His First Flight
“The draft from the propeller was a beastly nuisance. I found it quite impossible to make myself understood by the pilot. Everything was carried away by the wind. If I took up a piece of paper it disappeared. My safety helmet slid off. My muffler dropped off. My jacket was not sufficiently buttoned. In short, I felt very uncomfortable. Before I knew what was happening, the pilot went ahead at full speed and the machine started rolling. We went faster and faster. I clutched the sides of the car. Suddenly, the shaking was over, the machine was in the air and the earth dropped away from under me.
“I had been told the name of the place to which we were to fly. I was to direct my pilot. At first we flew right ahead, then my pilot turned to the right, then to the left, but I had lost all sense of direction above our own aerodrome. I had not the slightest notion where I was!”
He continued—with steadily increasing knowledge of aircraft—to serve as an observer until October 10, 1915, when, having passed his examination and been accepted as a pilot, he had the ecstasy of his first solo-flight. In his book (The Red Battle Flyer, translated by T. Ellis Barker, published by Robert M. McBride & Company), he describes that flight:
“I started the machine. The aeroplane went at the prescribed speed and I could not help noticing that I was actually flying. After all I did not feel timorous but rather elated. I did not care for anything. I should not have been frightened no matter what happened. With contempt of death I made a large curve to the left, stopped the machine near a tree, exactly where I had been ordered to, and looked forward to see what would happen. Now came the most difficult thing, the landing. I remembered exactly what movements I had to make. I acted mechanically and the machine moved quite differently from what I had expected. I lost my balance, made some wrong movements, stood on my head and I succeeded in converting my aeroplane into a battered school ’bus. I was very sad, looked at the damage which I had done to the machine, which after all was not very great, and had to suffer from other people’s jokes.
“Two days later I went with passion at the flying and suddenly I could handle the apparatus.”