“Don’t you know that’s an American plane?” I demanded in a manner neither affable nor pleasant. To my great surprise he responded that he knew it was an American plane.
“Well,” I continued, speaking even more severely, “what do you mean by firing on an American plane?”
This doughboy casually continued chewing his tobacco and looking at the ground for some reason, apparently not from lack of composure, for he would take an occasional spit at an old, rusty helmet about six feet up the trench. The presence of an officer bothered him about as much as the presence of a king affects a bolshevik.
“Well,” I again asked, “where do you get that noise of firing at a friendly plane?”
This was just the opening he wanted, for he threw out his chest in all his independent dignity and said, “There ain’t no friendly planes around here. I ain’t seen any, no how. Them American planes ain’t got no business being back this far from the lines and if them aviators ain’t got nerve enough to go over there and scrap them Boche on their own ground, we’ll force ’em over with our guns and put a little backbone in ’em.”
Then the lad gave me a full explanation as to why they had fired upon these American planes and he claimed the American flyers always ran from the Boche; the Boche came over and shot up the doughboys and he had never seen an American plane going over and shooting up the Boche. Then I asked him if he knew the functions of the airplanes. I wanted him to know that some planes had to stay behind the lines at times.
“Yep,” he said, “they’re all fighters, all of ’em, or supposed to be, but they don’t fight. They stay back here; they’re scared to go over.”
Then I asked him if he had ever heard of an observation plane and if an observation plane shot a signal of six rockets to him what he would do. He replied that he did not know anything about observation planes and didn’t want to know anything about them, but that several times large planes had flown back there and had fired fire rockets at the doughboys.
“How many rockets did they fire?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, “lots of ’em. Sometimes three and six at one time.” I knew six rockets was the official signal from an airplane to the infantry, and that they were supposed to put out white pieces of cloth, their panels, to tell the airplane exactly where they were.