The Cordova daily times., 1916-06-14
AMERICAN BIRD MEN UNIT IN
 ARMY

HEADQUARTERS OF AN ANIA. |TION GROUP, FRENCH FRONT, May 13. - Correspondence of the Associated Press.J - The aviator is an early bird and here, where the nightingale obounds, it is a close race between them to bed at dusk and to the fields at dawn.
 The uightingaIes were rioting in song this morning when the pilots of the Franco-American nying corps were making their way to the aviation camp, and daylight had just poeped over the horizon when Captain H----, commander of the group, ordered: |"Bring out the machines"
 There was nothing new in this to. the seven American pilots who have been flying in different groups on diff ferent parts of the front for upwards i of a year. All of them had been out with the nightingale a few hundred mornings, but it announced their first expedition together as a separate unit of the French aviation corps over German territory.
 Long planed machines resembling 
 small sheds, and short winged ma. chimes, which in comparison dwindled to the proportions of devil flies, rolled on the field, and were pushed on the run to their places until twenty-eight were lined up. Captain H. gazed at the low lying clouds excellent mask for a flotilIa crossing the enenys Hnes-and ordered: Tell
 the Americans to be ready" The Americans, grouped behind their swift chasers. listened to final instructions from Captain T, who commands the Franco-American rlotlIla, and is proud of it. The din was then too great for verbal orders to be heard and a soldier with a white signal flar ran into the field while pilots and machine gunners leaped to their seats. The flag was raised while the motors buzzed like a swarm of gigantic humble bees. The flag dropped and Captain H--'s big biplane rose to lead the column. The flag was raised and dropped at intervals of about thirty seconds, and each time a pair cs the bigger machines followed. un- til nineteen of them were filing to- ward the German lines.
 The big machines were gone, but the noise increased as the propellers of the smaller but more powerful and swifter biplanes were set in motion,
 It was time for the Americans -I specialists in speed, The first big plans was approaching the clouds when, with a bound. Captain IT rose: then followed Lieutenant De- lange, of the French corps. Lieuten- ant William Thaw of Pittsburg, Ser geant Elliot Cowdin and Corporal Vic tor Chapman, New York; Sergeant Norman Prince. Prides Crossing, Mass; Corporal Kiffen Rockwell, At lanta, Ga. Corporal J. NJ. Mcconnell, Carthage, N. C.; and Sergeant Hall, Galveston, Texas.
 These little biplanes, with powerful motors, are the fruits of the evolution of aviation during the war built to match the best German machines in speed, carrying only the pilot, a machine gun and the minimum re quirement in fuel Instead of rising gradually like their predecessors, they bound upward with an ascension al power heretofore unattained. They are so dangerous in a fight that the pilot has to go into the adversarys territory to hunt an engagement That was what the Americans, especially chosen for these machines, were to do.
 There were nine of these, together with nineteen of the big bombarding biplanes, in sight together for an in stant; then the head of the line dis appeared in the clouds. The hunt CTS" as the speedy machines are called. overhauled the last of the big ger fliers and went out of sight ahead of them, while Thaw's Iris" and Cap tain T--'s Fran" the two pet dogs of the camp, were still barking after xt