American Doughboys marching to war in October 1918 near the Argonne in France. Library of Congress
Killed Doing Noble Duty
Alvin Callender had returned to 32 Squadron in early September and to a new appointment as flight commander in place of the much mourned Jerry Flynn.39
As he prepared to return, Callender wrote his parents to explain that, much as he’d enjoyed his leave, he was eager to get back in the cockpit and “do a little execution” after “two weeks of loafing around on this side of the Channel.”
The Western Front had altered radically in the two weeks Callender had been “loafing” in Britain. The Amiens offensive, launched on August 8, had been followed thirteen days later by the British Third Army’s attack at Bapume. The German Second Army was in a headlong retreat toward the Hindenburg Line, falling back over a thirty-four mile front. On August 26, the British First Army joined the offensive, and three days later Bapaume fell. Then the Australian Corps were sent into battle, crossing the River Somme on August 31, and smashing through the German lines at St. Quentin Canal in a battle also involving British and American troops. On September 2, the Canadian Corps surged toward the Drocourt-Queant line, and, after a bloody engagement, ousted the Germans from the psychologically important position. Now the Allies had control of the western edge of the Hindenburg Line, from where the previous March the Germans had launched their own great offensive.
The Hindenburg Line, constructed during the winter of 1916–1917 and named after the Prussian field marshal who had won a series of great victories on the Eastern Front in the first two years of the war, stretched approximately eighty miles from Arras in the north to the Aisne in the south. It was a defensive fortification built in anticipation of a great Anglo-French attack, designed to minimize German losses while allowing them to inflict huge casualties on the enemy. While containing their enemy on the western front, the Germans planned to force the British to the negotiating table. Air raids would be increased, as would submarine attacks on merchant shipping, so that the starving and demoralized British would have no alternative than to seek an end to the war.
However, the policy had failed, and now the German soldiers dug in on the Hindenburg Line in September 1918 were the ones demoralized, part of an army that had spent the last month retreating over ground it had fought so hard to capture the previous spring. One great big battle was clearly still to come: the all-out Allied attack on the Hindenburg Line. All the momentum was with their enemy, bolstered by thousands of fresh American soldiers, who were well equipped, well fed, and well motivated—a stark contrast to what remained of the once-great German army.
American Doughboys marching to war in October 1918 near the Argonne in France. Library of Congress
As the Allies gathered themselves for that final assault, the RAF Ninth Brigade was ordered to secure control of the air over the strategically important towns of Douai and Cambrai, and as far south as Saint-Quentin. Ninth Brigade comprised thirteen bomber and fighter squadrons, one of which was 32, and their role was to bomb targets and destroy as many enemy fighters as possible. Resistance was fierce, however; the German air force was aware that should the Hindenburg Line break, beyond lay open country and a clear route into Germany.
Frank Hale wrote his parents relating some of these developments on the evening of September 2. Apologizing for not having written for several days, he continued: “For the last three or four days I haven’t had time to wash properly. We work from morning to night.…[O]ur front is constantly moving eastward.”
On September 4 Hale shot down two Fokker D.VIIs, one north of Cambrai, the second a few minutes later southeast of Arras. Two days later, Bogart Rogers performed a similar feat, claiming two victories in the space of a few hours. For Rogers there was a sense of palpable relief to finally be back on the scoreboard six weeks after shooting down his first enemy aircraft. He told his fiancée about the first kill in a letter written the same day. It had been “darn fun,” he exclaimed, swooping on a “a nice Hun two seater, fat, slow and comfortable,” the crew too preoccupied taking reconnaissance photographs to spot him lurking at 20,000 feet.
On September 8, Hale threw a party in the squadron mess for some of his old buddies from the 4th Ambulance Company of Syracuse. As he told Rogers, Hale had last seen them on the Mexican border in 1916, but he’d heard they were in France, so the least he could do was show them a good time. “They were a fine lot of fellows, some of the best I’ve met out here,” wrote Rogers. “These poor people in the infantry don’t get an awful lot of joy out of life…[so] without throwing any sweet scented bouquets we can fix up a very attractive looking dinner. One of these fellows said it was the most beautiful sight he’d seen in France.”
Hale spent the morning of September 16 visiting Lt. Donald Armstrong, one of his friends from Fayetteville serving in the 4th Ambulance Company. He returned to 32 Squadron for lunch, then in the afternoon composed a letter to his parents, telling them about Don and also about the toll being exacted by the constant flying. “I never thought that it would [be] such a nervous strain,” he admitted. “The minute we cross the lines old Archie starts bursting all around. That is quite nerve-wracking. Also, a fellow is on edge every minute, looking around and attending to the dozens of different things necessary to see to. First you have to see that you keep the correct position in the formation. Then you are constantly on the alert for Hun machines. Also you have to watch all your instruments to see that your engine is getting the correct amount of oil, etc.”
Hale included a couple of casual anecdotes and then brought the letter to a close. “Our inevitable afternoon tea is ready now,” he wrote. “So I guess I’ll close and go and be English for a few minutes.” Unfortunately they wouldn’t have much time to savor their tea, he noted, just half an hour in fact, and then “we have to go on an offensive patrol. That means going over the lines looking for a scrap.”
One can imagine Hale’s emotions as he replaced the cap on his fountain pen, slipped the letter inside an envelope, and asked an orderly to ensure it got mailed. Then he joined his comrades for tea, served on the squadron’s best crockery, sinking into a comfortable armchair, sharing weak jokes, and emitting counterfeit bluster over cake, scones, and strawberry jam. It was the same in every mess in every squadron in every air force, men reaching deep into their soul to dredge up the last reserves of their willpower. Elliott Springs recalled a convivial evening in the 148th Aero’s mess shattered by the shrill ring of the phone. It was headquarters. Instructions for a dawn patrol. “After they got the orders not a pilot could lift a glass to his mouth with one hand,” wrote Springs.
The “scrap” Hale envisaged in the letter to his parents materialized. He and Rogers, both members of Callender’s C Flight, engaged a flight of Fokkers over Cambrai a little after 6:00 p.m. “The place was simply cluttered up with airplanes,” Rogers wrote home that evening. “Every time you turned you nearly bumped into one.”
Rogers stayed calm, singling out a Fokker D.VII and pumping one hundred rounds into his tail. The machine went down in a spin and crashed in Sancourt, the same village a couple miles north of Cambrai where Callender’s sixth victory fell to earth. Hale had to chase his Fokker a few miles north but close to the village of Brunemont the pursuit ended with the German falling in flames.
The Allies relaunched their offensive in the last week of September, determined to bring the war to an end by Christmas. On September 23, the Allied commander in chief, Marshal Foch, had accepted Field-Marshal Haig’s view for “concerted convergent action,” and plans for four separate offensives were drawn up. There was little time between planning and execution. On September 26, the American First Army and French Fourth Army attacked between the Meuse and Reims, followed the next day by the British Third Army and the right of the British First Army advancing in the Cambrai sector. On September 28, the British Second Army, the Belgian Army, and nine divisions of the French Army would go on the offensive in Flanders, and the British Fourth Army and French First Army would assault the Hindenburg Line behind the St. Quentin Canal on September 29.
Nowhere were the gains as spectacular as those made by the British Third and First armies on September 27 as they advanced across the northern extension of the Hindenburg Line towards Cambrai, exploiting the success of the Canadian Corps at the start of the month at Drocourt-Queant. Canadian assault troops, supported by tanks, crossed the Canal du Nord and in two days an advance of six miles had been achieved on a twelve mile front. More than ten thousand Germans had surrendered, and the Allies expected far more as the Fourth Army prepared to launch the main attack on the Hindenburg Line.
It began in rain at 5:50 a.m., and the day was as bloody as expected. Poor visibility hampered the two inexperienced American divisions as they attacked the St. Quentin Canal, while supporting Australian units met fierce resistance on the high ground. Further south German defenses were less defiant, and Allied troops crossed the canal and captured a number of bridges intact. More brigades rushed up in support, and by mid-afternoon the main German positions along the Hindenburg Line had been breached, their soldiers either fleeing or surrendering.
“We have been having rather a lively time of it of late,” wrote Alvin Callender to his sister on September 29. That was some understatement. No. 32 Squadron had been in continuous action for the past few days, fighting “very large German formations of from 20 to 40 aircraft.” On September 24, Callender’s C Flight, together with A and B Flights, took on twenty-four Fokkers attempting to attack a formation of British DH.9 bombers on their way back from a raid on Cambrai. Callender went for the German squadron commander, hitting him with his second burst, and watching the Fokker dive into the northern edge of Bourlon Wood. Three other E.A.s were shot down by 32 Squadron before Callender claimed his second victory of the day.
Offensive patrols continued for the next couple of days and then, on September 27, the day the big ground offensive began against Cambrai, 32 Squadron carried out one mission after another. In the morning they escorted a bombing raid on a German aerodrome and met fifteen Fokker D.VIIs from Jasta 5, their leader the great ace Fritz Rumey, who that month alone had shot down sixteen enemy aircraft to take his tally to forty-five.
Rumey was fearless—he had shot down more fighter aircraft (as opposed to two-seater aircraft) than Manfred von Richthofen—and he liked to single out enemy flight commanders. Spotting Callender’s streamers, Rumey went for the American, but in his single-minded pursuit of his prey he overlooked Lt. Bruce Lawson, a South African, who “worked into position unobserved and fired both guns at point blank range.” Rumey pulled up stalling but the top plane of his machine collided with Lawson’s undercarriage. As the Fokker fell, Rumey undid his seatbelt, hauled himself out of the cockpit and jumped, putting his faith in his parachute. However, the ’chute failed to open, and Rumey plummeted to his death.
A Pfalz D.III decorated in the inimitable colors of Jasta 8.
Rogers meanwhile had shot down a Fokker, his fifth victory: cause for a celebratory lunch and a quick note to Isabelle. “It was a lovely target so I gave it to him with both guns,” he wrote. “He slipped out, then burst into flames. It’s a nasty sight, Izzy, even if it is a Hun.”
A couple of hours later Rogers and the rest of 32 Squadron were back in the air on an offensive patrol. Hale was at 16,000 feet when he spotted ten Fokkers diving on a squadron of British bombers, “so like the brave man that I am not, I opened my throttle and went to their assistance.”
The subsequent action was described by Hale in a letter to his parents dated September 30:
I picked out one Hun and attacked him. I shot him down. His machine broke into bits in the air. Just then I heard the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun. I saw the tracer bullets flying by me.
I instantly pulled my machine into a climbing turn. I did a half roll. That brought me down upon the fellow who just a minute before had been shooting at me. I held my fire until I nearly rammed him. Then I let him have a burst from both of my guns.
He turned over a couple of times. Then he went down in flames. Again I heard machine guns in back of me [sic]. I guess all the eight remaining Huns were on my tail shooting at me.
I knew it would be folly to try and fight the whole bunch. So down I went into a spin. I was headed for the clouds, which were 3,000 or 4,000 feet below me, and about that far from the ground. There was a strong west wind blowing, and I knew that I must have drifted back over the Hun lines for quite a distance.
When I got down into the clouds I pulled out of the spin. I found myself going due east by compass. I didn’t have any idea where I was by that time, so I pulled down under the clouds to see. As it happened I came out directly over Cambrai, which at that time was five or six miles back of the Hun lines. I immediately turned and started west again.
Again I heard a machine gun. When I turned I saw a Hun below and behind me. Evidently he had followed me down, knowing I would have to come out of the clouds to get my bearings.
I turned and dived at him with both guns firing. I missed him so I zoomed up, half-rolled, and dived at him again. This time I got him cold at point blank range. I let him have both guns. He went down like a brick. His ship burst into flames when it crashed.
Back at base, Hale submitted three combat reports, and within twenty-four hours confirmation was received by Maj. John Russell, 32’s squadron commander, that wreckage of all three aircraft had been located. “The general heard about, and recommended me for a Distinguished Flying Cross,” Hale told his parents. “Don’t know whether I’ll get it or not but can you imagine me going up to Buckingham Palace and having the king pin this medal on my breast?”
With the Hindenburg Line broken and the Allies advancing further east every day, everyone knew the war was nearing its end. Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Allies on September 30 and, on October 3, Kaiser Wilhelm II replaced Georg Hertling as Chancellor with Prince Maximilian of Baden, instructing the moderate nobleman to negotiate the most favorable armistice terms possible.
Even the weather over the Western Front appeared to have had enough after four years of bloodshed. A blanket of thick cloud moved in over northern France on the afternoon of October 2. Three days later it was still there, the rain as persistent as a German A.A. battery. Bogart Rogers went over to 92 RAF Squadron to look up an old friend from back home, Evandar Shapard from Tennessee. Alvin Callender went too. He needed a diversion. He hadn’t been feeling well of late, confiding to an uncle in a letter the previous day that he needed a vacation: “Although I have nine to ten hours in bed every night I hardly sleep a wink. That is a common trouble among flying men.”
Time dragged for much of October, the men hardly seeing a sniff of the enemy. Instead bridge, poker, and drinking were the order of the day, “also thick heads in the morning.” On October 13, Callender wrote a friend that he heard the German people were ready to throw in the towel, adding: “Their air force opposite us already have practically.”
Instead of dawn patrols, the men went off on early morning runs. There were table-tennis tournaments, and a soccer match that pitted A and B Flights against C Flight and Headquarters. A and B won by two goals to one. Rogers and Montague Tancock went grouse shooting with captured German rifles and angered the locals.
Callender’s thoughts began turning to life after the war. “The main thing worrying me now is demobilization,” he wrote a friend on October 30, three days after 32 Squadron had relocated to Pronville, west of Cambrai. “I expect we will find it a lot harder to get out of the army than it was to get in. It will take at least twelve months to get all of us Americans, Canadians and other Colonials home, and it will be my luck to get my ticket some time during the eleventh month, I expect. However, I won’t mind that so much if I can joy ride around France and England in [an] airplane during that period.”
Callender didn’t have time to sign off his letter. Instead he was ordered to lead C Flight toward La Louvière and Manage as an escort for a squadron of British bombers. The weather had taken a turn for the better and, all along the front, squadrons were ordered into the air to bomb targets, photograph positions, and shoot down the last remnants of the German air force.
At 9:20 a.m., eight Fokker D.VIIs dove out of the sun on the bombers. Callender led his seven-strong flight to the rescue but suddenly another layer of Germans appeared. “There were Huns everywhere,” recalled Rogers. “Above, below and on both sides.” A and B Flights saw the danger but, by the time they arrived, C Flight had seen Lieutenants Farquhar, Wilderspin, and Amory spin out of the sky. “Every time you’d look around there would be more of them coming up,” said Rogers. “I had two of ’em worry me almost to tears, one above and one below.”
A fourth S.E.5a was hit and dropped from the fight, watched by soldiers of D Company, 116th (Ontario County) Canadian Infantry Battalion. The aircraft came to earth close to where the men were positioned just north of Valenciennes, and Lt. H. E. Patterson led his men to the wreckage.
The pilot had been shot through the lungs but Patterson detected a faint pulse. “We did all we could,” Patterson wrote Alvin Callender’s parents, but their son died an hour later without regaining consciousness. If it was any solace, added the Canadian, “he was killed doing noble duty.”
October 30 was the high spot of the air war over the Western Front. Though the RAF had lost twenty-nine aircrew killed or missing, and a further eight wounded, the German air force had seen sixty-seven of their aircraft shot down. Such was the gallantry displayed by the RAF that King George V issued a Royal Tribute:
I offer you and the Royal Air Force my warmest congratulations on the successful results of air fighting on October 30, and on beating all previous records. Such achievements testify to the spirit which animates all ranks in their determination to maintain our mastery in the air and cannot fail materially to assist the steady advance of my Armies in the field.
George R.I., General-in-Chief
On November 2, 32 Squadron moved again, this time to La Brayelle airfield, an aerodrome close to Douai. It was a melancholic experience for Rogers. The squadron had only seven serviceable aircraft and nine pilots fit enough to fly. Two days later he wrote to his fiancée from their new quarters, an old French château, and apologized for the fact he hadn’t written since October 30. “Fact is,” he confessed. “I’ve never felt less like writing than I have the last few days.” He told her about the “awful scrap” that has cost “poor old Callender” his life. He ended with another apology. “This isn’t much of a letter, but the next ones will be better. I’ve had too much enthusiasm knocked out of me the last few days to be entertaining.”