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carry and using it for staffing the boche machine guns nest and convoys. On this trip we found ten or twelve nests around the little town of Youcq, which was down in a narrow and deep valley. We straffed them considerably from an altitude of only fifthy meters, then came back and dropped a message to infantry, telling them what the boche were doing up there. We got a lot of information and found he was still retreating. But we also got a hot reception. We were only flying 400 meters, and it was raining pretty heavy..... enough so that our propeller was in danger of being splintered. Our presence back there on such an absurd day for flying took them by such surprise that, as is characteristic of the thick-headed boche, we got our information before they realized we were there. By the time we reached Sedan, however, they had awakened from their temporary mental stupor and opened up on us with machine guns firing a solid stream of bullets, and incendiary bullets. I've never in my life seen so many flaming objects in my life in the air at once as there was then. How they ever missed us I'll never know. They were going all around us. On account of the rain I could not tell exactly where they were coming from but I turned my guns in the general direction and blazed away as hard as I could. Once while I was changing drums on my guns I saw one of the flaming balls coming straighttowards us. I held up the empty drum in my ahnd to ward it off, but it went slightly over us.

  We came to Youcq to pay another visit to friend boche down there. This time we were down to twenty meters, dealing them all the hell that an airplane could deall ground troops and that is a whole lot. Those were the only boche we could find between our troops and the Meuse River and we were determined to break them up. It was a battle royal between a Salmon aeroplane and ten or twelve machine gun nests. We were shooting the very life out of them, I know our damage to them must have been great, for I could see my tracer bullets going right into their midst. Those of them that were able to shoot were returning the fire with compound interest. Finally as we were passing over a cluster of five or six of them, with our nose pointed towards our lines, they shot away our controls. I looked around at Erwin for an explanation. He yelled back through the speaking tube that we were shot down. About that time he set the wheels on the ground not more than fifty meters from the boche. We were in "No man's land" and gliding up a slope towards the top of a flat hill. As Erwin put the tail on the ground it gave me a good field of fire right behind us. Without a second thought I took the last and only chance. I blazed away with both guns at the head of the boche just behind us and made them duck down into their holes out of sight and stay there until we glided over the "Military Crest", of the hill just out of sight of them. Then we didn't have the time to lose. If the boche were wise they would soon have surrounded and we knew about how much mercy we could expect from them.

  I tried to get my guns off the machine, but the rain had caused them to stick in their sockets and I did not have time to fool with them. I realized too that I could not carry my guns and my map boards too and it was imperative that I should take the latter as they held the codes and P.C. locations. By this time Erwin was out of the machine with his automatic ready for any emergency. I grabbed my maps and away we went. About that time the boche started to shell the plane and there were lots of overs which kept us dropping to the ground pretty frequently. After falling into all the shell holes in France and getting tangled in acres of barbed wire we finally reached our lines. "

  The last casualty suffered by the Squadron was on November 3, 1918. Lieut. McCormick, pilot, and Liet. East, observer, were sent on an infantry contact patrol to locate the lines of our advancing troops. During the mission the observed soon very nice ground targets in the way of convoys, retreating troops, etc, so after completing their mission they returned to do the straffing. After some very effective work of this kind they started again for home, but on crossing the lines noticed that our infantry was being held up by a series of machine gun nests established