Luck on the Wing: Thirteen Stories of a Sky SpyHaslett, Elmer
History
Luck on the Wing: Thirteen Stories of a Sky Spy
Haslett, Elmer
World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
We shot along those roads on that steel-wheeled bus at a remarkable
speed. Quite soon we were at Montmedy, which was the headquarters of the
5th German Army. Undoubtedly here we were to be interviewed and sure
enough we were taken into the large room in the front of the
headquarters building, but, to our great surprise we were left for a few
moments by ourselves as the force was out to lunch. I immediately threw
off my flying “teddy bear” and hastily ran through my pockets and in
spite of standing orders for flyers never to have written communications
on their person, while flying over the lines, I found one order which
would have given a great deal of aid and comfort to the enemy. I took
this order, which was on very thin paper, and rapidly folding it, taking
a match from the table I lighted a cigarette and then burned the order.
The few other things I had were not important, but at that I wanted to
destroy everything. I had thrown my map in the burning plane, so my
conscience was clear that I had done my duty all around as far as I was
able. We were quite sure that the room had audiphones so we said
nothing. As I was about to throw such other stuff as I had in the stove,
the kid came in. I simply slipped my hand in my pocket and looked
innocent. Then a very suave, English-speaking German Lieutenant came in
and told us that he had been a prisoner of war in Russia and had just
been released; that he felt sorry for all the prisoners of war, and
wanted to tell us not to believe everything we had heard about the
German atrocities and that since we were Americans we would be well
taken care of, fed, etc., for Germany wanted America to feel that
America and “Deutschland” were the best of friends. His line was so
smooth that I was sure that he told the same gag to everyone else,
regardless of nationality. This intelligence officer was a very smooth
article for instead of talking shop, he stated that if we would be so
kind as to give him such things as we had in our pockets there would be
no necessity to search us. By this time, he was welcome to everything I
had on me. Then he told us that he wanted us to be his guests at tea
that afternoon at five o’clock. We had no choice in the matter, so, told
him we would be very pleased to accept his kind invitation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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