GERRY, when shot down over the German lines, had succeeded in making that "some sort of landing" which his comrades had reported.
There was an axiom, taught in the training camps to give confidence to cadets, which said that when a pilot once gets his wheels squarely on the ground, he will not be killed, though his machine may be badly smashed. Gerry, in his landing, had tested this axiom to its utmost; for he had had sufficient control of his ship, at the last, to put his wheels square to the ground; and though his machine was wholly wrecked, he was not killed. He was painfully shaken and battered; but so excellently was his ship planned to protect the pilot in a "crash," that he was not even seriously injured. Indeed, after the German soldiers dragged him out he was able to stand—and was quite able, so the German intelligence officers decided, to undergo an ordeal intended to make him divulge information.
This ordeal failed, as it failed with all brave men taken prisoners; and Gerry was given escort out of the zone of the armies and put upon a train for a German prison camp. With him were an American infantry lieutenant and two French officers.
The Germans held, at that time, nearly two million
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