Grisly Account of World War 1 Air Combat Over Verdun

Stealth Hunter · 05-30-08, 02:40 AM

This comes from "Au Ciel de Verdun". Found a couple of sentences that came from it from an old web page I'd printed in 1999. Here's what I found:

"It got even uglier. Bernard Lafont in his candid book, Au Ciel de Verdun, detailed the brutal side of the air war. One time, a Caudron bomber force-landed at his aerodrome. When he and his friends came out to see it, they discovered that the Caudron's gunner had been shot in the head. The pilot, Lafont noted, was unhurt but quite shaken as he was 'covered with blood, {his} clothes and face, for in the wind of the motors, the blood that poured out of the passenger's wound lashed him.'

Another time, Lafont's squadron commander assigned him to burial detail. He spent his days recovering the mutilated bodies of his comrades. Once, after a nighttime crash, Lafont arrived at the crash site the next morning and noted:

'It is Senain. He received three bullets in the head, which exploded like rotten fruit; brains and blood trickle on the face and clothes. The helmet moves on nothing more than a broken skull.'

Another time he recovered the body of a Farman crewman, who had fallen to his death from his airplane:

'The second fell on the roof of the house. I clearly heard the dull sound of the body when it was crushed. Flouc!
. . .
The body was recovered from the roof, entirely broken, shattered, and shapeless and without rigidity like a heap of nothing more than ooze.'

Clearly, the air war over Verdun was not for the faint of heart."

Unnerving to say the least, but not surprising. I think my favorite thing about films about dogfighting is the neat trail of bullets that dots the plane, not an incoherent and disrupted spread of them through the wood and canvas; cracked ribs, torn canvas, broken wingspars.

05-30-08, 02:40 AM	#1
Stealth Hunter Silent Hunter Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Y'ha-Nthlei Posts: 4,262 Downloads: 19 Uploads: 0	Grisly Account of World War 1 Air Combat Over Verdun This comes from "Au Ciel de Verdun". Found a couple of sentences that came from it from an old web page I'd printed in 1999. Here's what I found: "It got even uglier. Bernard Lafont in his candid book, Au Ciel de Verdun, detailed the brutal side of the air war. One time, a Caudron bomber force-landed at his aerodrome. When he and his friends came out to see it, they discovered that the Caudron's gunner had been shot in the head. The pilot, Lafont noted, was unhurt but quite shaken as he was 'covered with blood, {his} clothes and face, for in the wind of the motors, the blood that poured out of the passenger's wound lashed him.' Another time, Lafont's squadron commander assigned him to burial detail. He spent his days recovering the mutilated bodies of his comrades. Once, after a nighttime crash, Lafont arrived at the crash site the next morning and noted: 'It is Senain. He received three bullets in the head, which exploded like rotten fruit; brains and blood trickle on the face and clothes. The helmet moves on nothing more than a broken skull.' Another time he recovered the body of a Farman crewman, who had fallen to his death from his airplane: 'The second fell on the roof of the house. I clearly heard the dull sound of the body when it was crushed. Flouc! . . . The body was recovered from the roof, entirely broken, shattered, and shapeless and without rigidity like a heap of nothing more than ooze.' Clearly, the air war over Verdun was not for the faint of heart." Unnerving to say the least, but not surprising. I think my favorite thing about films about dogfighting is the neat trail of bullets that dots the plane, not an incoherent and disrupted spread of them through the wood and canvas; cracked ribs, torn canvas, broken wingspars.