WAR

Although several times they were attacked by French flyers, von Teubern
and Immelmann always managed to make it home. Once they were almost shot
down. A French observer armed with a Hotchkiss machine gun put a burst into
the aeroplane right between the two cockpits, but did not hit either Immelmann
or von Teubern. The bullets did put holes in the fuel tank, or else severed the
fuel line, for the engine quickly went dry and died. Immelmann glided down to
a smooth landing and the two airmen congratulated themselves on their escape.
For von Teubern, it was the second and last close call. He was as lucky
in the air as Boelcke was at cards. He had been in a crack-up at Elsenmiihle
with a civilian pilot and the aeroplane was wrecked, but neither man was hurt.
His luck never deserted him. Immelmann's did. He was never shot down again,
but there are many ways by which fighter pilots may die.
although he wept at the thought of killing in the air, Roland Garros grimly
accepted what he believed to be the necessity of it. He believed his duty lay in
killing. France was invaded, engaged in a merciless war no one would admit
to having started, Paris trembled under the guns of the invader. Garros wept,
but he shot down two more German aeroplanes in the next two weeks.
Toward the end of April, Kriegszeitung, the newspaper of the German
Fourth Army, published the following account:
"April 18, 1915, at about seven o'clock in the region of Sainte-Catherine and
Landelede, two aeroplanes suddenly appeared flying at a great height. One of
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