PAT THE “BOCHE "-KILLER ONLY A STRIPLING

Evening Star, Issue 16626, 8 January 1918, Page 1

PAT THE “BOCHE "-KILLER ONLY A STRIPLING

It has been said frequently that the aii game is the young man’s game. It is noi only the young man’s game; it is the light-hearted man’s game. Glance over a bunch of the youngsters who have made good in the air, and pick out a grouch. You can’t do it. Take Pat, for example “ Pat, the Boche-HUer,” as his pals in the British aero squad call him. The United Press correspondent with' the British armies in the field tells a characteristic story m the New York ‘Evening Sun’ about the youngsters in the air service at the front. He was standing in the British aerodrome—just behind the lines—when a speck in the sky caused someone to remark : "Here comes a bird! It’s Pat. Watch him I” I watched. At 120 miles on hoar the speck came at us. Suddenly, at & height of about a mile, the machine slowly turned oyed sidewise, then plunged earthward upside down. “He’s done himself in!” someone exclaimed. It certainly looked so. Pat’s machine, the engine stopped, was plunging earthward, perpendicularly, spinning round and round on its own axis. Then suddenly it straightened out flat, wont a hundred yards, and shot up into the air, again perpendicularly. Slowly, gracefully, the aeroplane turned over on its back, again upside down, looped the loop twice, flew on straight, rolled over and over, plunged sidewise, went into another “nose spin,” first with a right-hand spin, then ,a lefthand one, and so on, until he had everyone gasping for breath. Finally the machine came down and lit on the field. Out of the pilot’s seat climbed a hooded, goggled being, which with one quick jerk, tore' hood anti goggles from head and face, and, behold! a kid, a boy, a stripling just turned 20! It was Pat, star pilot, Bocho-killer blushing smiling like a sweet giri graduate. He wasn’t swanking nor swaggering, but behaving exactly Kirn any kid home from school after algebra and football. For that is just the way he looked —like a kid who has dona a little mathematics and considerable r ootbaH hair tumbled, face red and glowing eves sparkling. J Nobody asked him if there had been anything doing over the lino, not any more than one brother asks another that question when they meet at home after office hours. But, as you shall sea, it had been what you or I would call a vatw busy day. However, I did not find thatout until later—the next day, in fact when I read the air reports. * An hour after Pat had come down I saw him again. This time ha was washed and combed and had on his slacks which Is r English army stuff for trousers—instead ?! breeches and leggings. He was in tfie it.Jj.G. reading room, a room in a shade, and next door to the dining room. He another kid—-a major, if you please—in on air pilot’s uniform were singing -. Hallelujah! Pm a bum ! Hallelujah 1 Bum again! Hallelujah ! Give us a handout To save us from sin. ,7f S0 was sun S ia a deep bass to the well-known revivalist tune; then, as the next _ Imes were reached, the. baas changed into the high falsetto pf the farmers wife as she stands, cm the back porch: . Oh, why don’t you - work As other men do 7 buaf- d lhen the taSS agaia ' stating the How the hell can I work When there's no work to do? There was nothing evil, nothing sacrilegious about it. Nothing more devilish than healthy boys, with bright, dean mmds. These were just kids having fun. Outside, on a court levelled and laid out in what wai recently a cornfield, four more kids were playing, tennis across a net made of wire, originally intended to keep trench as from caving in. Near this was another court a Badminton one, and hero four more beardless Boche-killcrs were racketing feathered globules about like mad. _ All day they had been fighting in the air, miles above the earth, waylaying stalking Prussian airmen in the clouds-’ these school kids! —-and now they were having a bit of relaxation before dinner. More kids still were grouped about a tent on the edge of the Badminton court, and a hilarious contest was going on seeing who could climb over the roof of the tent in quickest time. The winner was the padre, the airmen’s chaplain—bully good man that he is—-who came sliding clown the near side o' the steep tent roof, dying as ho came: “ Here comes a perfectly good parson!” And the kids about him laughed, like kids will at a Punch and Judy show, over the antics of their padre, who influences them like a real father. And these youngsters had all been in a big fight that very day. The writer says: Thirty-nine of them had fought over more than 60 German airmen, and had bested them. They had sent seven enemy machines crashing through the clouds to the ground, bombed two railway stations, given tlie range for any number of direct its on Prussian artillery, dived at and silenced a rumber of- anti-aircraft guns which wore hampering them in their work. Nnd Pat? Pat had. attacked four Ger man Albatross machines single-handed and scattered them, all save one, which ho riddled with his bullets and Hung head over heels three miles to the earth, where it smashed and blazed and glowed until it was cinders. And then Pat, attacked in his turn bv ton enemy machines as he flew alone three miles above the ground, escaped by a “nose spin,” a literal drop out of the blue, such a 6 I had seen him do that afternoon over the aerodrome. When I read i-heso reports two thoughts chased themselves round and round in my head. One was: “The air game is a young man’s game.” And the other waa in the guise of a haunting tune: Hallelujah! Pm a bum! Hallelujah! Bum again! Hallelujah 1 Give us a handout To save us from sin. The laughter of Put, the boy Bocho> killer, as he came back m deep, burlesque tones imitating the bum’s reply to the fanner’s wife, was part oi the music: How the hell can 1 work When there’s no work to do?