The First of Them to Die
“Then came Chapman’s last fight. Before leaving, he had put two bags of oranges in his machine to take to Balsley, who liked to suck them to relieve his terrible thirst, after the day’s flying was over. There was an aerial struggle against odds, far within the German lines, and Chapman, to divert their fire from his comrades, engaged several enemy airmen at once. He sent one tumbling to earth, and had forced the others off when two more swooped down upon him.” The wings of his plane suddenly buckled and the machine dropped like a stone.
Chapman had only started the list of deaths. He was to be followed by perhaps the most beloved of all the section. Kiffin Rockwell had started off with Lufbery one morning. Just before he reached the lines he “spied a German machine under him flying at 11,000 feet.” Rockwell had fought more combats, than the rest of the Escadrille put together, says McConnell. “He had shot down many German machines that had fallen in their lines, but this was the first time he had had an opportunity of bringing down a Boche in our territory.”
Rockwell approached so close to the enemy plane that it seemed there would be a collision. The German aeroplane carried two machine guns. When Rockwell started his dive the enemy opened a rapid fire. “Rockwell plunged through the stream of lead and only when very close to his enemy did he begin shooting. For a moment it looked as if the German was falling, but then the French machine turned rapidly nose down, the wings of one side broke off and fluttered in the wake of the airplane, which hurtled earthward in a rapid drop. It crashed into the ground in a small field—a field of flowers—a few hundred yards back of the trenches. It was not more than two and a half miles from the spot where Rockwell, in the month of May, brought down his first enemy machine. The Germans immediately opened up on the wreck with artillery fire. In spite of the bursting shrapnel, gunners from a nearby battery rushed out and recovered poor Rockwell’s broken body.”
“Lufbery engaged a German craft but before he could get to close range two Fokkers swooped down from behind and filled his aeroplane full of holes. Exhausting his ammunition, he landed at Fontaine, an aviation field near the lines. There he learned of Rockwell’s death and was told that two other French machines had been brought down within the hour. He ordered his gasoline tank filled, procured a full band of cartridges and soared up into the air to avenge his comrade. He sped up and down the lines, and made a wide détour to Habsheim, where the Germans have an aviation field, but all to no avail. Not a Boche was in the air.”
No greater blow could have befallen the Escadrille than Rockwell’s death. “The bravest and best of us all is no more,” said the French Captain. “Kiffin was the soul of the Escadrille,” writes Jim McConnell. “He was loved and looked up to by not only every man in our flying corps, but by every one who knew him. Kiffin was imbued with the spirit of the cause for which he fought and gave his heart and soul to the performance of his duty. He said: ‘I pay my part for Lafayette and Rochambeau,’ and he gave the fullest measure. The old flame of chivalry burned brightly in this boy’s fine and sensitive being. With his death France lost one of her most valuable pilots. When he was over the lines the Germans did not pass—and he was over them most of the time.”
“Rockwell had been given the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre, on the ribbon of which he wore four palms, representing the four magnificent citations he had received in the order of the army.”
Kiffin was given a funeral worthy of a general. “His brother, Paul, who had fought in the Legion with him, and who had been rendered unfit for service by a wound, was granted permission to attend the obsequies. Pilots from all nearby camps flew over to render homage to Rockwell’s remains. Every Frenchman in the aviation at Luxeuil marched behind the bier. The British pilots, followed by a detachment of five hundred of their men, were in line, and a battalion of French troops brought up the rear. As the slow moving procession of blue and khaki-clad men passed from the church to the graveyard, airplanes circled at a feeble height above and showered down myriads of flowers.”
The fates seemed to be envious of the American section in France. Rockwell had fallen September 23. On the 15th of October Norman Prince died. “It was hard to realize that poor old Norman had gone, but I do not think he minded going,” writes McConnell. “He wanted to do his part before being killed, and he had more than done it.”