Then the lad gave me a full explanation as to why they had fired upon these American planes and he claimed the American flyers always ran from the Boche; the Boche came over and shot up the doughboys and he had never seen an American plane going over and shooting up the Boche. Then I asked him if he knew the functions of the airplanes. I wanted him to know that some planes had to stay behind the lines at times. “Yep,” he said, “they’re all fighters, all of ’em, or supposed to be, but they don’t fight. They stay back here; they’re scared to go over.” Then I asked him if he had ever heard of an observation plane and if an observation plane shot a signal of six rockets to him what he would do. He replied that he did not know anything about observation planes and didn’t want to know anything about them, but that several times large planes had flown back there and had fired fire rockets at the doughboys. “How many rockets did they fire?” I asked. “Oh,” he said, “lots of ’em. Sometimes three and six at one time.” I knew six rockets was the official signal from an airplane to the infantry, and that they were supposed to put out white pieces of cloth, their panels, to tell the airplane exactly where they were. “Well, what did you do when the airplane fired six rockets at you?” I questioned in a more tolerating tone of voice. “What did I do?” he answered as if surprised at such a silly question. “What do you think I’d a done? Why, I fired right back at ’em. There ain’t nobody goin’ to fire at me and get off with it without me firing back.” The other buddies backed him up absolutely and I spent a half hour explaining to them the real facts about the airplane game. They finally came to my way of thinking on every point except the courage of the American airman. They could not be dissuaded; they were convinced that most American flyers were cowards and “yellow.” I, of course, reported this firing on friendly airplanes to Headquarters and an order was issued so as to acquaint the Infantry with the Allied insignia. However, it was not until late in the Argonne offensive that this misapprehension of the doughboy was entirely cleared away. Time and time again when I would ask infantrymen, even officers, if they knew the American airplane insignia, they would say it was a “Star,” but that they had never seen any American planes on the front. Perhaps it is for this reason that there are many doughboys who to-day declare they never saw an American airplane over the front. They undoubtedly saw many American planes, but they never saw any with the much-advertised star in the cocarde.