FRENCH AIRMEN TO TRAIN AMERICAN AVIATORS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1744, 4 August 1917, Page 4

FRENCH AIRMEN TO TRAIN AMERICAN AVIATORS.

MEN WH6 HAVE BEEN DECORATED FOR, EXPLOITS. Twelve French air pilots, all of them with fighting records and decorations, reached America recently on a steamship from a French port. They went at once to Washington to report to the French mission for duty in.developing the American Aviation Corps. The men are all young, none, apparently, over thirty years of age, and each wore the full-dress uniform of his particular oscadrille, with decorations on the left breast (says the New York Evening Post). One man has fought on every front, and has received eleven decorations, one of them the Croix de Guerre, with four palms, indicating that this cross has been deemed by the French Government worthy of bestowal for unusual gallantry no less than four times. A palm was won on each of the fronts. His companions all wore equally distinguished marks, and two had been decorated with the Legion of Honour, the highest decorative gift in the power of the French Government to confer. At the time the orders were received these men were all fighting on the Champagne front, and they had but four days’ notice to come to America. All speak English, and most of them with fluency. One of the aviators, who would not tell the story unless his name was withheld, yet who received his fourth palm on the Cross of V ar for the act, was fighting a squadron of Germans ten miles inside the German lines, when his tank was pierced by machine-gun bullets, and put out of commission. At the same time, his observer was badly wounded. The machine was 12,000 feel in the air, and surrounded by half a ’dozen Germans, all firing at him. lie turned the nose of his machine towards the French lines, and began a series of evolutions that avoided the enemies about him, and at the same time brought him nearer and nearer home with every drop of a hundred feet towards the earth. At the same time he was obliged to fight the Germans with his machine-gun, ■using one hand while the other was engaged in piloting his aeroplane. He finally toppled over two of the enemy, and alighted in French terriTory by a very scant margin. His wounded observer was landed in time to receive medical attention that saved his life.