As a Fighting Scout
Pat started flying, in Chicago, in 1912. “I was then eighteen years old,” he says, “but I had had a hankering for the air ever since I can remember....
“In the early part of 1916, when trouble was brewing in Mexico, I joined the American Flying Corps. I was sent to San Diego, where the Army flying school is located, and spent about eight months there, but as I was anxious to get into active service and there didn’t seem much chance of America ever getting into the war, I resigned and, crossing over to Canada, joined the Royal Flying Corps at Victoria, B. C.
“I was sent to Camp Borden, Toronto, first to receive instruction and later to instruct. While a cadet I made the first loop ever made by a cadet in Canada, and after I had performed the stunt I half expected to be kicked out of the service for it. Apparently, however, they considered the source and let it go at that. Later on I had the satisfaction of introducing the loop as part of the regular course of instruction for cadets in the R. F. C., and I want to say right here that Camp Borden has turned out some of the best fliers that have ever gone to France.
“In May, 1917, I and seventeen other Canadian fliers left for England on the Megantic, where we were to qualify for service in France....
“Within a few weeks after our arrival in England all of us had won our ’wings’—the insignia worn on the left breast by every pilot on the western front.
“We were all sent to a place in France known as the Pool Pilots’ Mess. Here men gather from all the training squadrons in Canada and England and await assignments to the particular squadron of which they are to become members.”
He was soon “called” to a squadron stationed about eighteen miles back of the Ypres Line. There were eighteen pilots. The routine was two flights a day, each of two hours’ duration. He presently found that his squadron “was some hot squadron,” the fliers being assigned to special-duty work, “such as shooting up trenches at a height of fifty feet from the ground.”