When a machine is upside down, the stress comes on the wrong side of the wings and is apt to spring them. My plane had fallen a thousand meters, and the wings had been thrown out of adjustment so that the controls were barely able to correct the change. I did not regain control of any sort until I was 400 meters from the ground, and then I could do nothing but spiral to the left. In that fall, when I found I could not control the machine, I believed it was my last flight. It was the first time I ever had been conscious of looking death squarely in the face. After the first hundred meters of fall, I was perfectly aware of the danger. I was wholly possessed in turn by doubt, fear, resignation (it was just there that I was almost fool enough to give up), anger (that I should think of such a thing), and, finally realization that only cool thinking would bring me out alive—and it did! From 400 meters I spiraled down with barely enough motor to keep me from falling, in order that the strain on the control would be minimum. The old brain was working clearly then, for I made a fine adjustment of the throttle and gasoline—just enough to counteract the resistance of controls, crossed in order to counteract the bent wings, and just enough to let the plane sink fast enough so that it would hit the ground into the wind in the next turn of the spiral, which I could not avoid. Allowing for the wind, I managed to control the spiral just enough to land on the only available landing ground in the vicinity. The landing was perfect, but the machine rolled into a ditch and tipped up on its nose. As I had cut the motor just before landing, the propeller was stopped and not a thing was broken. If the wing had been bent a quarter of an inch more, they would have carried me home. The machines they use here are old ones, and that was probably responsible for the accident. This weak spot of the Nieuport caused many deaths before anyone ever survived to tell what had happened. Again the gods were with me, and I lived to be the wiser. When I undid my belt and climbed out of the machine my hands were never steadier nor my mind more tranquil. Many Russians from the detention camp near by swarmed around, and I set them to work righting the plane and wheeling it over to a post, where an American was on guard. Leaving the machine in his care, I hit cross-country for the aviation field. As I walked through the brushwood, the beauties of nature were possessed with renewed charm, the sea breeze laden with the scent of pine seemed a sweeter incense, the clouds were more billowy, my steps were wondrously buoyant, for I felt like one whom the gods had given special privilege to return among the treasures of his childhood. The passing of death’s shadow is a stimulus to the charm of living. Today I had an hour and a half of flying, and engaged in a sham combat of half an hour with another pilot. We both killed each other several times.