The evening world. Newspaper, October 9, 1918, Page 16

{S WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1918 Eight Months at the Front | With the American Army. THE THRILL OF NIGHT BOMBING. _ A Vivid Description of a Night With the Aerial Raid- ers, Whose Work Is Done Under Cover of Dark- ness, Their Exploits Winning Decorations, but Their Names Never Published. By Martin Green (Staff Correspondent of The Evening World.) i UR bombarding squadron last night dropped thirty tons of bombs | on e station and railroad warehouses @ German railroad | centre.” | ome = “~) A paragraph like this appears almost dafly in the! | offictal communique issued from one or another or all : the Allied Army headquarters, The paragraph is | inconspicuously displayed, but it relates progress of a ' phase of warfare of as great importance as the more ! spectacular day bombing and fighting in the air, The} {a night bomber’s namo is seldom seen in print, nor does! j it appear of the list of aces. Many night bombers | : wear decorations earned by daring or exceedingly | i & brave deeds, but their exploits are known only to thelr |} { comrades and their commanding officers, ig The camps of the night bombers are some distance | + tack of the front lines, but never far enough back to ‘8 e safe from attacks by German air bombers, It is necessary to have! } hangars in the open and to use great flat fields for starting and landing, and the hangars and fields are marks for German aircraft. But it 1s pos: |® ‘@ sible to conceal the living quarters of the aviators in the woods, although | Ms is not always done. 1 recall one barrack sheltering about fifty pilots! ; and bombers which was directly across the road from a sheet-iron hangar which had been bombed 60 often by the Germans that {t looked like a steve, | 1, ‘ Aviators engaged in night bin O——————er If 4 become fascinated with their calling] He and the observer feel a shock a and seldom ask for a transfer to the|though their craft had been stru ’ ore sensational day work, although | by some solid object. A red flash | ha .| pears below and to the right. The)? teey are fully qualified for chasse | Gornan anti-aircraft. guns have} xr combat flying. There ts a charm|opened up. Flashes appear all about | about coursing in the air, with the/ them and the shocks are continuous. stars above and the earth far pelow,| Two shafts of white light shoot up rr | from the earth and be to search f a series of dark splotches, with here | ro the invader in long sweeps across and there, when the moon is shining, | the sky~searchiight rays from tho; a winding ribbon of silver marking/air defenses in the German city. | the course of a river, The searchiights find the machine} j ti 6 ene Vie ie the comvat sone no lights are| tre the pilot dives, Burapnel trom ing overhead. The pilot straightens room in which there ts a light is cov-| out his machine and exerts all his! ered, Automobiles and auto keel flying at night can depend on no|to which are attached the wires con: |! gu’dance from Mghts on the ground] trolling the springs holding the he has his compass and the stars to HOW THE AVIATOR BOMBS HIS TARGET. guide him and he can see some things below which furnish aids, and unless mijes an hour. The observer makes |’ the Germans get him with their his calculations in his mind. If he}: ‘ in the vicinity of the rajlroad station | ., t jective, drops his “pills” and returns) oo oe distance aheatl. He pulls two| safely ninety-nine times in one hun- [a second pulls the other two. The | A NIGHT TRIP WITH A BOMBING! ™Achine, relieved of $00 pounds In BIPLANE. over from his cockpit and touches the! pilot on the shoulder. Instantly the |; bombing biplane manned by a pilot Seg a Both men look over the edge of the and an observer, The machine 18) ruseiage, Something should happen !n and bomb railroad stations and sidings| In just twenty-two seconds there 1s | in Rhine towns. The commander of|# &Teat burst of flame below, followed ¥ the aviators that the pilot loses con- of jate evening on an aerial expioriag trol momentarily and the machi report that there Is no mist in the! Shell whistles by and bursts danger.’ valleys and conditions are favorabie|UMY near, Speedily the machine is |; now swinging in wide ares, and occa she sky and it will soon be pitch dark,|#onally they find the machine. The Mechanics have been busy OxinS| tne “old bus” dips and slides and rolls and twists through red gashes in tho of the bottom wing of each machine. Yn this night the machine we are to|"Pward the pilot heads toward the east. yrial torpedoes, each weighing 200/phut there are searchlights ahead. pounds, Two are affixed to each side|Turning to the right and still cltmb- | he If a mile and a half up he turns in two long lines, ghostly, indistinct | toward home. ‘The observer, leaning shapes in the waning moonlight, as grimly as he sees, away below and to the field and pick out their particular|the right, explosion after explosion, vehicles, Each pilot and observer munition train, of electric flashlights, They slip on| In a few minutes the shrapnel bursts vaeir heavy flying suits and helmets far behind. Still the machine climbs imander, and the pilot, through the whirring Our machine !s No, 10. Nine others last glimpse for the night of the new sattle and the sky is full of the nuise| moon dropping beyond the horizon, of their engines when the com- peared from the sight of men on the hands of the pilot and observer and| surface of the earth with the admonition “I k tn ay, BURNING.” 2 lage Straight ahead across ‘country the HOW THE PLANES ARE GUIDED the anti-aircraft guns is now bur shown after dark, Every window of a trucks | Skill toward holding It on an even are run without lights, The aviator/ axed to the outside of the fuscdag, after he leaves his own territory, But| bombs. | The machine is moving seventy |: anti-aircraft guns, he reaches his ob- drops his bombs here they will land |} levers, one on each side and in haif | dred, weight, Jumps. The observer reaches Let us take a trip with @ night machine dips sharply to the right. one of a dozen detailed to start out| twenty-two reconds j the squadron haa gone up in the dusk DY, three other bursts. So intent are expedition and has returned with the| turns completely over, A shrapnel righ Five searchlight fingers are ~ for flight. The new moon is low ia pilot. works his controls rapidly and bombs to the traps on the lower side air, Pointing the nose of the machine company is equipped with four) “soon the shrapnel bursts are "shen | Mf the plane. The planes are arranged|'"& the pilot heads southward, Whe over the edge f his cockpit, laughs the aviators and observers troop onto One of his bombs has struck an am- makes a hasty inspection with the aid and the waving searchlight beams are and wait for the word from the coia- wheels of his propeller, catches his Nave started away with @ roar and a the moon which has long since disap- mancer steps up to No, 10, shakes the ut| THEY “KEEP THE HOME FIRES taidnight, old dears,” sends them on “old bus’ drones, the pilot frequently | BY LIGHTS. consulting his map and his compass pla sumps clumsily over the| 2nd the star in the Great Dipper Tho plane bumps clumsily over the} Which is his guiding mark. He. is found, the roar of the engine tn hha ; cs - ereasing in volume as the pilot puts] Over the boundary, back In France, on more power. The rubper tired! put not over the | 38 man ines 8 wheels leave tho earth and the “old| Sn0Wws [nat alone the Gorman ron bus,” ag the flying men cali an acro.| @ti-aircraft stations are on the look- out for him, but he heads the ma- plane, climbs sharply. The pilot heads for a winking light, purt of the| Chine down He has eluded the Germans looking equipment of the squadron, on the] gor ‘nig return. Away off to. the side of a mountain six miles away.| southwest. he distineulshes the rom above that light he is to shape] fights one white, two duly red. I my course for the town that i8 his! heads toward them, descending. ‘They objective, It is the only light thows! are the landing likhts on the flying ng—a sort of se h(house. | heid, a blinding acetylene light and| As the machine cl ciimbs slowly to the | pilot reaches the light ne mile up and he heads his tward. Vor half an hour he stzers vy com-| piad hs. The observer, thiough his glass makes out a dark patch on the ground indicaung a thick forest and the moun n the 3 hearly @ raft to the two great bontires in the form of the letter L, with the bonfires forming | the bane of the letter, As he approaches the field from the north he clicks off a code message with his signal lights. Swinging to the right until he has passed the landing lig he turns and heads | northward, nose down, He skims th ‘ough that forest runs a narrow | top of a grove of trees at the southe ereuk, darker than its surrouud-|]y side of the field, steadies his ma- ings. This streak is the rairoad line) chine, feels the wheels touch the running across the boundary between | ground and then proceeds like a great Fran and Germany. Occasionally | frog between the bonfires and a milk open country ix reached und the ark! beyond, gradually slowing down, Sal streak is lost, but it is picked up turns to the right, rides the “old bus" again in the nex. forest, Half an! ajong the ground and brings it to elapses an 1 the time | halt, headed to the north, just at the chine, a mile up, is following point he started. the streak Atm enters the barrack Ahead, the streak widens, indicat- with his observer. He is the last in. ing a ra'lroad yard with many Ail the others have reached their ob- twacks, There ts a slight mist on the jective. Waiters bring refreshments. ground, but a few lights show in the In the dim light of a few candles tho vard, for there must be signal lights night bombers raise their | © and switchlights at railroad june- drink to the aviators’ toast ‘ The pilot stead» bis machine, Landings, asses and “Happy } & Tho observer grasps the levers). ‘i 77..- “e AND OFFICERS WHO COMMAND THESE WOMEN WHO ARE Lt, ESTELLE ISR. AW. Lb MARY SHAR SWOotD GIVING EFFICIENT AID TO UNCLE SAM “OVER HERE” Motor Corps Ambulance Drill | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 ‘Women’s Motor Corps Work A Real Test for Courage, Endurance and Quick Wit h the Exception of Being Under Shell Fire, Corps Work Is Nearly as Difficult and Perilousas That of Ambulance Workers Behind the Firing Line—Their Heroic Work During the Disaster at Morgan, N. J., and in Transport- | ing Army Influenza Victims to the Base Hospital Shows | That These Women Are in Earnest and Ready for Any Kind of Call to Duty. By Marguerite Mooers Marshall Copyright, 1018, by The Press Publishing Co, (The New York Evening World) O rescue, without fainting or even flinching, the wreckage of battie, a i murder, sudden death and Spanish influenza—that is what it means just now to be an active member of the Motor Corps of the National League for Woman's Service. Persons who have seen these young women in their trim khaki, puttees and Sam Browne belts pa- rading up Fifth Avenue or who have read of their mil- itary camp of a week at Fort Totten perhaps have been inclined to dismiss them as picturesque but rather histrionic figures in the grim business that is war. I admit I have been one of these slightly scornful crit- ies. But when I heard yesterday at the league bead- quarters, No. 259 Madison Avenue, of the horribly un- Pleasant, even dangerous, and yet most useful work which the Motor Corps performs I concluded it has a perfect right to all the joy it can extract from its uniforms, salutes and other military prop- erties. The corps is not usually under shell fire; except in this par+ ticular its service yields little in difficulty and peril to that of ambulance workers behind the firing line. And while shell fragments were Wit Ce - aun i | me AC IN THRs TER yt BY VERY EX-CIVILIAN ARTHUR (13th Training Battery, Camp Zachary Taylor, Ky.) HE civillan who winds up his elght-day clock for the last time, i kisses his gold-plated collar button good-bye and breaks into | the F. A. C. O. T. 8. may have b a big wheel in the home town, but here be is only a cog. And a small cog at that, The minu he has traded his Panama for an O. D. helmet, exc nged his Prince | Albert for a uniform and parked his bunions inside of army brogans | he isn't his own boss any more than a married man ts. The fact that he have been president of the Gold Fisb Fanciers of East Orange, J., fails to make any impression on the callous medical examiners who give him the double O when he flat | wheels into Camp Zach. He may have been the entire works in East Orange, but they prefer to identify him by the mole on his left shoulder. of thirty be dwindled to ma Z0r0. He's nothing but an army worm now and remains an army worm until four months later, when he busts his cocoon and blossoms out | into a full-blown butterfly with the gold bar on his shoulder, Some | of us blossom out in two wee but not with the gold bar, | ‘The best method for a civilian breaking 8, into camp is to forget How I Began My Stage Career m what he was before he signed on the dotted line at Camp Zach. A gold fish fancier may be all right in East Orange, but there are no fact that aquariums on the battlefield. Don't try to buzz your battery com- minister of th mander just how they did tt in Mast Orange or Kokomo, rect differently in the artillery, Just because you were a Brigadier General in the Ashtabula Home Guards entitle They do it n the 8 that most doesn't you to chirp objections to the battery com: |;).ose in small towns, are not devotees mander when he explains a drill formation which differs from the of the theatre, My father lived in Ashtabula Home Guards’ method, They do {( differently in the ar- | Springfield, Mo. and was a very reli- ullery, ’ The best system of easing by in the F. A. C. O. T. S. ts to keep your ears open and your mouth shut. If you acquire a crantal limp from endeavoring to absorb the knowledge tify toss at you in lumps, like a zoo keeper throwing gobs of fish to the walrus, just put a crutch under your chin and try to look wise. | You will be safe anyway until the quizzes, And remember, no matier what you re ious man, | career, ng church voice culture in | Paris, 4 about drill formations in the mail order catalogue, that they do it differently tn the artillery, |oi4 admirer of the Rev. William J. YOUR PAY EQUALS X; SOLVE THE EQUATION, Bicderwolf, the revivalist. Through VERYTHING in the artillery is figured out in mathematics and | iy father, 1 met Dé. Bicderwolf and E you have got to have it cold. Nothing can be lett to chance, | was asked to sit his meetings, 1 cven the pay is figured down to fractions and that's the way | ed the invitation and for ix you get {tin fractions | 4 L toured the West, singing at The best way for a candidate in the F. A. C. 0. 'T. S. to dope out | FeY under the leadership of the his montiily reward is by algebra, Your pay equals X, which equals |Reted trombonist, Homer peiee the unknown quantity, X equals plus thirty minus insurance, laun- | Heaven inter vet pie SPE dry, allowance to dependents, literary society dues, Liberty Bonds, |i. 4 to relinquish it, as the sing- charges for property lost and a few other incidentals. Outside of these few things you get all your cola, music, abroad for two year Berlin, y responsibl » to-day. ministers, An Ex-Civilian in F. A. C. O. T. S. In algebraic equations, we change the elgns. becomes minus thirty, A candidate whose pay has a muzzle velocity 8 finds that at the range of thirty days the velocity has The maximum effective range of army pay is three days and sixteen mills. “All you do 1s sign the pay roll, All you do {s sign the pay roll, All you do is sign the pay roll, And you never get @ blank-blank cent.” But don’t ever forget to sign the pay roll. | essential part of army training and the exercises will do you good, BELLE STORY. father was & gospel ts indi- for my being This may seem , since it 18 a generally known especially When he decided to have my volce cultivated, it was not with the idea of launching me on @ stage It was rather to equip me to He sent me and I studied Milan and At that time my father was a friend ing was of a heavy, dramatic nature, a voice in the middle reg soprano, Now York |cert work. | drome, | mar er dressing J ovening. | ville. podrome I practising. Marcella Sembrich, I 1 Following my work came an engagement in * under Charles nent, and then be ‘Thus plus thirty Calisthentics are an |Corps of the National League for {Woman's Service worked like vet- | erans, : | first in the field, reporting for duty | at 8 o'clock in the morning. | refugees to the armory where they ing and trom the pride that apes flying and explosions resounding at| humility. the Morgan, N, J., munitions works “There are from seventy-five to last Saturday morning the Motor| eighty-five active workers in the Mo- tor Corps of the National League f¢ Woman’ she an- 8 They ail are over twenty-one and of them are under forty. Some of our youngest members are the most e m= cient, All must know how to daive a motor car unusually well and how to repair it. They have regular in- fantry drills twice a week, to kecp them physically fit, and they hava been taught just how to le wounded and sick men and the tit ters, It is true that for some time wa Service at presen’ ered my next question The Newark branch was the most By noon the New York and Brooklyn branches had sent thelr workers, and thirty women and fifteen ambulances Ia- bored for many hours transporting were cared for, the wounded to the hospitals, and even the dead victims to the morgue. For two weeks women of the Motor Corps have been transporting sol- diers suffering from Spanish influenza|bave been meeting ships whica to the big First Base Hospital in the| brought back wounded men fro. tha Bronx, and naturally the women\front in France and transporting themselves have been exposed ever them to base hospitals. The girls pre~ and over again to the dreaded plague.| pare the litters, place the men on “In fact, I think about half of our them and lift them into the ambu- women have had Spanish influenga,"|!ances. The task requires mwa Capt. Katharine Richards of the| knack than physical strength, you Motor Corps admitted pleasantly| see, and, if they know how, two giris when I talked to her. know I had| can lift the heaviest man. The hard- to stay in bed two days last week| est job is placing the litter in with chills, @ temperature and sneez-|top tler of the ambulance, as ing. The influenza is nothing, though,| must do when it is to be filled unless you let it develop into pneu-| hav monia. We never think of trying to! heads. avold it. Yesterday we had six calls} ‘We are on duty day and nigh’. to go to different addresses, some-| From each girl the corps requires at where in New York, and take soldiers | least two days’ full service per week, who had come down with the disease | from 9.80 to 5.30. Of course, she must to the Base Hospital. I myself, with| finish the call on which she is work« one of the giris of the corps, went to|ing, no matter what the clock says, Astoria late last night for such a] Then the girl who has signed for call, The man weighed about 180| emergency duty may be called up aay pounds, and it was pretty difficult|hour of the night and asked to pro- for two of us to get him on th@|ceed with private car or ambulance stretcher and down a narrow flight|to a designated spot for military sere of stairs to the ambulance. But we| vice,” did it, with the help of the slings) «And do the corps members never which distribute the weight between! repel at all this hard work?" I asked. the shoulders and arms, Capt. Richards, “When we got to the hospital toe] “They are fine about it,” she re+ doctor scolded us for not wearing our| plied warmly, “They do anything nasks, Ob, yes, we have them,” she|they are asked to do without com~ answered my look of inquiry. “They plaint. One of the hardest of our are strips of chemically treated gauze| jobs is the ambulance service for the which we are supposed to tie over|New York City Hospital, He have mouth and nose. But I don’t really|taken that over altogether, and two think they do much good, and they|girls are on duty there all the time, are so uncomfortable that most of us| working in twelve-hour shifts, simply won't bother to wear them,” “They have had the most thrilling Capt. Richards is a Californian,| experiences! They have responded to tall, creamy-skinned and smiling, who| calls to remove unconscious women tells of the work of those in her|from opium joints, They have car- command with a splendid simplicity, | ried D. T. cases—one girl who told mo we We to lift the loaded litter over ouc equally removed from blatant boast-|of such an incident ended calmly, ‘just ter and harmful to a light coloratura On leaving Dr, Biederwolf I came to| , and to my studies with did some cou- invited to One time I v sing at a big benefit at the Hippo-| It was for some of the les of the Titanic's victims. audience was a prominent vaudeville and room over to Proctor's Fifth Avenue Thea- tre and sing at the second show of the fain In the he sent asking a note t me to my hurry did, and the next dey |found myself a headliner in vaude- in vaudeville in-Chia,” Dillingham's manage- vt me in the Hip- podrome as prima donna I am still bere and am becoming a | veteran performer, like the elephants Jt have 4 1 in “Hip, Hip, Hoo- ray!" Up" and the present produc “Everything.” Between season Hippodrome I have had time for some concert work, T ap- peared with Caruso at a Biltmore morning musicale and did much other work that counted Here at the Hip- manage to keep up my The general stage direc- _ shut the windows of the ambulance so that the patient's screams wouldn't be heard all over the city.’ The girls have been called to many suicide cases, and they have had to handie particularly bad and bloody street ac- cident: “The hospital doctors thought that these last might be too much for our, drivers: that we would faint or be- come hysterical, But there has not | been a single case in which a mem- ber of our Motor Corps lost her self- ‘| control, There has not been a serious accident of any so-'t since we organ- ized, although much of our driving has been at night through toro-up streets.” } “How do the patients behave toward you?" I asked. "When they are conscious they aro \ practically always most grateful and polite,” said Capt, Richards, “But Often they are so badly off that they don't know whether we are men or women, No, we never carry pistols, even on night duty, It has not beea found necessary.” Besides their more dangerous duties the women ofthe Motor Corps ara ELLE [much used as rs between TORRY | {ua vaciace military Necdquarteret in as } and about New Y And—who ys women can't keep secrets?—they are often sent on mysterious and im- portant missions for the Intelligence Department, missions for which they » doff their uniforms and, dixgulsing themselves in pretty frocks, com- pletely camouflage their Government service, tor, R. M. Burnside, has had a plano installed in my dressing room and I spend much of my spare time at t. I feel that fate has been kind to me, It is a long jump from Spring‘eld, Mo., to the New York Hippodrom you know,