The mirror., 1922-07-20
A BEGINNERS LUCK
Continued from page ~


"Y must mean something" thought, "if
they are making all that fuss about it.
Y-Y-Y-Y."
1t was memory test for me. felt that
I should remember some of those panels,
and quickly. l went through the various
memory courses had taken and tried in
every way to determine the meaning of
Y. After trying to figure it out by the
law of association, the law of likeness of
sound, the law of impress and by five
other such hopeless laws, began to regret
that l had paid so much for that memory
course. Then casually took out my map
chart in order to learn what Y meant. As
1 ran slowly down the list of signals I
came to and, looking across the page, I
saw, "Attention! -Ennemi aViOn pres de
Vous"; which in English means, "Look
out! Enemy aeroplane close to you."
l thought did not know French but if
1 didn't 1 certainly acquired it with the
speed of lightning l dropped my map
board like shot, jumped up in my cock
pit, grabbed my machine guns, released
the swinging tourelle and, whether knew
anything about that tourelle or not threw
it round three times in complete circle,
without stopping-I was bent on getting
anything that came near me.
I stopped and looked frantically at the
pilot, expecting to find him dead. He had
turned round to learn what the trouble
was. l did nothing except to give him
sickly smile, for had nothing else to give
him. A signal commonly used among sky
spies was to describe cross with the fore
finger and point when the observer saw
German aeroplane, but that was among
the thousand things had not learned. So
the pilot went on flying, just aimlessly
drifting on.
I gradually calmed myself and looked
into the sky above me and saw seven
aeroplanes, which were hidden from the
pilot by the wing From the lectures I
had had in America from the instructors
who had never been at the front l was
quite sure that you can easily distinguish
an enemy aeroplane by the huge black
cross that is painted all over it, and so
skinned my eyes over them, trying to dis
Germ the cross. could not see it; and yet
the aeroplanes stayed about six hundred
meters above me and kept circling round.
I looked down again. They were still
putting out that big Y, and my pilot was
just floating along as if nothing had ever
happened; in fact, he had never seen the
panels and was not paying any attention,
having undoubtedly an abundance of con-
fidence in the ability of the American OBJ
server. Since I could not disappoint his
splendid confidence in my ability I just
used my perfectly splendid logic and de-
cided that, if they were German planes,
they certainly would have attacked me be-
fore that time; and since they had not at
tackled, they could be no other than French.
The battery had probably received notice
from the squadron commander that there
was new observer up, and so they were
undoubtedly flashing that Y as joke on
me, believing that would run home, and
thinking, perhaps, that I had not seen
Jones go down in his rapid spiral. So I
decided to show them that they could not
"fox" me, and stayed up there, floating
round. After about fifteen minutes Jones
started for home, and when saw him
shoot off in that direction decided that
perhaps the signal had been changed, that
Y probably meant, "There is no further
need for you," and that they were just
trying to attract my attention, so that we
would start for home. I decided that
should not show any more ignorance and
should say nothing of the incident.
So we went home, and felt pretty glad
that was in sight of the aerodrome again
and still alive, and that nothing unusual