Cole and fellow squadron member Lieutenant Roy Maxwell Drummond attacked six enemy aircraft that were threatening to bomb Allied cavalry, scattering their formation and chasing them back to their own lines. Both airmen were awarded the Military Cross for their actions; Cole's citation was published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 16 August 1917: The day after the action that earned him the Military Cross, Cole was flying a Martinsyde G.100 "Elephant" over Tel el Sheria when he was hit by ground fire and forced to crash land behind enemy lines; after setting his aircraft alight he was picked up and rescued by Captain Richard Williams. On 26 June, following an eight-plane raid on Turkish Fourth Army headquarters in Jerusalem, Cole and another pilot suffered engine seizures while undertaking a similar rescue of a downed comrade; all three airmen were forced to walk through no man's land before being picked up by an Australian Light Horse patrol. Western Front Promoted to captain in August 1917, Cole was posted to France as a flight commander with No. 2 Squadron AFC (also known until 1918 as No. 68 Squadron RFC). Flying S.E.5 fighters on the Western Front, he was credited with destroying or sending out of control ten enemy aircraft between July and October 1918, making him an ace. In a single sortie over the Lys Valley on 19 August, Cole shot down two German fighters and narrowly avoided being shot down himself immediately afterwards, when he was attacked by five Fokker Triplanes that were being pursued by Allied Bristol Fighters. On 24 September, he led into battle a patrol of fifteen S.E.5s that destroyed or damaged eight German fighters over Haubourdin and Pérenchies, claiming one Pfalz D.III for himself. Cole was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions on 7 October 1918, when he led No. 2 Squadron through "a tornado of anti-aircraft fire" in a major assault on transport infrastructure in Lille. During the raid he successfully bombed a goods engine and a troop train, and put several anti-aircraft batteries out of action, before leading his formation back to base at low level. The announcement and accompanying citation for his decoration was gazetted on 8 February 1919: Between the wars Returning to Australia in February 1919, Cole briefly spent time as a civilian before accepting a commission in the Australian Air Corps, the short-lived successor to the