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
“Yes, but what about the radio?” asked the Captain. “You should have
left one of them on the job.”
“Oh, well, Captain,” came back the “Top” Sergeant, “it ain’t goin’ to
make no difference; these airplanes don’t call the station more than
once every two or three days and we ain’t got enough men to waste on
sitting around awaiting for ’em to call and they don’t do nothing for us
when they do call.”
Thus I found one of the main reasons for this early lack of results.
These old timers did not take the Air Service seriously. They had no
faith in its present capabilities nor its future development. To them an
Army was composed of Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery. Every other arm or
service was experimental. I am glad to say, however, that later this
battery, in fact the entire regiment of Artillery, became very
proficient in the work with the Air Service and the results were,
indeed, satisfactory to all.
In the actual advance at Château-Thierry the ground liaison—that is, the
communication by telephone, wireless telegraph and ground telegraph
between the line units and the Air Service—became poorer and poorer as
the troops advanced until it was really in a deplorable state. The area
over which troops passed was all shell torn and it was impossible to
move our flying fields farther up because we could not cease operations
in order to make the move since we had no reserve Air units, and worse,
we had no fields prepared and the Germans had destroyed theirs in the
retreat.
As the days advanced conditions became more terrible. The entire corps
headquarters had only one telephone wire and one ground telegraph line
to the Corps Advance Headquarters and from there only one out to the
various Divisional Posts of Command and in front of those Posts of
Command almost everything was done by runners. Our little force at the
Corps Air Service Headquarters was all worked down. After the first few
days the drive ceased to be exciting and it became purely drudgery and
habit. We were all irritable and cross. We were overworked and loss of
sleep was showing very much in our dispositions. This particular day
things were getting pretty bad up the line. The German artillery was
making a strong defense and all of our Command Posts were getting their
full share of German artillery fire. At noon our radio operator told me
that some one had been trying all morning to put through a message to
us, but that we had been unable to receive it. Either the transmitting
set at the line was not working or our receiving set was not. At any
rate, something was urgently wrong somewhere at the front or they would
not have been so persistent. About nine-thirty they started trying to
call us and they kept on until eleven-thirty, but the operator could not
get anything definite out of the sound. In addition, at about a quarter
of twelve they succeeded in getting a telephone call through, but we
could not hear. We tried to relay it, but that did not work. We worked
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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