"Wake up, Bill, there's a big fish on your line." "I should worry," replied Bill as he lay on his back on the bank of the McKenzie River. "Let him do the worrying. I am having a marvelous time just lying here thinking how wonderful it is to be here in the Oregon woods. Perhaps in a day or two I will get sufficiently accustomed to the big outdoors, the gigantic trees and the wildlife to get enthusiastic over a fish. In the meantime, let him bite." Bill Bruce and Bob Finch were officers in the United States Army Air Service. They had been boyhood friends in Flower City, Long Island. At the outbreak of the World War they had enlisted as Flying Cadets and had been sent to the Ground School at the University of California, at Berkeley. They had both finished the ground work and then completed their flying training at the aviation field near Lake Charles, Louisiana.