This sort of impressed the Captain and dear, old fellow that he was, he immediately ordered “Mon Lieutenant Dillard,” who was his Operations Officer, to arrange for me to accompany the next mission over the lines, as a protection. This was scheduled for the next day. A French Lieutenant by the name of Jones was to do an adjustment of a battery of 155’s, and I was to accompany him in another plane to protect him from any attack by German airplanes. That night we played Bridge until midnight, whereupon we all shook hands, as is the French custom, and departed for our various billets. My Bridge had been rotten—my mind was on a different kind of bridge: How was I to bridge that next day—What did it hold? The night was chilly as the devil and as I picked my way in the darkness I could hear very plainly the rumble of guns and could see the artillery flashes very clearly, although the front was twenty kilometers away. I began to think about my first trip over the lines that was soon to come. I was mentally lower than a snake. I hadn’t prayed for some time and I was just wondering whether or not I would pray that night. My solemn idea of prayer was that it was an emergency measure. I was always reverently thankful to the Maker for His blessings, but He knew that for He must have known my mind. I believed that God helped him who helped himself, but when the question was too big for man to control, then it was the time to invoke the help of the Supreme Being. I was inclined to think this case was only a duty of war in which man should help himself. So, I had decided that I would go ahead and handle it as a man to man proposition, reserving invocation for a more serious situation, but as I was getting pretty close to my billet I heard a sudden noise that gave me a real thrill—a big cat jumped out of a box and ran directly in front of me. It was too dark, of course, to tell the color of that cat, but the condition of my mind convinced me that it could be no other color than black and that it was an omen that bad luck was sure to come my way. When that cat ran in front of me my Man theory was gone, absolutely; I knew quite well that I was going to pray.