Enduring Courage by John F. Ross

Author:John F. Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250033789
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

12.

RACE TO ACE

It’s easy to think that Lufbery’s death must have seemed like a great oak crashing down in the forest, ripping a hole in the canopy through which light could spill to afford wispy saplings a chance to reach for full growth. In fact, northeastern France in that bloody spring of 1918 was no stable forest, but rather a hothouse in which the cream of America’s finest fought to survive the debilitating toll of fatal or crippling accidents, technical malfunctions, and a skilled enemy eager to exploit them. As the world order swayed in the balance, these young men were on the cutting edge of a struggle that would remake the contours of the political world.

Their journals, if anything electrified by daily extreme risk, began to change in timbre and tone from the almost carefree early days at Issoudun and Cazaux—not really that fatalism takes over their pencils, but rather that a certain hardening becomes manifest in those being pressed into adulthood at deadly speed. To most, these insistent calls to maturity were new, but not for Eddie, who had felt such demands since his bruised childhood. Most were still boys at heart, drinking anything alcoholic that passed in front of them, prone to horsing around and gibing at one another, painting the world in passionate simplicities. While their voices might already ring deep, their curses still crackled boyishly when they opened yet one more parcel from home to find soap and toothbrushes. Moments of pure joy still peeked through. “Have you ever looked up at a fleecy cloud with the sun glistening on its top and wished you were there?” wrote one breathlessly. “I saw one and in five minutes had reached it.” Overall, however, a growing sobriety begins to creep into their writings.

If young men often know no bounds and must press forward until they meet them—and themselves—in the process, then this environment gave them the room literally to soar. “Flying that people are called fools for doing in the States is simply everyday life here,” wrote Lansing Holden of the 95th, “and the man that isn’t perfectly at home in his machine at any position is gone.” Among this cadre, all culled through manifold trial and test, all potential leaders, two within their midst pulled far ahead of all others. Lufbery had been right all along in anointing Campbell and Rickenbacker.

The first and second kills for both could have been chalked up to good fortune more than seasoned skill; from then on each raced ahead of the others in victories, awakening a heated competition for bragging rights as the first ace in American service. Their fellow pilots—themselves all strong fliers—began to understand they were witnessing something extraordinary, even in extraordinary times. Like two elite tennis competitors who keep pushing one another to reach beyond what either thought possible in himself, these two born competitors used courteous competition to hone their already sharp competitive edges.

Campbell had scored his first kill that day with Alan Winslow in early April, then took more than a month for his second.

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