In my little cockpit from which my shoulders just protrude I have several diversions besides flying. The compass, of course, and the map I keep tucked in a tiny closet over the reservoir before my knees, a small clock and one altimetre. But most important is the contour, showing revolutions of the motor which one is constantly regarding as he moves the manettes of gasoline and gas back and forth. To husband one's fuel and tease the motor to round eleven takes attention, for the carburetor changes with the weather and the altitude.... The earth seemed hidden under a fine web such as the Lady of Shalott wove. Soft purple in the west, changing to shimmering white in the east. Under me on the left the Vosges like rounded sand dunes cushioned up with velvety light and dark masses (really forests), but to the south standing firmly above the purple cloth like icebergs shone the Alps. My! they look steep and jagged. The sharp blue shadows on their western slopes emphasized the effect. One mighty group standing aloof to the west--Mount Blanc perhaps. Ah, there are quantities of worm-eaten fields my friends the trenches--and that town with the canal going through it must be M----. Right beside the capote of my engine, showing through the white cloth a silver snake--the Rhine!
What, not a quarter to six, and I left the field at five! Thirty-two hundred metres. Let's go north and have a look at the map.
While thus engaged a black puff of smoke appeared behind my tail and I had the impression of hearing a piece of iron hiss by. "Must have got my range first shot!" I surmised, and making a steep bank piqued heavily. "There, I have lost them now." The whole art of avoiding shells is to pay no attention till they get your range and then dodge away, change altitude, and generally avoid going in a straight line. In point of fact, I could see bunches of exploding shells up over my right shoulder not a kilometre off. They continued to shell that section for some time; the little balls of smoke thinning out and merging as they crossed the lines.
In the earlier days of the war, when the American aviators were still few, their deeds were widely recounted in their home country, and their deaths were deplored as though a personal loss to many of their countrymen. Later they went faster and were lost in the daily reports. Among those who had early fixed his personality in the minds of those who followed the fortunes of the little band of Americans flying in France was Kiffen Rockwell, mentioned in an earlier paragraph, and one of the first to join the American escadrille. Rockwell was in the war from sincere conviction of the righteousness of the Allies' cause.
"I pay my part for Lafayette, and Rochambeau," he said proudly, when asked what he was doing in a French uniform flying for France. And pay he did though not before making the Germans pay heavily for their part. Once, flying alone over Thann, he came upon a German scout. Without hesitation the battle was on. Rockwell's machine was the higher, had the better position. As a๋rial tactics demanded he dived for the foe, opening fire as soon as he came within thirty or forty yards. At his fourth shot the enemy pilot fell forward in his seat and his machine fell heavily to earth. He lighted behind the German lines much to the victor's disgust, for it was counted a higher achievement to bring your foe to earth in your own territory. But Rockwell was able to pursue his victim far enough to see the wreck burst into flames.
Though often wounded, Rockwell scorned danger. He would go into action so bandaged that he seemed fitter to go to an hospital. He was always on the attack--"shoved his gun into the enemy's face" as his fellows in the escadrille expressed it. So in September, 1916, he went out after a big German machine, he saw flying in French territory. He had but little difficulty in climbing above it, and then dashed down in his usual impetuous manner, his machine gun blazing as he came on. But the German was of heavier metal mounting two machine guns. Just as to onlookers it seemed that the two machines would crash together, the wings of one side of Rockwell's plane suddenly collapsed and he fell like a stone between the lines. The Germans turned their guns on the pile of wreckage where he lay, but French gunners ran out and brought his body in. His breast was all blown to pieces with an explosive bullet--criminal, of course, barbarous and uncivilized, but an everyday practice of the Germans.
Rockwell was given an impressive funeral. All the British pilots, and five hundred of their men marched, and the bier was followed by a battalion of French troops. Over and around the little French graveyard aviators flew dropping flowers. In later days less ceremony attended the last scene of an American aviator's career.
