An American youth who, in the early part of the war, joined the Canadian Royal Flying Corps. Shot down from a height of 8,000 feet, he was captured by the Germans. Afterwards making his escape, he passed through 72 days of harrowing ordeal leading finally to safety.] PAT O’BRIEN OUTWITS THE HUN The Remarkable Story of an American Boy in a Seventy-two Days’ Ordeal of Escape from the Germans The publishers of his book, _Outwitting the Hun_, were not extravagant when they advertised Lieut. Pat O’Brien’s story as “one of the strangest and most thrilling since the outbreak of the war.” No one else had quite such an experience, and that he lived to tell of it was due to indomitable Irish pluck rather than to any favor of circumstances. You get the flavor of the capital book he wrote and the tone of the man from the name he transferred to the title page. There is no Lieut. Patricius, or even Lieut. Patrick O’Brien; but straightforward character-delivery in plain “Lieut. Pat. O’Brien.” and you get from it an odd sort of subconscious assurance that the very extraordinary story he tells of his escape from the Germans is every whit true. Yet, between his being shot down from a height of 8,000 feet and the last item of his seventy-two days of anguish and adventure in escaping the Huns there is many a challenge to credulity. There can be but little of his story reproduced here. AS A FIGHTING SCOUT Pat started flying, in Chicago, in 1912. “I was then eighteen years old,” he says, “but I had had a hankering for the air ever since I can remember.... “In the early part of 1916, when trouble was brewing in Mexico, I joined the American Flying Corps. I was sent to San Diego, where the Army flying school is located, and spent about eight months there, but as I was anxious to get into active service and there didn’t seem much chance of America ever getting into the war, I resigned and, crossing over to Canada, joined the Royal Flying Corps at Victoria, B. C. “I was sent to Camp Borden, Toronto, first to receive instruction and later to instruct. While a cadet I made the first loop ever made by a cadet in Canada, and after I had performed the stunt I half expected to be kicked out of the service for it. Apparently, however, they considered the source and let it go at that. Later on I had the satisfaction of introducing the loop as part of the regular course of instruction for cadets in the R. F. C., and I want to say right here that Camp Borden has turned out some of the best fliers that have ever gone to France. “In May, 1917, I and seventeen other Canadian fliers left for England on the _Megantic_, where we were to qualify for service in France.... “Within a few weeks after our arrival in England all of us had won our ‘wings’—the insignia worn on the left breast by every pilot on the western front.