GALLANT AIRMEN.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 99, 22 October 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

GALLANT AIRMEN.

THRILLING ADVENTURES. Details of a remarkable episode in the air are related by Philip Gibbs, the "Daily Chronicle" special correspondent at the British Headquarters. It happened recently when a young nigiu officer was swooping over the German lines jn Flanders.

He flew low go that his observer might see something worth while for his notebook—too low, so that suddenly, out of a burst of shrapnel, a jagged piece of shell touched the pilot's leg. Such a touch is enough to cut off a limb. The young officer believed his leg was almost severed, and although it was not quite so bad as that he lost control of his machine, and, for a moment or two, of all his 6enses. He was over 700(7 feet nigh, and the acroplan.- fell, nose down wards, in a straight plunge. The observer clung to the gun, which was sliping from its straps. The drums which hold the cartridges had already scattered to earth. The crash would come in a second or two. But the flight officer had got a new grip upon his consciousness and steering-gear. AFRAID TO MOVE. In spite of his loss of blood and that momentary swoon, he not only brought his machine up to the level planes but flew steadily back over the enemy's lines and above their storm of shrapnel, until, after a journey of no less than thirty-five minutes, he made an unbungled lauding in an aerodrome. Here he sat in \vs saddle, afraid to move lest his leg should fall off, and he remained in his place until the doctors rescued him and carried him away to the hospital. There he still lies and there is hope that his leg may 'be saved.

' Two or three days ago another aviator had an experience hardly less perilous though of a briefer agony. He made nothing of it, when one of his friends told me the' tale, and listened with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders, as though such incidents arc all in the day's work. Yet when I heard the adventure I looked at him curiously, as at a man who has escaped death by just an odti Alike and passed through an experience outside the range of ordinary humanity. For ;i fall through the air of 3000 ft. in a sheer drop docs not seem to give a man a chance of chatting in a light-hearted way about the comparative merits of French and Brit'sh trenches, or the characteristics of Hungarian music. (Those were the subjects of his conversation before he went to bed.) ENVELOPED IX A CLOFD. He, too, was about 7000 feet high when the adventure came to him. He was suddenly enveloped in a cloud, so white and impalpable, that all vision was blinded, and all guidance lost. Thus flight lieutenant seemed to be struggling in a world of cotton-wool. He could not tell whether he was flying upside down or with his plans tilted to an acute angle one way or the other. He had lost his horizon, without which an airman has no sense of position. As a matter of fact he flew at a frightful pace earthwards for that 3000 feet, and when he emerged from the cloud the world seemed to rise up at him to bash him with a mortal blow.

The pressure of his planes was so terriffic—for lie was travelling down at a speed of over 100 miles an hour—that it was only by the most gradual effort that be could raise his elevating plane and right himself, just in tim-> to ward off that final knock-out which would have been the end of his Slight adventures. Yet this young lieutenant was not unnerved. He had the same keen, steady, smiling look in his eyes. To-day, I have no doubt, he went hack to the German lines again, after dusting his guns in ease there was any luck to be had :n the way of single com! at with a German airman.

THE ONLY REGRET. His only regret is that ,in spite or the superior speed of the enemy's newtype ot aeroplane, the German aviator* seldom accept the challenge of a fight, but swoop back to their own lines witn a farewefl wave of the hand, escaping above the shelter of those anti-aircraft howitzers which have a very high range and fire high explosives, so that even without a hit they may endanger our machines by a terriffic alteration of the atmosphere. To give them their due, the enemy's a viators show a courtesy to their opponents which is rare in their racial methods of war, and if one of our men is brought down in their lines it is not uncommon for them to fly back and drop a not<> to say whether the man is killed or only slightly wounded. The fires of hate would not have been stirred up to such intensity as now prevails if the German soldiers bad fought in as clean a way as this. But the airmen of both nations seem to have risen above the brutalities of this war as they rise above the squalor of its trenches. Oa our s : de, at least, as far as I have met them—and I have seen a good deal of them along the lines—they are keen, simple, cheery young men, who take the risks of death with wonderful carelessness, and go whistling into their saddles before liding down the wind. They are spared a good deal of the dirty business of war, and have, I tlfnk, most of the luck.