Chapter 1

The drone of the Hispano-Suiza 8 in my SPAD S13 was almost enough to put me back to sleep. Were it not for the fact that this was my first combat patrol in my new fighter, I might well have fallen asleep. My train ride yesterday to get to the aerodrome was nothing but one horror after another, so I was well after midnight getting to my new posting. After doing umpteen pages of paperwork and getting everything lined up, I fell into bed at 2:30 AM and was up at 4:00 AM to get ready for this little jaunt.

Dammit, things were so tight for my unit that I had not even had time for a familiarization flight before taking off for this patrol. Thank God that I was not a complete rookie at flying a fighter. My previous plane, though, had been a pusher with one machine gun. I had managed to knock down four observation balloons and one very tired Roland C.II, but nobody, including me, was sure that my previous experience would do me any good against a Fokker. On the other hand, having two machine guns did give me more confidence in my chances to live through this.

The SPAD S13 was a struggle to fly compared to my previous planes. I had been told to try various aerobatic maneuvers just after takeoff so that I would have some idea of what the plane felt like. The struggle was not because of defects in the SPAD, but because pilots tended to over-control the plane as they went through maneuvers that were difficult with older planes, but no problem with the SPAD. Experience would fix the problem, but only if you lived long enough!

I went through the usual menu of aerobatics including some that would have been impossible with my old pusher, and the SPAD performed like a champ. I fooled around for as long as I could waste the time, but the rest of my unit began to get too far away from me, so I gave up on the joyriding and pushed to catch up.

Uh-oh, sometimes being a goof-off had its advantages: three Fokker D.VIIs were coming in on the tail of the trailing SPAD, and I had seen them before they were ready to shoot. The other SPADs were flying at the normal cruising speed, but I was pouring on the coal trying to catch up. The D.VIIs were also pushing in at maximum speed, and they had the advantage of being in a shallow dive, so they were going to catch my friends pretty damned soon.

I was going about 130 MPH (Miles per Hour) and the Fokkers were doing about 125 MPH. That was not much of a difference in speed, but I did hope to catch up before disaster struck. Dammit, I could not get any more speed out of my plane; I even found myself leaning forward on my seat straining to get that last possible iota of speed from my ship. The three Germans were en trail so that the lead Fokker was very close to the trailing SPAD and about ready to shoot; however, that did put me at about the same distance from the tail-end Fokker.

Dammit, I was about to have kittens as I struggled to get close enough to take a shot at the nearest German. There was no chance of me catching up to get within normal range of the D.VII, but I had to do something. The only thing that I could think of was to raise my nose to well above my target and to spray bullets as I let the nose fall. Just maybe, I would be lucky enough to put a bullet where it would do some good.

That was pretty sloppy tactics, but nothing else would do. I could only shoot for a few seconds that way before running out of ammunition, but I had no other choice. Well, I have always been lucky, and the other American's guardian angel must have been working overtime because one of my bullets did do some good. Along with everyone else in the squadron, I was using the incendiary bullets, and one must have hit the gas tank of the D.VII. There was a mighty blast, and the plane exploded in a massive fireball.

The flash of light was seen by at least one of the American pilots, and the SPADs all peeled off in different directions. The Germans were disconcerted by the totally unexpected explosion and were slow to react. They must have been rookies without much combat experience. Anyway, the two remaining Germans suddenly found themselves in the midst of four SPADs who were intent on knocking them out of the sky.

The resulting fight was shorter than as such things usually went, and the two D.VIIs were shot down. Unfortunately, neither one was by me. However, three kills by three pilots were sufficiently rare in our squadron that none of us were in the mood to complain, even the one who did not score a kill that morning.

We had been on a hunting mission so the flight leader decided that we had done enough. Besides, we were all low on ammunition, and we needed to return to base to restock. Not only that, the castor oil lubricant that we were breathing always produced such bad screaming squirts (diarrhea) that we all looked for a chance for a drink of whiskey as soon as we could get it. The whiskey was the only thing we had to fight the effects of the diarrhea.

We landed and were congratulating ourselves on such a successful flight as we headed to the club for a drink. That did not last long as the squadron XO (Executive Officer) ran to us and said, "We just got word that the Krauts are trying something different. Flights of both fighters and bombers are headed our way, and we are in their path. Undoubtedly, they are out to clobber us, and we don't have enough planes to stand them off. Nevertheless, we are going to do what we can, and we need you men to get back into the fight. Get back to your planes and be ready to take off as soon as all of you are rearmed and refueled. The ground crews have already gotten the message and are working their tails off to get your craft ready to go. Good luck and give them hell!" With that, he ran off to waylay another flight that was just landing.

Jack Sorly, our flight leader, said, "I sure hope we can get more information before we take off. I would like to know where to find the bastards before they can jump us like earlier today." We all agreed to that, but that did not stop us from running as fast as we could manage to get back to our planes.

Thank God, there was a man standing beside Jack's plane with some papers and a map in his hands. He and Jack talked intently for a few seconds before Jack hastily climbed into his SPAD. He must have been full of useful information, judging from the look on Jack's face. We quickly took off and formed up to follow wherever Jack was to lead us. As usual, I was tail-end-Charlie, and I was not going to waste any more time playing with my SPAD. I was now confident in what it could do and planned to do my damnedest to show what I could do. I wanted to prove that I was a valuable member of the team and not a one-trick pony.

We climbed to 6,000 feet, but Jack was reluctant to take us any higher because of the problems we would have in getting enough oxygen. Oh, yes, we often did go higher than that during an actual dogfight, but nobody stayed that high if he did not have to. A man's fighting efficiency fell rapidly when he had trouble getting enough oxygen, so everybody kept that in mind.

The Germans must have been serious about this because we saw them in the distance after only about 20 minutes of flying time. We were already well behind the German front lines, and we were occasionally getting antiaircraft (AAA) fire, but none of it seemed to be the determined sort that we sometimes saw. There were so many German planes in the sky at one time that they looked like dark clouds in the distance. Without a doubt, these were not the usual flights of German observation planes with their fighter escorts. As somebody might say, there certainly was a plethora of targets. Suddenly I wondered just how much good our four SPADs were going to do against what looked like hundreds of enemies.

Well, as they say in the poem: "Ours not to reason why; ours but to do and die." And it looked like a hell of a lot of that was headed our way! There was only one thing to do—we climbed. We didn't worry about the lack of oxygen. If we didn't gain some altitude on the Germans, they were going to blow us out of the air like so much confetti. Altitude was the only thing that could save us, so we were prepared to suffer with our breathing. Better that than to eat a bullet.