WAR

Lufbery.
Assuming command of the 94th, Lufbery began the task of instructing the
green Americans in the business of air fighting. He succeeded, but exactly how
he succeeded no one knows. Lufbery wasn't much of a talker, and never encouraged
shop talk. Douglas Campbell remembers that he didn't like to talk,
and never said much, that he was businesslike and intense. Perhaps he did it
by sheer intensity, putting an education by implication into every well-chosen
word. When he did talk, his remarks were short, terse, and always delivered at
the
appropriate moment.
Eddie Rickenbacker describes Lufbery as "a taciturn man, but if he felt that
you had the qualities and the interest in becoming a real fighter pilot he would
go out of his way to give you the benefit of his knowledge,
"He did this with me by taking me out alone with him on his lone patrols
with instructions to follow his maneuvering, which would teach me to see all
corners of the sky very quickly. However, he always advised me to watch him and
if he got into trouble not to join him but to go on home.
"I know of several other youngsters in whom he took the same interest,
but, of course, his greatest ability was in teaching by example and achievement."
The first
score for the squadron and for America was a simultaneous double
victory by Douglas Campbell and Alan Winslow on April 15, 1918. Lufbery had
assigned Captain David M. Peterson, another Escadrille Lafayette veteran, to lead
two other men, Chambers and Rickenbacker, on a patrol between Pont-a-Mousson
and Saint-Mihiel. Lieutenants Winslow and Campbell were to stand by from 6
to 10 a.m. The patrol took off about 6 o'clock, found the lines, but as it was a
cloudy day not unmixed with fog, found nothing going on. They eventually gave
up and headed toward home.
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