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never connected the speaking tube to his earpiece, so that he could not have heard anything I said to him during the flight. It was his duty to take orders from me in the air. Moreover the pilot could not see enemy planes coming from above, and behind, while the observer could. I could understand that McCordic might have forgotten to connect the speaking tube when we started. But when I had to fire my guns to get his attention he must have known what was wrong. Either he was unbelievably stupid or he had deliberately left the speaking tub disconnected.

Yet Ensign, our man in Chattanooga, admired McCordic and still reminisces about his feats. At our last meeting he told me of how one of our planes once made a forced landing in a field. Mechanics were brought and repaired whatever was wrong, but the plane's own pilot did not dare try to fly it out. He was afraid he could not clear the hedges that bordered the field. McCordic offered to fly it out and did.

Major Anderson had left the squadron before I returned to it. Captain Littauer, his second in command, took over. I welcomed the change. I had nothing against Anderson, having known him too briefly to form a judgment of him. but Littauer was my friend from the beginning. While we were still at Ourches I went with him on an overnight trip to Nancy, about forty miles away. We went with a truck to pick up some furniture which the Red Cross had bought for our officers' lounge. Nancy was being bombed almost nightly, and furniture could be bought there, second hand, at bargain prices. On the way Littauer and I discovered that we had a common interest in chess. So we bought a small chess set and spent the evening playing the game in our roon at the Hotel d'Angleterre. Part of the hotel had been destroyed by bombs. There was an alarm that hight but no bomb fell anywhere near.

Littauer was one of the squadron's pilots, but as commander he did not fly as often as the others. But on photographic missions that seemed likely to be dangerous he nearly always flew in the protecting formation, out on the tail of the V where he would be the first target in case of attack. And I flew with him more often than any other observer did. I felt honored, though scared.