Chapter 9

Eddie was flying top cover for me again, but we did not have Jack and Bill to distract the antiaircraft people. However, they must have been spending so much time gawking at the big air battle going on nearly overhead that we managed to sneak in undetected. Let me tell you, we sure appreciated that bit of good luck!

Anyway, we went through the usual routine for my attack, and I dove in to drop my first set of bombs. Dammit! For the first time, I missed with both bombs. I couldn't imagine why it happened, but that was why I carried the second set of bombs. I struggled back up to my approach altitude, and that was when we were spotted by the antiaircraft shooters. Suddenly, all hell broke loose.

Fortunately, these guys were so excited, I guess, that they did not hit either one of us, though some of the cannon shells went off pretty damned close. Shrapnel did whistle by close enough to worry me, but not enough to drive me from my appointed task. I got lined up again and dove in on the balloon. This time, I managed to dive even slower than usual, and that gave me a chance to do a better job of lining up with my target. That may have been why I missed the first time.

I managed to put both bombs on top of the balloon's envelope, and they went off so nearly simultaneously that the blue plume of burning hydrogen was larger than we had ever seen before. These bombs broke the back of the balloon, and it folded in such a way that the hydrogen was dumped out through a massive rent in the envelope. The result was that the envelope fell so fast that the two observers appeared not to have had time to parachute from the gondola.

It was especially gratifying that the burning fabric of the envelope fell onto a pile of artillery shells and set them off. The explosion was relatively minor, but it did stop the firing of shells at us long enough for us to get away.

Now that the observation balloon was destroyed, Eddie and I were free to rejoin the dogfight. We ran out of ammunition before we shot down any more Germans, but we certainly did add to the confusion. All of us were low on fuel by this time, so we broke away from the Germans and left for home. I counted the allied planes and the total came to only 13, and that meant that we had lost 3. I did not get an exact count of the German planes, but I think that they lost 7. That was a major victory for us, plus we had knocked out that balloon that had everybody worried. Sometimes, there are good days, even in the midst of a war.

A couple of our planes had to make emergency landings because they were out of fuel, but they did come down at small airfields that would have gasoline for just such emergencies. Their only problem was that they might be late for supper. Mostly, the German planes stayed over their own territory, so there was little chance of meeting any on the way back home once the trench line had been crossed.

When we got back, word had already been passed up and then down the line that the balloon had been successfully knocked out. We were congratulated, and Jack received acknowledgment that he'd had the right idea on what to do about the great number of German planes defending the balloon. That was the only time we needed so many fighters to protect me during my bombing run, but it was good to know that we had an answer to that German tactic.

Well, the war for us settled into a routine, but never a rut. Almost every day that the weather permitted, we went after an observation balloon. It seemed like the Germans were growing them on a farm somewhere. They always had one to replace a balloon that we shot down, it just took them a couple of weeks to get the new one in place. We never did tell anybody that we were knocking down balloons by bombing them, and the higher echelons never caught on, so they let us alone.

However, the Germans finally did recognize what we were doing, and rearranged their antiaircraft fire to aim more at me. Actually, what they did was to keep the antiaircraft guns they already had in place and add some more cannons to shoot at me. As far as we could figure out, the Germans still thought that I was shooting bullets at the balloons and not dropping incendiary bombs, but it didn't make much difference. All they could do was to shoot at me, and it was damned hard to hit an airplane while it was diving the way I did. Even moving only about 60 MPH or so in my dive, it was still hard to train the guns on me and follow me in the dive, so the exploding shells never did get close enough to really bother me. Okay, so I was more lucky than I deserved, I didn't care as long as I still knocked down balloons and lived through the experience.

Well, on to a more pleasant subject: Connie's pregnancy was progressing as normally as anybody could hope for. I think I mentioned it, but maybe I didn't. Connie was sure that she was knocked up during our honeymoon. This did create a problem that was small now, but was bound to become larger as the pregnancy progressed. She was just beginning to bulge enough to show her condition. Well, "nice ladies" did not advertise that they were pregnant. She started wearing dresses that hid her condition, but everybody who didn't know about it, sure did after only one dance.

A pregnant belly just felt like a pregnant belly. There was no way around that, and the Red Cross was becoming disturbed by Connie's "condition." Okay, there was no way around it, Connie had to be shipped back to the States before she got too big. Connie was not the only woman who was carrying a baby, but she was early in that bunch. Therefore, the Red Cross did not have a set policy on how to treat the pregnant women. At this stage, they were just sending the women home by the first available transportation, and there were plenty of ships making the trip.

Neither one of us was happy about the situation, but we had known that something was going to happen when Connie discovered that she was pregnant. The arrangement that was finally made was that Connie was shipped back to her home town to live with her parents until the war was over, and I was discharged. We had to admit that we had been living in a dream world because we were able to stay together for as long as we did.

At least, I was able to get leave long enough to see Connie off at the port of Le Havre. She was headed to England and then to the States. We were both broken up about being separated when the baby was born, but we got over it enough to try to fool the other one into thinking that we were reconciled to the situation. Neither one of us was fooled, but we did put up a good front for other people. We each had the other one's mailing address, so we had promised to write every day. The promise was made in good faith, but life got in the way. However, we did manage to send letters at least once a week.

The day after I returned from Le Havre was just like any other day as far as the Army was concerned. I flew with Jack, Bill, and Eddie on a balloon busting mission. The only thing that kept it from being routine was that the wind was so high that the Germans never sent up the balloon. All we could do was to turn around and fly home, and, to be truthful, I was just as happy not to have to drop any bombs that day. I was still moping about from saying goodby to Connie, and I probably would have missed the balloon if I had been forced to dive at it.

The next day, I was feeling better. That was partly because I had moved back into my regular barracks cot and was just one of the guys again. The bed was not as comfortable as the one at our apartment, but I didn't care very much because Connie was not there beside me. I am sure that I was a real pain in the ass for the rest of the guys for the first few days after Connie left, but they put up with me, and things finally worked out well enough.

We did get a break from balloon busting because all of the SPAD S13s were grounded for two weeks while some work was done on the engines. We had to rotate back to SPAD S7s for that time, and they were not up to carrying bombs or even matching up to the German D. VIIs. All we did during that time was to fly cover over our trenches trying to keep the German observation planes from photographing our deployments. Because of the difference in performance between the S7s and the S13s, we had to be damned careful to keep our planes close enough together so that we could support each other against the D. VIIs. Any pilot who got careless and wandered off by himself was a dead duck if the Germans spotted him, and a few did. There was nothing that we could do about it, but drink a toast to the missing pilot and hope that he survived the fall to Earth.