Eddie Rickenbacker

“ The German Rumplers came overhead every morning and photographed the field, but no attempts were made to destroy the Handley-Page machines by either shelling from the lines or by aeroplane raids. The Germans are a funny people!
As Mr. Taylor and I were scudding along over these smooth roads through the forests of the Vosges we noticed a family of wild boars rooting in the edge of a field. We backed up the car and I asked Mr. Taylor to be good enough to wait for me a minute while I went over and picked up one of the little pigs for a mascot for our squadron. ”

“ The more I studied the situation the more puzzled I became. I saw the German shells bursting close behind our lines. From the nature of the bursts I knew they were high-explosive shells. This was the usual preliminary to a sudden rush over the top, yet there were no German troops there waiting for the moment of attack.
The whole vicinity of the German front was covered with a dense fog. The intermittent gun-flashes showed but dimly through this mist. Off to the east and the west, where the Meuse and Moselle rivers might be supposed to emit a fog of this sort, the landscape was clear. ”

“ We lighted our pipes and measured the distance to the adjacent overhanging limbs. For an hour nothing happened to relieve the monotony. Some one made the brilliant suggestion that we take our cartridges out of our rifles and make dum-dum bullets out of them. ”

“ He told us he was out of touch with events lately himself for he had been up all night with the American Gas Organization, who had just been experimenting with their first gas attack on the German trenches north of Seicheprey! Then we all shouted! The whole circus became as clear as daylight to us.
The attack had not been announced generally and Major Atkinson himself was in ignorance as to its hour for demonstration. The Germans, awakened by the fumes at three o'clock this morning, had very naturally imagined that it would precede a sudden attack by our troops. ”