed. A bit of anti-aircraft shrapnel caught the pilot in the back. It did not kill him instantly, but he was not long in succumbing to his wound. He had just energy enough left, after he realized that he was very badly hurt, to tell his observer that he was going off. Before he actually relinquished control of the machine, the observer, who was a daring chap, climbed right out of his seat, pulled himself along the fuselage, and half-sitting, half-lying, managed to stick there, within reach of the control levers and the engine cut-off.

"He was an old-time flyer himself, and understood aeroplane construction pretty well, and he made a very decent landing not very far from our front lines. Fortunately he was on the right side of them, though from what he told us afterward that was more luck than judgment. He thought he was much further back than he was.

"He had become very tired, owing to his strained position on the body of the plane, and was afraid he would fall off. So he came down. He had a bad shock when he found that his pilot was stone dead, and had been for some time. He must have died when the observer took over the control of the plane, but the observer, oddly enough, never thought of him as dead, and quite expected to be able to bring him around if he once got him safely landed."

"Well, that was enough to give anyone a shock," said Will. "But he would have had a worse shock if he had come down on the Boche's side. More than one chap has done that just through not knowing exactly where he was. I can't imagine anything more tough than to get yourself down when something has gone utterly wrong, thanking your lucky stars that you are down with a whole skin, and then discover you are booked for a Hun prison, after all. I could tell you a thriller along that line, but it'll keep. You've had enough now to make you believe that the Air Service demands of a man the very best there is in him, brawn and brain."

The hour was late before the boys knew the evening had passed, and they were most cordial in their invitation to Will Corwin to come and pay them another call. Will said he would do so when he could, but that next visit was to be long deferred.

Less than a fortnight later Will took part in a gallant fight against three machines that had attacked him far within the German territory.

He accounted for one, crippled another, and outsped the third—-but when he landed his machine in his home airdrome he settled back quietly in the driving seat as the machine came to rest. When his mechanics reached him he was unconscious!

Examination showed that Will had been hit by a machine-gun bullet, that had lodged in his shoulder. In spite of his wound, which was increasingly painful and made him fight hard to retain consciousness until he got home with his plane, he made a fine nose-dive that gave him a clear road to his own lines, and managed to dodge cleverly once on his way back when the German Archies began to place shells unpleasantly close.

Will was given much credit for his pluck and tenacity, was recommended for a special decoration, and was packed off to a hospital to recover from his wound, which fortunately gave the doctors little worry, though it put Will on his back for a long time.