I emphasized to him that in my experience over the lines among other things I had found that the best way to get away from the “archies” was to dive when they got near you for the reason that it was much easier for the “archies” to correct deflection than it was for them to correct range. Whatever that means, it’s all right. Phil knew.
I decided that we would call on a battery and adjust the artillery on an enemy battery in a woods close by, which was causing our troops considerable trouble, so I explained to Phil just what we would do, going largely into detail.
The plane was a little shaky even at the take off, and I decided right away that Phil was not quite in the class with Rickenbacker, but I attributed the cause to his natural nervousness, which would soon wear off. After calling our battery by wireless for several minutes they finally put out their panels and we immediately went over to look for the hostile battery that had been reported the same day. I found it and we just started to cross the lines to go back into France when Fritz played one of his favorite tricks. The Germans allow the observation plane to cross the line and come in for not more than three or four kilometers, then when you turn to come out, having followed you all the time with their range finders, they suddenly open up with all their anti-aircraft artillery and generally catch you in their bracket at the first salvo. You are bracketed when they have fired the first shots—one above, one below and one on each side of you. It is not a pleasant position in which to be caught. But they did more than that to us—they not only bracketed us, but one shot got us right under the tail and when Phil heard that burst, known commonly as “Aviator’s Lullaby,” which is the most rasping and exasperating noise it is possible to imagine, he remembered my admonition to dive if they got close, so just as the tail went up from the force of the concussion of the shell directly below us, Phil pushed forward for all he was worth on the control stick. The sudden jarring of the plane from the explosion and the more abrupt dive, released the throttle, throwing the motor into full speed. And with one mighty jerk like the sudden release of a taut rubber band, all three forces working in the same direction, and aided by the flyer’s greatest enemy, Newton’s law of gravity, that A.R. omnibus started straight down in one terrible dive. Poor old Phil was thrown completely out of the pilot’s seat and was only saved from going headlong into the open air by his head striking the upper wing of the plane, which knocked him back into the seat, dazed and practically unconscious. The “hardboiled” observer in the back seat did not have a belt, for my famous A.R. plane was not equipped with them. I went completely out of the cockpit and in that brief second I had one of the rarest thoughts I have ever had—I was sure I was going to be killed and I regretted that it was in such a manner, for it was, indeed, unfortunate that I should be killed in an airplane accident when I might have died fighting in combat—there, at least, I would have had an equal chance with the enemy. As I shot out of that cockpit with the speed that a bullet leaves the barrel of a gun, my foot caught on the wire directly underneath the rim of the cockpit. With superhuman effort doubled by the intuitive hope of self-preservation, I grabbed the top gun which in those days was mounted on the top of the upper plane. Backward I fell. For a moment I was completely free of the airplane, in midair; as I fell my chin hit the outward pointing muzzle of the machine gun; I threw my arms forward and closed them in the grip of death. I had caught the barrels of my machine guns and the next thing I was conscious of was that I was hanging over the side of the fuselage, below the airplane, but clinging on to those machine guns for dear life. The old admonition “to stand by the guns, boys” was tame compared to me. My watchword was “hang on to the guns, boy.”