October 30th Rickenbacker won his 25th and 26th victories, the last that were added to his score. But on November 9th Major Kirby, who had just joined the 94 Squadron for a little air fighting experience, was one of a party of four who flew off for a try at the retreating Huns, and shot down an enemy plane across the Meuse. This was the last plane shot down in the war. Rather exultingly, pardonably so, Captain Rickenbacker says: “Our old 94 Squadron had won the first American victory over enemy aeroplanes when Alan Winslow and Douglas Campbell had dropped two biplane machines on the Toul aerodrome. 94 Squadron had been first to fly over the lines and had completed more hours flying at the front than any other American organization. It had won more victories than any other—and now, for the last word, it had the credit of bringing down the last enemy aeroplane of the war!” And this word from Laurence Driggs: “After having visited some sixty-odd British flying squadrons at the front, many of the French escadrilles and all of the American squadrons, I was given the pleasure of entering Germany, after the armistice was signed, as the guest of the Hat-in-the-Ring Squadron, of which Captain Rickenbacker was and is the commanding officer. In no other organization in France did I find so great a loyalty to a leader, such true squadron fraternalism, such subordination of the individual to the organization. In other words, the commander of 94 Squadron had perfected the finest flying corps I have ever seen.” THE GUNBOAT _By_ Dana Burnet Out in the good, clean water where it’s blue and wide and deep, The pride of Britain’s navy lies with thunders all asleep, And the men they fling their British songs along the open sky, But the little modest gunboat, she’s a-creepin’ in to die! The First Line’s swingin’ lazy on the purple outer ring, The proudest ships that ever kept the honor of a King! But nosin’ down the roadway past the bones of other wrecks Goes the doughty little gunboat with her manhood on her decks! Oh, the First Line’s in the offing, with its shotted lightnings pent, The proudest fleet that ever kept the King in his sacrament! But down the death-sown harbor where a ship may find her grave, The plucky little gunboat is a-sinkin’ ’neath the wave! Then sing your British chanteys to the ends of all the seas, And fling your British banners to the Seven Oceans’ breeze— But when you tell the gallant tale beneath the open sky Give honor to the gunboat that was not too small to die! CAPTAIN FRYATT’S MURDER A Court-Martial in Which Vengeful Malice Mocked Justice and the Rules of Naval War In the Lust of Blood