Flying Ace Recalls How Armistice Came
By Walter T. Brown
(Associated Press Feature Editor)
Chicago—Col. Frank P. Lahm, chief of the Second American army corps air service, hung up the military telephone in headquarters of the 25th aero squadron, near Toul, and gazed silently into space.
"The war's over," he finally shouted to Capt.
Reed Landis, commander of the squadron.
That's how Reed Landis, son of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball commissioner, and one of the outstanding war aces of the United States, learned of the armistice 10 years ago. Landis officially was credited with bringing down 10 planes and twice that number unofficially.
The squadron was at mess and the hilarity was at its highest when Lahm arrived from headquarters and told them the news.
"Some men cried, others just sat and thought, some hurried out to write letters," recalls Landis. "A tension was broken. None of us had thought of the war ending. We knew it would some day, but we lived only from day to day, always in the present."
The 25th was disappointed, Landis relates.
"The squadron, just down from the British front, had fumed and fretted four weeks before planes were sent to us, and when they came they did not have guns. It was another two weeks before the guns arrived. That was the week before the armistice. We had watched Fritz sail over us, dropping his bombs and machine gunning a column of troops, without our being able to fight back. Some of the boys wanted to go up in the gunless planes and battle Fritz with their automatic pistols."
The next day Landis and some of his "gang" went for a final patrol. "Our planes didn't have bomb racks so we carried them in our laps, pushing them out over Metz. We dropped down on our field a few minutes before 11 o'clock."
A few clays later Landis, Capt. Hoby Baker, the former Princeton athlete, and Maj.
Charles Biddle of Philadelphia motored into Metz, where they were mistaken for and welcomed as Marshal Foch and his staff before they could explain their identity.
The Landmark (Statesville, North Carolina) - Monday, November 05, 1928
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