Pursuit

“Boy, I’ll say they’re bad! These here culls just ain’t got no conscience a-tall, nohow. For my own part, I’m going to quit air for the Tank Corps. As a rule, when these crocks hit the sod, nothing’s above ground but the rudder, waving like a flag over a hole in the ice. I came here with ten friends. Four of them are up there on the hill--boxed.”

“Ten friends?” Langdon mused, as though this had something to do with the business at hand. “Nobody in the world has ten friends.”

“That’s how it looks to you,” the instructor answered. “Any guys that are sent up here to fly DH’s sure have no friends! And that’s why you won’t mind being bumped off ... Anyway, let’s see what you boys can do with these arks. Who’s who here? Let’s get a look at your monikers. When I call your name, step stiffly to the front, stand at rigid attention and answer--‘Here, kind sir.’ Lieutenant John J. Langdon!”

“On the job, kind sir,” the new arrival answered. “And I’m a guy as ain’t got no friends.”

“Langdon?” the instructor repeated. “I’ve heard of you, Lieutenant--never mind the salute. Weren’t you the bird who flew Major Greene from Mitchel Field clean to Hazelhurst, upside down, and told him that you were trying to get a look at your landing gear--that you thought you had blown a tire on the takeoff?”

“The same dizzy guy,” Langdon said. “And wasn’t it strange? I couldn’t get a look at those wheels; and that was why I flew the major all the way back to Mitchel in the same way, upside down. Till I’d tried it, you couldn’t tell me that a pilot wouldn’t see the bottom of his plane by turning the bottom up. Is it not all strange, kind sir?”

“It sure is,” the instructor agreed. “But lend an ear, Lieutenant. We have a commanding officer here who likes to ride in DH’s. One of these days I’ll manage to get you and him in the air in the same ship. Do you begin to see light?”

“That’s one of my worst troubles, kind sir. My eyes take in too much light. The docs have a fancy name for it. But, anyway, it causes me to see--or think I see--fun in things that strike others as being drab. For instance, after that flight at Mitchel, Major Greene said that it was his first trip in the air.”

“And the records,” the instructor smiled, “prove that it was his last. Now, ten years later, the record still stands.”

After one turn of the field with Langdon on the controls, the instructor gave him an O.K. He simply said, as he stepped from the plane:

“You’re jake, Lieutenant, but if I were you, I wouldn’t land these DH’s out of a loop like that. Hell, Langdon, life’s sweet, even at an observation school. Come on now, go on living. Maybe you’ll get a shipment back to chasse. Others have done it, and the war is young. You know your air, and that’s no small item. But the good ones, Langdon, are the ones we pack in large boxes. And the other kind, damn ’em, we can’t get rid of. You know, there are observers here, Langdon, who just won’t qualify. They’re afraid of the Front and won’t leave Romo’. And just so long as their observation work is below grade, we can’t ship them out. What’s the use? They wouldn’t be worth a damn to any squadron....

“Now, just a minute. A mighty thought strikes me. Langdon, I’m going to put some of these dumb johns behind you. Maybe you can show them their objective. If you’ll fly ’em the way you just flew me, the Front will look like an old ladies’ home to the most timid of these goldbricks. Oh, just one more word before you take off. Don’t fly as close to other planes as you flew to that one a little while ago. That was Colonel Kingsley. He’s from Tours. Man, you were too near.”

“That was all right,” Langdon assured the instructor. “I wasn’t trying to pull anything fast. I just wanted to learn something. You see, I’m accustomed to flying rotary motors with propellers turning at about 1400 revs. Well, this Liberty was doing about 1700 revs per minute and I just wanted to get a peek at that other bird’s instrument board. It was all right; his was turning the same. But 1700 r.p.m. seemed mighty fast.”

“Hell!” the instructor said. “I hope your clock never stops, or you might try to get a peek at some other pilot’s wrist watch. But go ahead, take off. See you later ... We’re going to like each other, Langdon.”

With a full tank, good for four hours’ flight, the new DH pilot went back into the sky. Off toward Vierzon, at sunset, he spotted something that made his heart glad. There, with about twenty thousand feet under them, was a Nieuport “27” patrol, from Field 8. He knew that they were from No. 8 because, coming in close, all five Nieuports revealed ship numbers with which he was familiar. All of them were students; not an instructor’s ship was among the lot.

Langdon felt fine. He climbed on the front man’s tail, broke the formation and tried to induce the bird to go “round and round”. The lead man was not looking for combat with a DH. He went into a dive and waved Langdon away. But the merry one followed. Then, with his power running wild, the retreating Nieuport flyer burned out his rotary engine. Langdon saw the propeller stop. Then he leveled off and started to climb back to the rest of the flight. A man with a dead engine is no man at all.

One of the remaining four, when Langdon closed down on their rear again, deliberately killed his motor and went into a spin. The other three, somewhat bewildered, remained to mill a bit. But when Langdon’s propeller came near to biting chips out of one of their rudders, that Nieuport also called it a day. Enough is enough. Langdon saw the machine start down for a landing.

Jack Langdon had discovered something. What had started as fun, took on the magnitude of worthwhile research. He had learned that a DH, rightly flown, could combat--could go round and round--with a chasse plane.

The remaining two Field No. 8 ships had followed their disabled mates to earth. Jack Langdon hung around to make sure that five safe landings had been made; then he laughed, sang a bit and looked about for new worlds to conquer.

West of Bourges, he found a Farman “pusher” from the French school at Châteauroux. It was drifting along at eight thousand feet. Langdon came up from the rear and had his left wingtip nestled in close to the Frenchman’s outriggers, before the Châteauroux flyer noticed that he was not alone. Then a badly frightened face under a large crash helmet stared, wild eyed, across that short space. Langdon’s heart skipped a beat with the shock. The face under the helmet was a boy’s.

“You damn’ bully,” Jack Langdon said to himself. “Get t’hell gone from here before you scare this game little frog to death.”

He throttled his power, dropped his right wing and slipped away from the Farman. Then he turned back, headed into the last rays of the sun and cut for Romo’. There was joy in his heart, and he was making himself all kinds of fine promises.

These DH’s, he decided, were not the poorest things in the air, and if a young fellow were to apply his best talents-- Well, chances were, he could manage to make himself felt.

“Yes, sir,” he said, talking aloud. “I’ll talk with the riggers. See what they think about washing some of the incidence out of these wings. Bet with the outer wing bays washed flat, there’d be no drag and the old crate would swing around on a dollar. And that will speed her up a lot, too. No question at all. If we flatten these surfaces out, we’ll add eight to ten miles per hour. What can be done, is going to be done, or I’m a wet bird. In the meantime, unless they put the screws on me, I’ll combat everything that flies in this neck of the tall timber.”

Early the next day, though, they did climb Langdon’s frame. They climbed him twice. Once on account of the complaint that Field No. 8 sent through from Issoudun; again because of a wail that came up from Châteauroux.