Making a Clean Job
“His nose dipped and his tail flicked up, and he went roaring down, full out, after his last Hun. A rapid crackle of one machine gun after another struck his ear before ever he had the last hostile fully centered in his sights. Ricky knew that at last the flight had arrived and were joining in the fight. But he paid no heed to them; his enemy was in the ring of his sights now, so with his machine hurling down at the limit of speed of a falling body plus all the pull of a hundred and odd horsepower, the whole fabric quivering and vibrating under him, the wind roaring past and in his ears, Ricky snuggled closer in his seat, waited till his target was fully and exactly centered in his sights, and poured in a long, clattering burst of fire.
“The hostile’s slanting nose-dive swerved into a spin, an uncontrolled side-to-side plunge, back again into a spinning dive that ended in a straight-downward rush and a crash end on into the ground.
“Whether it was Ricky or some other machine of the flight that got this last hostile will never be known. Ricky himself officially reported having crashed two, but declined to claim the third as his. On the other hand, the rest of the flight, after and always, with enthusiastic unanimity, insisted that she was Ricky’s very own, that he had outplayed, outfought, and killed three Huns in single combat with them—one down and t’other come on. If Ricky himself could not fairly and honestly claim all rights to the last Hun, the flight did. ‘Three!’ they said vociferously in mess that night, and would brook no modest doubts from him.
“As the last Hun went reeling down, Ricky, in the official language of the combat reports, ‘rejoined formation and continued the patrol.’ He pulled the stick toward him and rose buoyantly, knowing that he was holed over and over again, that bullets, and explosive bullets at that, had ripped and rent and torn the fabrics of his machine, possibly had cut away some strut or stay or part of the frame. But his engine appeared to be all right again, had never misbehaved a moment during the fight, was running now full power and blast; his planes swept smooth and steady along the wind levels, his controls answered exactly to his tender questioning touch. He had fought against odds of three to one and—he had won out. He was safe, barring accident, to land back in his own ’drome; and there were two if not three Huns down on his brazen own within the last—how long?
“At the moment of his upward zoom on the conclusion of the fight he glanced at his clock which had not been hit by the enemy fire, could hardly believe what it told him, was only convinced when he recalled that promise to himself to turn back at the end of that minute, and had his belief confirmed by the flight’s count of the time between their first hearing shots and their covering the distance to join him. His clock marked exactly noon. The whole fight, from the firing of the first shot to the falling away of the last Hun, had taken bare seconds over the one minute. That pilot was right; in air fighting ‘you don’t get time to think.’”