In the midst of our “tea bacchanal” the door opened and we saw standing before us a full-fledged German aviator, whose face was nicked and scarred from the great German pastime of fencing. Although wonderfully straight and well-built, with a face and jaw that spelled determination and strength, his eyes possessed all the hellishness and heinousness of a Hun. We were introduced, whereupon this young Flying Lieutenant clicked his heels together and gave us a salute almost as perfect as the world-famous salute of General Pershing.
After some sort of a framed-up conversation, the flyer sat down and the Intelligence Officer explained to us that the flyers and the anti-aircraft artillery and the machine gun crews had been in a controversy as to who should have the credit for bringing us down and that this Lieutenant had contended that the Squadron which he commanded was responsible; and he wanted to find out who it actually was that gained this victory. This did not seem to interest the other German-American officers present, so they excused themselves and left. The only remaining officer who spoke English was the Intelligence Officer; the young, battle-scarred Lieutenant, to the best of our knowledge, did not. So when the Intelligence Officer stated that this Lieutenant was in one of the four planes that was firing on us when we finally went down, Davis went to pieces and snapped out the impertinent question, “And was he one of the four who fired on us after we were already shot down?”
The flyer conceded that all four of them fired at us, but that they were certainly not trying to kill us but were merely trying to keep us from escaping. This was too sad an excuse to get by. Davis told him that he didn’t care a hang who got the credit for shooting us down—we were down and that was all there was to that subject—but that in the American Army it was considered mighty poor to strike a man when he was already down. The Intelligence Officer was surprised and scornfully asked me if the Americans did not do exactly the same thing. Davis reared back like a rattlesnake about to strike and with eyes flashing fire of indignation and contempt told them that if an American Aviator was caught doing a thing like that—firing on the enemy when he was already down—that the Americans, themselves, would take their own countryman out and, without giving him the pleasure of being shot to death, would tar and feather him and hang him, for to an American, when a fellow was down he was down, and whether we were fighting a war or not, we wouldn’t stand for murdering any one in cold blood. I saw we were getting in Dutch, right off, and so did Davis, for as the Intelligence Officer explained it to the high-spirited flyer we could see his temples throb and his eyes quiver from anger; and his jaws closed with hatefulness and scorn. The Intelligence Officer, realizing that the conversation was getting into deeper channels than was especially desired for the occasion, told the German aviator something and without saluting or otherwise rendering military courtesy, he left the room.