WAR

—
On October 1, 1917, at five o'clock in the afternoon, Theobald and his
pilot, Leutnant Rochling, were on top of the world. They were up on a joyride,
familiarizing themselves with their new aeroplane. The weather was
beautiful, the air was sparkling, and at 16,000 feet the bright feathery cirrus
clouds above them seemed close enough to touch. It was cold at that height, so
cold that after a while it began to chill their exuberance and Theobald tapped
Rochling on the head to indicate that he wanted to go down. At that moment
the motor sputtered. It caught briefly, then began sputtering again. Rochling
pushed the nose down hard, hoping the dive would force the propeller to windmill
and keep the motor going. To no avail—the motor died and the propeller
stopped
dead.
Theobald grabbed his map and began making some fast calculations.
Rochling levelled out and headed toward Slonim in a shallow glide. Theobald
figured that with their altitude they should be able to make the German lines
with a couple of miles to spare. Neither of them had given a thought to the
fact that their off-duty flying might just as well have been over German territory
most of their flying had been over Russian territory and it' just seemed
natural to head that way when they started. Now that familiar ground below
began to look pretty dangerous.
In the unnatural quiet, with only the sound of the wind, Theobald and
Rochling discussed the situation. They might have landed immediately, for
25 miles behind the Russian lines there was a chance that they would not be
spotted, and they were certainly far behind the concentrations of troops at
the Front. Possibly they could fix whatever was wrong, then take off and fly
home. Had they but known it, they probably could have started up the motor
with no trouble at all, but they didn't know that the source of the failure was
nothing more serious than an iced-up carburetor. They decided to keep going
for the German lines.
They had lost about half their height and were still ten miles behind the
lines when they passed over a small lake, the aspect of whose surface made
Theobald's scalp prickle. The western half of the lake was smooth as glass
while the eastern half was ruffled. That could only mean a westerly wind,
a wind blowing from west to east—in other words a headwind. They could never
make it. He shouted his discovery to Rochling. They were low now, and
vast tracts of woodland stretched in all directions. Suddenly shots cracked out
from the woods below as Russian soldiers spotted the German aeroplane skimming
the trees. Rochling was hit and jumped in his seat. He was hit two more times
and Theobald, fearing he might lose control of the machine, unbuckled his
safety belt and tried to reach into the front cockpit to take the stick. At that
moment the landing gear snagged on the topmost branches of the trees and the
aeroplane nosed over, catapulting Theobald out of his seat. "Like the cork
from a bottle of champagne," said one Russian officer who witnessed the crash.
Theobald came to a few moments later,
feeling that he must have swallowed
most of the marsh he landed in. Outside of a huge bruise on his leg, he was
unhurt. Russian soldiers stood all around with rifles pointed at him. The
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