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States were the 94th and 95th Pursuit. One day in March I watched while the pilots of the 94th brought their new planes in to land at Amanty. The planes were Nieuport 28's. Spads were still so new that there were not enough of them to go around. Many French squadrons were still using Nieuports. A few still had an older model, the Nieuport 27, which had the distinction of being the noisest plane in service anywhere. When a 27 was approaching you could hear it long before you could see it. Its motor, which generated all that noise, was I believe called the Gnome, or maybe it was the Rhone.  I always confused them. The Nieuport, in its various models, had a long and honorable history in the French service. Guynemer, in the early part of his career, flew a Nieuport model that was, I believe, the smallest plane ever used in combat.

As the 94th came in that day the leading plane did a barrel roll over the field.  It was the first time I had seen that maneuver. I heard later that the pilot was the commander of the 94th, Major Raoul Lufbery. He was French-born but an American citizen. He had served in the Lafayette Escadrille, made up of American volunteers flying in the French service. Most of them transferred after we got into the war. Lufbery had official credit for shooting down [[handwritten]] 17 [[/end handwritten]] German planes, but he was himself killed in May, after the 94th had been at the front only a few weeks.

Jumping ahead a bit, one day in August I met Lufbery's successor as commander of the 94th. He was Captain David Peterson, another veteran of the Lafayette Escadrille. I met him because I was an unexpected guest of the 94th at luncheon. I had taken off that morning to help protect a photographic mission. My pilot was a new replacement with whom I had never flown before. As we were