No. 11 Sqdn, R.F.C.
France
24/4/17.

Dear Ones All,

Yesterday the R. F. C. brought down 40 Huns and a number of other "doubtfuls" on the Western front. We all feel very much bucked of course. I was in one of the scraps myself and a mighty satisfactory affair it was too. Three of our machines were out on a job escorted by four of our scouts (You have no idea how we love those little scouts who take care of us on most of our jobs. They zig-zag around behind us and beneath us to keep Huns off our tails while we do the reconnaissance or whatever it is,- and you can bank on it that it gives us big fellows a very cheering feeling to see them buzzing around us. They come past us just a few feet away and we make obscene signs to them, but we love them just the same) Well, we came across a formation of eight Halberstadt scouts and they jockeyed around until they got between us and the sun and then came at us. Duncan wasn't flying with me as usual but another little chap named Holman, just a kid of about 18 with a cheery grin all the time, and the harder he was fighting in that scrap the more he grinned. The leading two Huns came wheeling around and got under my tail. Holman stood up on the sides of the nacelle and blazed away at them over the top plane. Then he signalled me to sideslip so went up on edge and shot down like a stone for 500 feet or so, throwing both the Bosche off as they evidently thought they had got me. One of them sailed past over our head and our leader turned on him and got him cold. The other one of the two shot past beside us and I flattened out and followed him. Holman had no belt on and all but fell out in the sideslip, but it didn’t take him long to grab the front gun and begin popping away at that Hun. We following him down for awhile together with one of our machines and another British machine from some other squadron which had dropped in from nowhere. We all potted away at him at point blank range until he turned his tail up to the sky and went down in a vertical spin. Then I turned back to the rest of the other machines. It was all over by that time for we had been joined by several other British machines and the German formation was nowhere to be seen. Three of them were crashed on the ground below us and the rest had limped off home, possibly to land safely and possibly not. It was a great scrap. The machines were twisting around almost wing tip to wing tip and the noise was terrific with those tremendous engines roaring everywhere, the wires screaming and twenty or thirty machine guns all blazing away. Some excitement, believe me! So our squadron contributed its little quota to the Hun-strafing yesterday you see! Things were much quieter over the lines to-day and machines with black crosses painted on them kept very noticeably at a respectful distance.

Must close now. Am on a job at 5.0 a.m. to-morrow and it is getting late.

With lots of love to each one of you, Dear Ones,
Yours as always,
Eric.