In Thomson' words;
Because of the sporadic, but occasionally effective, moonlight bombing by the Germans, the planes at our airfield were parked along the hedge of a pasture at night, while we twenty or so pilots had been trundled off some distance away to sleep in an abandoned chateau. We shared our airfield with the 4th Australian Squadron, who flew Camels and did night interceptor work. While coming in from patrol the night before, one of the Aussies missed his mark and set his kite down on my SE5. So, on this patrol I had to use a borrowed plane which began to prove sluggish and I fell behind in my flight.
Unaware of my plight, Clements and Swazi continued on while I engaged in the ancient debate between valor and wisdom. I found that by zooming, I could finally get my plane up to 17,000 feet. I was congratulating myself on reaching them when Clements for reasons unknown to me, put his nose down and did not pull out until I had lost some 5000 feet of hard earned height. He started up again and I attempted to follow, but couldn’t reach him. I had just about decided that the best place for a lame engine was in our shop when out of the sun came four Fokkers. I was cut off from our lines and my mates. The jig was up and I sailed recklessly into them and open up with my Vickers with the aluminum clips from the belt sailing past me in a stream.
The rest of the story and Thomson's uniforms and artifacts can be viewed on this thread posted in the "Groupings" section.
http://www.usmilitar...d...c=29504&hl=
