Flying for France
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James R. McConnell >> Flying for France
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FLYING FOR FRANCE
With the American Escadrille at Verdun
BY
JAMES R. McCONNELL
Sergeant-Pilot in the French Flying Corps
Illustrated from photographs through the kindness
of Mr. Paul Rockwell
To
MRS. ALICE S. WEEKS
Who having lost a splendid son in the French Army has given to a great
number of us other Americans in the war the tender sympathy and help
of a mother.
CONTENTS
Introduction
By F. C. P.
CHAPTER
I. Verdun
II. From Verdun to the Somme
III. Personal Letters from Sergeant McConnell
IV. How France Trains Pilot Aviators
V. Against Odds
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
James R. McConnell _Frontispiece_
Some of the Americans Who are Flying for France
Two Members of the American Escadrille, of the French Flying Service,
Who Were Killed Flying For France
"Whiskey." The Lion and Mascot of the American Flying Squadron in
France
Kiffin Rockwell, of Asheville, N.C., Who Was Killed in an Air Duel
Over Verdun
Sergeant Lufbery in one of the New Nieuports in Which He Convoyed the
Bombardment Fleet Which Attacked Oberndorf
INTRODUCTION
One day in January, 1915, I saw Jim McConnell in front of the Court
House at Carthage, North Carolina. "Well," he said, "I'm all fixed up
and am leaving on Wednesday." "Where for?" I asked. "I've got a job to
drive an ambulance in France," was his answer.
And then he went on to tell me, first, that as he saw it the greatest
event in history was going on right at hand and that he would be
missing the opportunity of a lifetime if he did not see it. "These
Sand Hills," he said "will be here forever, but the war won't; and so
I'm going." Then, as an afterthought, he added: "And I'll be of some
use, too, not just a sight-seer looking on; that wouldn't be fair."
So he went. He joined the American ambulance service in the Vosges,
was mentioned more than once in the orders of the day for conspicuous
bravery in saving wounded under fire, and received the much-coveted
Croix de Guerre.
Meanwhile, he wrote interesting letters home. And his point of view
changed, even as does the point of view of all Americans who visit
Europe. From the attitude of an adventurous spirit anxious to see the
excitement, his letters showed a new belief that any one who goes to
France and is not able and willing to do more than his share--to give
everything in him toward helping the wounded and suffering--has no
business there.
And as time went on, still a new note crept into his letters; the
first admiration for France was strengthened and almost replaced by a
new feeling--a profound conviction that France and the French people
were fighting the fight of liberty against enormous odds. The new
spirit of France--the spirit of the "Marseillaise," strengthened by a
grim determination and absolute certainty of being right--pervades
every line he writes. So he gave up the ambulance service and enlisted
in the French flying corps along with an ever-increasing number of
other Americans.
The spirit which pervades them is something above the spirit of
adventure that draws many to war; it is the spirit of a man who has
found an inspiring duty toward the advancement of liberty and humanity
and is glad and proud to contribute what he can.
His last letters bring out a new point--the assurance of victory of a
just cause. "Of late," he writes, "things are much brighter and one
can feel a certain elation in the air. Victory, before, was a sort of
academic certainty; now, it is felt."
F. C. P.
November 10, 1916.
FLYING FOR FRANCE
CHAPTER I
VERDUN
Beneath the canvas of a huge hangar mechanicians are at work on the
motor of an airplane. Outside, on the borders of an aviation field,
others loiter awaiting their aerial charge's return from the sky. Near
the hangar stands a hut-shaped tent. In front of it several
short-winged biplanes are lined up; inside it three or four young men
are lolling in wicker chairs.
They wear the uniform of French army aviators. These uniforms, and the
grim-looking machine guns mounted on the upper planes of the little
aircraft, are the only warlike note in a pleasantly peaceful scene.
The war seems very remote. It is hard to believe that the greatest of
all battles--Verdun--rages only twenty-five miles to the north, and
that the field and hangars and mechanicians and aviators and airplanes
are all playing a part therein.
Suddenly there is the distant hum of a motor. One of the pilots
emerges from the tent and gazes fixedly up into the blue sky. He
points, and one glimpses a black speck against the blue, high
overhead. The sound of the motor ceases, and the speck grows larger.
It moves earthward in steep dives and circles, and as it swoops
closer, takes on the shape of an airplane. Now one can make out the
red, white, and blue circles under the wings which mark a French
war-plane, and the distinctive insignia of the pilot on its sides.
"_Ton patron arrive!_" one mechanician cries to another. "Your boss is
coming!"
The machine dips sharply over the top of a hangar, straightens out
again near the earth at a dizzy speed a few feet above it and, losing
momentum in a surprisingly short time, hits the ground with tail and
wheels. It bumps along a score of yards and then, its motor whirring
again, turns, rolls toward the hangar, and stops. A human form,
enveloped in a species of garment for all the world like a diver's
suit, and further adorned with goggles and a leather hood, rises
unsteadily in the cockpit, clambers awkwardly overboard and slides
down to terra firma.
A group of soldiers, enjoying a brief holiday from the trenches in a
cantonment near the field, straggle forward and gather timidly about
the airplane, listening open-mouthed for what its rider is about to
say.
"Hell!" mumbles that gentleman, as he starts divesting himself of his
flying garb.
"What's wrong now?" inquires one of the tenants of the tent.
"Everything, or else I've gone nutty," is the indignant reply,
delivered while disengaging a leg from its Teddy Bear trousering.
"Why, I emptied my whole roller on a Boche this morning, point blank
at not fifteen metres off. His machine gun quit firing and his
propeller wasn't turning and yet the darn fool just hung up there as
if he were tied to a cloud. Say, I was so sure I had him it made me
sore--felt like running into him and yelling, 'Now, you fall, you
bum!'"
The eyes of the _poilus_ register surprise. Not a word of this
dialogue, delivered in purest American, is intelligible to them. Why
is an aviator in a French uniform speaking a foreign tongue, they
mutually ask themselves. Finally one of them, a little chap in a
uniform long since bleached of its horizon-blue colour by the mud of
the firing line, whisperingly interrogates a mechanician as to the
identity of these strange air folk.
"But they are the Americans, my old one," the latter explains with
noticeable condescension.
Marvelling afresh, the infantrymen demand further details. They learn
that they are witnessing the return of the American Escadrille--composed
of Americans who have volunteered to fly for France for the duration
of the war--to their station near Bar-le-Duc, twenty-five miles south
of Verdun, from a flight over the battle front of the Meuse. They have
barely had time to digest this knowledge when other dots appear in the
sky, and one by one turn into airplanes as they wheel downward.
Finally all six of the machines that have been aloft are back on the
ground and the American Escadrille has one more sortie over the German
lines to its credit.
PERSONNEL OF THE ESCADRILLE
Like all worth-while institutions, the American Escadrille, of which I
have the honour of being a member, was of gradual growth. When the war
began, it is doubtful whether anybody anywhere envisaged the
possibility of an American entering the French aviation service. Yet,
by the fall of 1915, scarcely more than a year later, there were six
Americans serving as full-fledged pilots, and now, in the summer of
1916, the list numbers fifteen or more, with twice that number
training for their pilot's license in the military aviation schools.
The pioneer of them all was William Thaw, of Pittsburg, who is to-day
the only American holding a commission in the French flying corps.
Lieutenant Thaw, a flyer of considerable reputation in America before
the war, had enlisted in the Foreign Legion in August, 1914. With
considerable difficulty he had himself transferred, in the early part
of 1915, into aviation, and the autumn of that year found him piloting
a Caudron biplane, and doing excellent observation work. At the same
time, Sergeants Norman Prince, of Boston, and Elliot Cowdin, of New
York--who were the first to enter the aviation service coming directly
from the United States--were at the front on Voisin planes with a
cannon mounted in the bow.
Sergeant Bert Hall, who signs from the Lone Star State and had got
himself shifted from the Foreign Legion to aviation soon after Thaw,
was flying a Nieuport fighting machine, and, a little later,
instructing less-advanced students of the air in the Avord Training
School. His particular chum in the Foreign Legion, James Bach, who
also had become an aviator, had the distressing distinction soon after
he reached the front of becoming the first American to fall into the
hands of the enemy. Going to the assistance of a companion who had
broken down in landing a spy in the German lines, Bach smashed his
machine against a tree. Both he and his French comrade were captured,
and Bach was twice court-martialed by the Germans on suspicion of
being an American _franc-tireur_--the penalty for which is death! He
was acquitted but of course still languishes in a prison camp
"somewhere in Germany." The sixth of the original sextet was Adjutant
Didier Masson, who did exhibition flying in the States until--Carranza
having grown ambitious in Mexico--he turned his talents to spotting
_los Federales_ for General Obregon. When the real war broke out,
Masson answered the call of his French blood and was soon flying and
fighting for the land of his ancestors.
Of the other members of the escadrille Sergeant Givas Lufbery,
American citizen and soldier, but dweller in the world at large, was
among the earliest to wear the French airman's wings. Exhibition work
with a French pilot in the Far East prepared him efficiently for the
task of patiently unloading explosives on to German military centres
from a slow-moving Voisin which was his first mount. Upon the heels
of Lufbery came two more graduates of the Foreign Legion--Kiffin
Rockwell, of Asheville, N.C., who had been wounded at Carency; Victor
Chapman, of New York, who after recovering from his wounds became an
airplane bomb-dropper and so caught the craving to become a pilot. At
about this time one Paul Pavelka, whose birthplace was Madison, Conn.,
and who from the age of fifteen had sailed the seven seas, managed to
slip out of the Foreign Legion into aviation and joined the other
Americans at Pau.
There seems to be a fascination to aviation, particularly when it is
coupled with fighting. Perhaps it's because the game is new, but more
probably because as a rule nobody knows anything about it. Whatever be
the reason, adventurous young Americans were attracted by it in
rapidly increasing numbers. Many of them, of course, never got
fascinated beyond the stage of talking about joining. Among the chaps
serving with the American ambulance field sections a good many
imaginations were stirred, and a few actually did enlist, when, toward
the end of the summer of 1915, the Ministry of War, finding that the
original American pilots had made good, grew more liberal in
considering applications.
Chouteau Johnson, of New York; Lawrence Rumsey, of Buffalo; Dudley
Hill, of Peekskill, N.Y.; and Clyde Balsley, of El Paso; one after
another doffed the ambulance driver's khaki for the horizon-blue of
the French flying corps. All of them had seen plenty of action,
collecting the wounded under fire, but they were all tired of being
non-combatant spectators. More or less the same feeling actuated me,
I suppose. I had come over from Carthage, N.C., in January, 1915, and
worked with an American ambulance section in the Bois-le-Pretre. All
along I had been convinced that the United States ought to aid in the
struggle against Germany. With that conviction, it was plainly up to
me to do more than drive an ambulance. The more I saw the splendour of
the fight the French were fighting, the more I felt like an
_embusque_--what the British call a "shirker." So I made up my mind to
go into aviation.
A special channel had been created for the reception of applications
from Americans, and my own was favourably replied to within a few
days. It took four days more to pass through all the various
departments, sign one's name to a few hundred papers, and undergo the
physical examinations. Then I was sent to the aviation depot at Dijon
and fitted out with a uniform and personal equipment. The next stop
was the school at Pau, where I was to be taught to fly. My elation at
arriving there was second only to my satisfaction at being a French
soldier. It was a vast improvement, I thought, in the American
Ambulance.
Talk about forming an all-American flying unit, or escadrille, was
rife while I was at Pau. What with the pilots already breveted, and
the eleves, or pupils in the training-schools, there were quite enough
of our compatriots to man the dozen airplanes in one escadrille. Every
day somebody "had it absolutely straight" that we were to become a
unit at the front, and every other day the report turned out to be
untrue. But at last, in the month of February, our dream came true. We
learned that a captain had actually been assigned to command an
American escadrille and that the Americans at the front had been
recalled and placed under his orders. Soon afterward we eleves got
another delightful thrill.
THREE TYPES OF FRENCH AIR SERVICE
Thaw, Prince, Cowdin, and the other veterans were training on the
Nieuport! That meant the American Escadrille was to fly the
Nieuport--the best type of _avion de chasse_--and hence would be a
fighting unit. It is necessary to explain parenthetically here that
French military aviation, generally speaking, is divided into three
groups--the _avions de chasse_ or airplanes of pursuit, which are used
to hunt down enemy aircraft or to fight them off; _avions de
bombardement_, big, unwieldy monsters for use in bombarding raids; and
_avions de reglage_, cumbersome creatures designed to regulate
artillery fire, take photographs, and do scout duty. The Nieuport is
the smallest, fastest-rising, fastest-moving biplane in the French
service. It can travel 110 miles an hour, and is a one-man apparatus
with a machine gun mounted on its roof and fired by the pilot with one
hand while with the other and his feet he operates his controls. The
French call their Nieuport pilots the "aces" of the air. No wonder we
were tickled to be included in that august brotherhood!
Before the American Escadrille became an established fact, Thaw and
Cowdin, who had mastered the Nieuport, managed to be sent to the
Verdun front. While there Cowdin was credited with having brought down
a German machine and was proposed for the _Medaille Militaire_, the
highest decoration that can be awarded a non-commissioned officer or
private.
After completing his training, receiving his military pilot's brevet,
and being perfected on the type of plane he is to use at the front, an
aviator is ordered to the reserve headquarters near Paris to await his
call. Kiffin Rockwell and Victor Chapman had been there for months,
and I had just arrived, when on the 16th of April orders came for the
Americans to join their escadrille at Luxeuil, in the Vosges.
The rush was breathless! Never were flying clothes and fur coats drawn
from the quartermaster, belongings packed, and red tape in the various
administrative bureaux unfurled, with such headlong haste. In a few
hours we were aboard the train, panting, but happy. Our party
consisted of Sergeant Prince, and Rockwell, Chapman, and myself, who
were only corporals at that time. We were joined at Luxeuil by
Lieutenant Thaw and Sergeants Hall and Cowdin.
For the veterans our arrival at the front was devoid of excitement;
for the three neophytes--Rockwell, Chapman, and myself--it was the
beginning of a new existence, the entry into an unknown world. Of
course Rockwell and Chapman had seen plenty of warfare on the ground,
but warfare in the air was as novel to them as to me. For us all it
contained unlimited possibilities for initiative and service to
France, and for them it must have meant, too, the restoration of
personality lost during those months in the trenches with the Foreign
Legion. Rockwell summed it up characteristically.
"Well, we're off for the races," he remarked.
PILOT LIFE AT THE FRONT
There is a considerable change in the life of a pilot when he arrives
on the front. During the training period he is subject to rules and
regulations as stringent as those of the barracks. But once assigned
to duty over the firing line he receives the treatment accorded an
officer, no matter what his grade. Save when he is flying or on guard,
his time is his own. There are no roll calls or other military
frills, and in place of the bunk he slept upon as an eleve, he finds a
regular bed in a room to himself, and the services of an orderly. Even
men of higher rank who although connected with his escadrille are not
pilots, treat him with respect. His two mechanicians are under his
orders. Being volunteers, we Americans are shown more than the
ordinary consideration by the ever-generous French Government, which
sees to it that we have the best of everything.
On our arrival at Luxeuil we were met by Captain Thenault, the French
commander of the American Escadrille--officially known as No. 124, by
the way--and motored to the aviation field in one of the staff cars
assigned to us. I enjoyed that ride. Lolling back against the soft
leather cushions, I recalled how in my apprenticeship days at Pau I
had had to walk six miles for my laundry.
The equipment awaiting us at the field was even more impressive than
our automobile. Everything was brand new, from the fifteen Fiat trucks
to the office, magazine, and rest tents. And the men attached to the
escadrille! At first sight they seemed to outnumber the Nicaraguan
army--mechanicians, chauffeurs, armourers, motorcyclists,
telephonists, wireless operators, Red Cross stretcher bearers, clerks!
Afterward I learned they totalled seventy-odd, and that all of them
were glad to be connected with the American Escadrille.
In their hangars stood our trim little Nieuports. I looked mine over
with a new feeling of importance and gave orders to my mechanicians
for the mere satisfaction of being able to. To find oneself the sole
proprietor of a fighting airplane is quite a treat, let me tell you.
One gets accustomed to it, though, after one has used up two or three
of them--at the French Government's expense.
Rooms were assigned to us in a villa adjoining the famous hot baths of
Luxeuil, where Caesar's cohorts were wont to besport themselves. We
messed with our officers, Captain Thenault and Lieutenant de Laage de
Mieux, at the best hotel in town. An automobile was always on hand to
carry us to the field. I began to wonder whether I was a summer
resorter instead of a soldier.
Among the pilots who had welcomed us with open arms, we discovered the
famous Captain Happe, commander of the Luxeuil bombardment group. The
doughty bomb-dispenser, upon whose head the Germans have set a price,
was in his quarters. After we had been introduced, he pointed to eight
little boxes arranged on a table.
"They contain _Croix de Guerre_ for the families of the men I lost on
my last trip," he explained, and he added: "It's a good thing you're
here to go along with us for protection. There are lots of Boches in
this sector."
I thought of the luxury we were enjoying: our comfortable beds, baths,
and motor cars, and then I recalled the ancient custom of giving a man
selected for the sacrifice a royal time of it before the appointed
day.
To acquaint us with the few places where a safe landing was possible
we were motored through the Vosges Mountains and on into Alsace. It
was a delightful opportunity to see that glorious countryside, and we
appreciated it the more because we knew its charm would be lost when
we surveyed it from the sky. From the air the ground presents no
scenic effects. The ravishing beauty of the Val d'Ajol, the steep
mountain sides bristling with a solid mass of giant pines, the myriads
of glittering cascades tumbling downward through fairylike avenues of
verdure, the roaring, tossing torrent at the foot of the slope--all
this loveliness, seen from an airplane at 12,000 feet, fades into flat
splotches of green traced with a tiny ribbon of silver.
The American Escadrille was sent to Luxeuil primarily to acquire the
team work necessary to a flying unit. Then, too, the new pilots
needed a taste of anti-aircraft artillery to familiarize them with the
business of aviation over a battlefield. They shot well in that
sector, too. Thaw's machine was hit at an altitude of 13,000 feet.
THE ESCADRILLE'S FIRST SORTIE
The memory of the first sortie we made as an escadrille will always
remain fresh in my mind because it was also my first trip over the
lines. We were to leave at six in the morning. Captain Thenault
pointed out on his aerial map the route we were to follow. Never
having flown over this region before, I was afraid of losing myself.
Therefore, as it is easier to keep other airplanes in sight when one
is above them, I began climbing as rapidly as possible, meaning to
trail along in the wake of my companions. Unless one has had practice
in flying in formation, however, it is hard to keep in contact. The
diminutive _avions de chasse_ are the merest pinpoints against the
great sweep of landscape below and the limitless heavens above. The
air was misty and clouds were gathering. Ahead there seemed a barrier
of them. Although as I looked down the ground showed plainly, in the
distance everything was hazy. Forging up above the mist, at 7,000
feet, I lost the others altogether. Even when they are not closely
joined, the clouds, seen from immediately above, appear as a solid
bank of white. The spaces between are indistinguishable. It is like
being in an Arctic ice field.
To the south I made out the Alps. Their glittering peaks projected up
through the white sea about me like majestic icebergs. Not a single
plane was visible anywhere, and I was growing very uncertain about my
position. My splendid isolation had become oppressive, when, one by
one, the others began bobbing up above the cloud level, and I had
company again.
We were over Belfort and headed for the trench lines. The cloud banks
dropped behind, and below us we saw the smiling plain of Alsace
stretching eastward to the Rhine. It was distinctly pleasurable,
flying over this conquered land. Following the course of the canal
that runs to the Rhine, I sighted, from a height of 13,000 feet over
Dannemarie, a series of brown, woodworm-like tracings on the
ground--the trenches!
SHRAPNEL THAT COULDN'T BE HEARD
My attention was drawn elsewhere almost immediately, however. Two
balls of black smoke had suddenly appeared close to one of the
machines ahead of me, and with the same disconcerting abruptness
similar balls began to dot the sky above, below, and on all sides of
us. We were being shot at with shrapnel. It was interesting to watch
the flash of the bursting shells, and the attendant smoke
puffs--black, white, or yellow, depending on the kind of shrapnel
used. The roar of the motor drowned the noise of the explosions.
Strangely enough, my feelings about it were wholly impersonal.
We turned north after crossing the lines. Mulhouse seemed just below
us, and I noted with a keen sense of satisfaction our invasion of real
German territory. The Rhine, too, looked delightfully accessible. As
we continued northward I distinguished the twin lakes of Gerardmer
sparkling in their emerald setting. Where the lines crossed the
Hartmannsweilerkopf there were little spurts of brown smoke as shells
burst in the trenches. One could scarcely pick out the old city of
Thann from among the numerous neighbouring villages, so tiny it seemed
in the valley's mouth. I had never been higher than 7,000 feet and was
unaccustomed to reading country from a great altitude. It was also
bitterly cold, and even in my fur-lined combination I was shivering.
I noticed, too, that I had to take long, deep breaths in the rarefied
atmosphere. Looking downward at a certain angle, I saw what at first
I took to be a round, shimmering pool of water. It was simply the
effect of the sunlight on the congealing mist. We had been keeping an
eye out for German machines since leaving our lines, but none had
shown up. It wasn't surprising, for we were too many.
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