Chapter 6

We were rewarded with another pass to visit the town, but with the understanding that we would not drink too much wine nor would we return late to our beds. We had no trouble agreeing to those terms, and Jack drove us to the Red Cross canteen to pick up dates. Connie was working that evening, so I was not interested in running around town, so the other three found dates among the Red Cross women not scheduled to work that night.

They took off, and Connie promised to return me to base in her car in time to meet the CO's curfew. We spent the evening drinking the Red Cross coffee, talking, and dancing. The other women knew of Connie's attachment to me, so they covered for her when any of the visiting soldiers wanted to dance or just to talk English with a woman.

Connie's shift was over with just enough time to drive me back to base, so we had no time for hanky-panky. We found that our previous night's activities were enough to hold us for a while, so we were completely happy just being together for the few hours that we had. I promised to see her the next time I could get a pass, but I had no idea when that would be. Connie said that she understood, and she would be ready whenever I managed to show up.

We shared a long kiss before I exited the car and she drove off. Jack, Bill, and John showed up just in time to make the curfew, so we hoped for another pass tomorrow night. We dragged off to bed and woke up at our usual time the next morning. Again, we had breakfast and took off at just before dawn as soon as there was enough light to get off the ground safely.

I was loaded with my usual four incendiary bombs, and we had a covering flight of four SPAD 13s to accompany us. We were not going so far this time, but Col. Handly wanted to give us every chance to make a successful run at the observation balloon. He had received several messages of thanks from the officers of ground troops saying that we were doing an outstanding job and expressing how much they appreciated our efforts at destroying the observation balloons. These messages had gone through channels, so copies were enclosed with our personnel files. That might mean a promotion, but we really were mostly interested in the fact that our efforts were appreciated.

We had climbed to altitude in a gentle manner so as to conserve fuel, and we were over enemy territory before we had reached our planned altitude for travel. Our main interest was getting above accurate AAA fire, so we were tooling along at 6,000 feet. We were keeping a sharp watch for D. VIIs, and one of our covering pilots did spot the Germans before they got close enough to us to do any shooting. The four covering fighters peeled off to attack the six D. VIIs while we continued on our journey to kill an observation balloon.

I guess that I should point out that these balloons were never more than a couple of miles behind German lines. When I say that we had to fly a long way, what I meant was that we would fly pretty much parallel to the front, but we would have to go a long way along this line to do our job. By the very nature of their job, the observation balloons were never so far behind the front that the observers had trouble seeing several miles into our lines.

Quite often, we would cross back and forth over the front as it meandered through the French countryside. The result was that we could spend as much time over our lines as over the Germans, but we had to be careful at all times. Our people were just as likely to shoot at any passing airplanes. From a distance of a mile or more from the ground, it was a practical impossibility to make out the markings on our wings, so, come hell or high water, we drew friendly fire fairly often. Much as we would cuss at the friendlies shooting at us, we did understand their problem, and just did our best to avoid their fire.

Anyway, we managed to reach our target without encountering any more German fighters, so we were able to make our run. Jack and Bill went down to engage the AAA and to shoot at the balloon while John and I prepared our own attack. John wanted to attack a balloon with incendiary bombs the way I did, and the CO said for us to go ahead. John's plane had the same bomb rig as I was carrying, so we had a total of eight bombs to use against the balloon. Surely, we could bring down the balloon with that much firepower at our disposal even though John was a rookie at dive bombing.

He claimed that he had seen me do it enough times that he was sure that he could copy my technique, so Jack told him to go ahead. He was going to make the first run so that I could back him up in case he missed. Unfortunately, we had forgotten that our cover flight was not with us, so we were vulnerable to Germans in their D. VIIs if we did not keep a close watch.

John began his run, and he was lucky because there was very little crosswind at this altitude. He lined up the long way just as I had done and started his approach. John dove on the balloon, but he forgot to reduce his speed as he approached the target. He released his first two bombs at about 800 feet above the top of the balloon and pulled away. Unfortunately, his inexperience at dive bombing showed up, and he missed with both bombs.

I hope he knew how fortunate he was that he had missed. He was going so fast in his dive that he had trouble pulling away, and he arrived over the balloon and very close to it at about the same time as the bombs reached the altitude of the balloon top. If he had struck the balloon correctly with his bombs, there was a very good chance that he would have been trapped in the flash of burning hydrogen. Surely, his plane would have caught fire if the hydrogen flame had enveloped him. I hoped that he had learned his lesson.

Okay, it was now my turn to make a pass at the balloon. I flew over and into my dive just as I usually did. I also made a point of reducing speed, and I hoped that John noticed what I had done. I released my bombs at the same 800 feet of relative separation as John had done, and I had no trouble pulling out of my dive and away from the balloon before the bombs hit.

Both of my bombs hit the target and the balloon burst into flame. It started down, and I looked away just in time to see two D. VIIs diving on me in attack mode. Man, let me tell you, that is a scary sight! I banked sharply and turned to my left in hopes that they would expect me to go to my right, as any sane Nieuport pilot would have done. It worked! My luck was holding, and I was able to dodge enough to be missed by their bullets.

I did a quick reversal of direction and flew directly at one of the D. VIIs. I suddenly had a crazy notion. I still had two of my incendiary bombs that I was going to have to jettison in order to have any hope of surviving this attack. I asked myself, "Why not use the bombs against a D. VII?"

I flew directly at the lead German and neither one of us flinched as I fired my machine gun at him. We were damned close to a collision when I suddenly jerked my plane up over his and released both bombs. Lady luck was with me because one of the bombs landed inside his cockpit and started burning. I was completely past my opponent when smoke curled furiously from his plane. Suddenly, he blew up. I assume that the flames had reached his fuel tank. Let me tell you, that was a spectacular fireball where the D. VII used to be.

I was buffeted by the shock wave from the explosion, and I had to fight to keep control of my SPAD. I was too busy at that moment to fight, but another lucky thing happened for me: the German pilot was also buffeted by the shock wave so that he was having the same problem that I was having. However, he did not have a guardian angel like I did in the form of John. John had already dropped his bombs, so he was prepared to engage the German from a distance that kept him from the worst of the shock wave. He fired one moderately long burst of machine gun fire into the cockpit of the D. VII. That was enough to send the German fighter plummeting to the ground.