Goettler had already cranked their DH-4 engine into a roar.
The last thing the Wichita kid said, before he and Goettler took off, was to squadron commander Lt. The one thing they had going for them, said the historian Robert Laplander, was their fellowship of soldiers. The Yanks, or Doughboys, as they called themselves, were roughly 550 guys surrounded in a French ravine, starving four days so far, shivering in rain, dying from explosions and bullets. They had already been shot at - thousands of bullets from German rifles and machine guns - while trying to locate the so-called Lost Battalion. A suicide mission, they said.Įrwin Bleckley and his pilot, Harold Goettler, climbed into their warplane anyway. One day, long ago, a daring young flyer from Wichita devised a plan that made his fellow flyers cringe.
