Viewing page 160 of 171

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-4-

We assembled at the hanger, preparing to take off.  While Murphy's engine was being warmed up an incoming plane from the 99th landed and came to a stop near by.  The pilot jumped out and shouted something, and an ambulance ran out to the plane.  They pulled a dead observer from his cockpit.  He was Raymond Hill, a red-haired man I had met and liked at the school of air gunnery at Cazaux in June.  He had been on a photographic mission, with two of the 99th's planes protecting him.  They had been attacked by German chasse, their formation broken up, and Hill had been shot through the heart.  His protecting planes straggled in a little later.

We had had the air to ourselves for the first two days of the St.Mihiel offensive. Evidently the Germans had brought in some fighter planes overnight.  We began to feel uneasy about the mission to Conflans.

[[Love, 
Dad.]]