Frank didn't fly straight north to his rendevous with the drachens. Instead he turned and flew south to take care of some business first.
The American balloon company at Souilly heard the angry buzz of a Hisso and looked up to see a familiar sight - Frank Luke's Spad 13 exploding over the treetops at low altitude. Frank circled the field once, then dropped something from his cockpit. A man ran out to the package and unwrapped it. Inside was a message: "Watch those three Hun ballons along the Meuse. LUKE."
It was a cloudy twilight, but the ceiling was high. The balloons bobbed in the chilly, deepening gray light, their observers peering out along the front, the gunners below scanning the skies for the American scourge of the German balloon line. And above, dipping in and out of the cloud cover, a fighter cap of eight to 10 Fokkers waited.
In the failing light, Luke's lone Spad slipped along the front almost unnoticed. It was probably the white bursts of anti-aircraft fire that alerted the Fokkers, which split into two flights and rolled off into a diving attack. Frank had hoped to make it to at least one of the balloons before the fighters arrived, but this time they had him. There would be no free shot this time.
For as long as five minutes - an eternity of aerial combat - Luke and the Fokker D-7s danced a deadly pirouette above the French countryside. Had there been a larger formation, German commanders would have ordered the winching down of their precious drachens. But the odds were too long for that one Spad to pose any real threat. Despite the presence of a determined attacker, the balloon line remained aloft, spotting for the German guns as they pounded American troops on the move.
According to the affadavits of the French citizens of Murvaux, Frank destroyed two of the D-7s in this combat. This has never been confirmed, but nevertheless, by all accounts it was a spectacular combat.
Finally, it looked as if the end had arrived. The Spad faltered, stalled, spun and dropped wildly to earth. No one could survive that spin. It was just like ... it was just like the death spin at Issoudon May 1. The one everyone was sure had killed him. The one he had recovered from just in time to land in a wheat field.
And yet he recovered. The spin probably fooled the Fokkers, who turned to look for other work thousands of feet above. Frank Jr. righted his camouflaged Spad, zoomed up over the outstretched branches of trees and set his sights now on the first of the three balloons.
His marksmanship was uncanny now. Quick bursts chattered from his twin 11mm Vickers. Incendiary bullets filled the bag, igniting the hydrogen inside. Luke skimmed through the trail of smoke as he rolled over to set the snub nose of his Spad on a line with his second victim. Again the big Vickers rattled. Again the 11mm slugs found their way. Again the resounding explosion, the gut-churning fireball, the sudden black smoke.
He throttled back, stood the Spad on its wingtip and swung around abruptly for his final attack run. The Fokkers had not recovered in time - perhaps taking an intercept path expecting to catch the wounded Spad as it raced for home. But now the ground fire intensified. Luke struggled through it, flying erratic to throw off the gunners, boring in on his prey.
In the past two weeks, dozens of Germans had fired thousands of rounds at the Arizona Balloon Buster. Thousands of rounds, none of which ever found their target. But Luke's days as a fugitive from the law of averages were over. As the Hisso strained its way toward the final balloon, a concussive, quick series of clanging, ripping blows rocked the Spad. The rpms dropped slightly - it was an engine on the way out - but that wasn't the worst of it. One of the thousands of German bullets had finally found a home, buried deep within his shoulder.
Frank was in trouble, but he wasn't finished. He pulled the nose of his plane back up, set it on target, and pulled the triggers. Tracers spun wildly around the balloon at first, but the corrective fire hit the mark and the rounds kept coming. Below on the ground the crews worked frantically to winch it down, but there wasn't enough time. Frank Luke's last balloon quivered, heaved and convulsed fire.
The earth was opening up for him now, but he still wasn't ready to give up. Almost gliding now, the hit-and-miss Hisso descended over the cobbled streets of little Murvaux, a small farming village where a platoon of German infantry was garrisoned. Frank spotted it as he passed over the town in search of an emergency landing field. The soldiers were too much of a temptation, and he opened up on them, killing half a dozen of the surprised deutsche before clearing the tile roofs of the village and putting his wheels down in a churchyard beside a stream. The Spad splintered and shrieked before it slid to a resting place.
His ruined shoulder cradled roughly against his body, Frank spilled out of his plane and worked his way to the nearby stream. He drank from the rill with his good hand, but it wasn't enough liquid to replace the blood that flowed from his shoulderblade.
Now the German platoon neared the courtyard and arrayed itself in a skirmish line around the lone aviator who had only minutes before slain six of their comrades-in-arms. At the sound of their orders, the blonde American jerked around. The end was at hand. As he had promised the state senator in Phoenix, he would never be captured.
The order came for him to surrender. In reply, Frank raised his service pistol and fired an unsteady shot toward his enemies.
Their response was quick and effective. A fusillade slammed into the body of Frank Luke Jr., and he dropped to ground, offering his blood to the dark cemetery earth of Europe, ground stained over centuries by the blood of many a young traveller who came only to fight and die.
The people of Murvaux were moved by this unknown hero, this American flyer who had fought so spectacularly, then chosen death over captivity. But the Germans - angry at the loss of their comrades - kept the civilians at bay. The infantrymen stripped of everything except a cheap watch, then dumped his still-loose-limbed, barefoot, bloody body onto an open manure wagon. When townspeople brought straw or sheets to cover the body, their officers shooed them away, leaving the corpse of Frank's once beautiful body defiled for all to see.
When they were ready, the Germans dropped Frank's body in an unmarked hole.
A few hours later and thousands of miles away, Tillie Luke would step out of her door and see the lilies that Frank had planted blooming in the shape of a cross - five months out of season. She would drop to her knees like a quail caught on the wing, the instant shock and grief and knowing washing over her, pounding her down. The American Army carried Frank Jr. as missing for three months. His mother knew the first morning.
Epilogue
To the men of the trenches, Frank Luke Jr. was already a spectral legend before he disappeared behind the flaming forms of three German drachen. The rumors circulated after his death that Frank was merely hiding out, living with the French and refueling anywhere he could find the help he needed to keep his one-man war going. Shorty mentioned this possibility in his journal two days after Luke's death.
Across the flight line, Frank's death opened the door to Eddie Rickenbacker's march to history. The former Indy driver relentless added to his score, finally passing Frank's total and building up to 26 confirmed victories. He reclaimed the title of Ace of Aces, and went on to a prosperous career that included lobbying Congress for his own Congressional Medal of Honor.
Luke's came posthumously, but it required no lobbying. Once the people of Murvaux provided their affadavits, the context of Luke's final flight made perfect sense. It was as stunning a feat of arms as the war in the air produced. Capt. Grant himself wrote up the citation for Luke's CMH.
In February 1919, an American graves registration officer heard about an American aviator in an unmarked grave at Murvaux. He exhumed the body, and investigators soon confirmed its identity. He was buried in the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery at Ramagne.
