"This fellow must be as quick as a cat,"
he thought. "I wonder if I would have had sense enough to grasp the
situation in the way he did? Well, if I get in a similar fix I will
have some idea of what to do, thanks to him."
Weeks afterward Jimmy heard that story of Parker's fight with five
Boche planes from another source. He then learned that Parker had
omitted an interesting feature of the tale. Before Immelmann swooped
on him, Parker had smashed up and sent to ground two of the four
Boche machines which had originally attacked him.
The Brighton boys soon learned that the most outstanding characteristic
of veteran fliers was modesty. A new chivalry had sprung up with the
development of the air service. Every successful flier had to be a
thorough sportsman to win through, and never did the boys meet a real
veteran at the, game who would tell of his own successes.
The general view of the flying men at the front was that the man who
did the prosaic work of daily reconnaissance and got back safe and
sound, without frequent spectacular combats and hair-breadth escapes
that made good telling, was just as much of a hero and took his life
in his hands just as surely, as did the man who went out to individual
duel with an adversary, and accomplished some stunt that had a spice
of novelty in it.
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