"Green Balls" : The Adventures of a Night-Bomber

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"Green Balls"

"Green Balls"

The Adventures of a Night-Bomber

By

Paul Bewsher

William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London

1919

_To

My Faithful Friend,

WHO DURING THE WAR PROTECTED ME FROM THE ENEMY AND A THOUSAND TIMES SAVED MY LIFE,

The Night Sky._

Preface.

Lest it should appear that in this book I have worked the personal pronoun to death, I wish to explain my reasons for describing always my own feelings, my own experiences, my own thoughts. I feel that the lay public who did not fly in the war, and knew little of its excitements and monotonies, would rather hear of the experiences of one person, related by himself, than merely a journalistic record of events which had come to his notice. Therefore I have tried faithfully to describe the sensations, the strange inexplicable fears, the equally inexplicable fearlessness, of a desk-bound London youth, pitchforked in a moment into the turmoil of war, and into a hitherto unknown, untried occupation--bombing at night from the air.

Those who read this book will never see me--I will be to them but a name--so I feel that my egotism is only an apparent one, and that I am justified in slightly transgressing the service tradition of personal silence in order to give as vivid a portrayal as possible of a branch of war which, in England at any rate, influenced the general public more than any other.

The fragments of verse quoted at the beginning of each chapter are taken from the author's poems, 'The Bombing of Bruges,' published by Messrs Hodder & Stoughton, and 'The Dawn Patrol,' published by Messrs Erskine Macdonald.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE I. THE DAWN PATROL 1 II. TO FRANCE 23 III. THE FIRST RAID 48 IV. UP THE COAST 91 V. COASTWISE LIGHTS 109 VI. BRUGES 148 VII. DAWN TO DAWN 187 VIII. THE LONG TRAIL 236 IX. TRAGEDY 260 X. WITH A KITE BALLOON AT THE DARDANELLES 288

"Green Balls."

I.

The Dawn Patrol.

"Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea, Where, underneath, the restless waters flow, Silver and cold and slow...."

--_The Dawn Patrol._

Somebody shakes me by my shoulder, and I wake to the consciousness of a dark room and a determined steward.

"Four o'clock, sir!"

I get out of my warm bed, very unwillingly, and dress lightly in a white cricket shirt, grey flannel trousers, and a blue pea-jacket and a muffler, and go out of the hut to the garage. Dawn is just breaking. The sky is still bright with stars, and a moon is drowsily hanging like a golden gong in the south-west. The air is extraordinarily fresh and cold, and soon I am tearing joyfully through it on a clamorous motor-bicycle. Down the road through the marshes I rush on my mile-long ride to the sheds.

Outside the office I dismount and go inside the bare room, with its charts and its long table, and meet the sleepy-eyed duty-officer, who is wearing "gum-boots" and an overcoat over his pyjamas, and is obviously looking forward to settling down once more to sleep. The duty-pilot comes in after him, with a flying-cap on his head, and a muffler round his neck, and a pair of gloves in his hand. A welcome cup of tea is brought in by a massive bluejacket, and then I snatch up a life-belt, a pair of binoculars, the Thermos flask and Malted Milk tablets, my charts, and a few odd necessaries, and, accompanied by the pilot, I go over to the slipway, at the end of which floats the seaplane, with its wide white wings reflecting the pale light of dawn. A group of men in great rubber boots stand in the water holding the wings.

When I get to the edge of the water I climb on to the back of one, and he wades out into the water until I can stand on the float and climb up into a seat in front of the pilot.

It is an ample seat--wide enough for three people--and I sit on a soft cushion over a petrol-tank. The wireless sets, in varnished wooden boxes, are fixed in position in front of me. My machine-gun is ready to be fixed at a moment's notice, and I settle myself into the seat and put down my various impedimenta and wait for the start.

The pilot in the back seat examines his instruments, and soon there is a hissing noise as he turns on the compressed air. The propeller in front of me moves round slowly. The engine fires and begins to start with a roaring noise.

The propeller vanishes as it gathers speed, and I can see straight ahead with an uninterrupted view.

The engine is tested with men hanging on to the wings. The pilot waves his hand, the men leave go, and we begin to move out across the wide harbour with its grey battleships and lean destroyers, and merchant ships painted in strange patches.

The moon is growing paler now, and nearly all the stars have vanished before the silver of the dawn. On our right is the outline of a red-roofed harbour town, quiet and asleep. On the left are the great sheds of the station, and the low green hills beyond. We face the wind. The engine recommences its roar, and the seaplane begins to move quickly across the water with a steady noise. Faster and faster it rushes on, then begins to leap from wave-top to wave-top until we rise into the air, and move at a rushing pace just over the pale oily water.

The roar of the motor is soon registered no more by my ear, lulled by its perpetuity. I find it glorious to be winging my way into the heart of the dawn over the silver water. Above a long floating boom we pass, and turn east towards the wide misty level of the sea. Ahead of me in the haze burns a red-eyed sun, looking hot and only half awake.

Far to my left and far to my right is a faint grey coast-line as we move up the widening estuary. I bring out a little blue-covered note-book, and sharpen a pencil and prepare to record the name, nationality, and type of every ship, with a brief note of its cargo, course, and characteristics.

Through the haze suddenly appears a little group of ships anchored round a stout red lightship, with its great lantern at the top of the mast and the cheery white-painted name on its side.

My pencil is very busy as we sweep round in circles, while I make notes of the different types of ships. Neutral ships being luridly decorated with painted colours and their names in enormous white letters, are easily recorded. It is somehow very dramatic to see a great steamer loom through the mist, and to read _Jan Petersen-Norge_ or _Hector-Sverige_ on its black sides as it sweeps majestically under the seaplane, its churning propeller leaving a wide lane of white bubbling foam.

It gives such a splendid idea of far-flung commerce--of nation linked up with nation by these loaded ships. You realise how the forests of Scandinavia have been despoiled to fill these decks with the towering piles of clean fair wood. There is something in the passing of the great ship proclaiming its nationality and origin in such bold characters that seems like the triumphant note of an organ.

Yet these signs are the heartfelt appeal of an apprehensive and vulnerable vessel, hoping against hope that the vivid stripes of colour and the proclamation of nationality will protect it from the cruel, greedy submarine.

Then we leave the little crowd of anchored ships below and sail on into the mist to the lonelier levels of the sea. Now and then we overtake some heavily-laden freighter, low in the water, pounding outwards on its hazardous journey, its plain unlettered sides showing that it is a vessel of the Allies.

In front of me I wind a little handle. This causes the wireless set to connect with the engine, and the little motor revolves rapidly. I press the brass key, and a blue spark spits and splutters inside one of the boxes. Then I call up the seaplane station far behind me in the mist and record my position. Putting the telephone-receiver over my ears, I hear above the roar of our engines the sharp staccato signals of some warship below us on the grey sea. As I move a lever round a series of studs I hear it more clearly or more faintly as I get more or less in "tune" with it. Then I remove the receiver, having tested the wireless instruments and found them correct, and once more look over the side to the chilly sea.

We fly over three or four little trawlers steaming slowly along, dredging the waterway for mines. Then over two leaning masts of some wreck, which pierce the water like thin lances. Next we pass above a Belgian relief ship, advertising its nature by means of innumerable placards and flags and colours, which are yet not sufficient to keep it immune from the Germans and their unreliable promises. Now it is a familiar line of mud-hoppers carrying a load of dredged mud to some deep dumping-ground. Now over a couple of lean grey torpedo-boats, nosing everywhere, carefully and suspiciously, protecting the Channels.

So at times over ever-varying craft, and at times over grey wet loneliness, we travel on in our long patrol, until at last the squat red shape of a lightship appears through the haze, and we know that we have reached the limit of our outward journey. We sweep low over the isolated vessel, wave our hands to the men on board, and start to return home by a different route, and roar on over mile after mile of water glittering in the sun, which is slowly dissipating the mist of early morning.

Soon a group of ships are met steaming along towards us, and I recognise the vessels which I had seen anchored together waiting for the dawn. They are left behind us, and we regain the land from which we started. Over the sleeping seaport town we pass, and can see its red and brown roofs lit by the sun, and its empty streets. Then we sweep over the harbour, the pilot turns the machine round to face the wind, and the roar of the engine stops. We begin to glide down slowly, drawing nearer and nearer to the water. Just above the surface of the glittering waves we rush, touch it with a long splash, and slowly pull up and stop, floating once more in the harbour. The engines roar out again, and we "taxi" quickly over the little waves in long even jolts towards the slipway, where the men are waiting to help us ashore. When we are alongside they walk out to us in their waterproof thigh-boots and carry me on to the slipway.

I walk quickly through the hangars across the grass-covered lawn to the office, and sitting down at a typewriter begin to transcribe at once the notes I have written in my little blue book.

6.40. British cargo steamer, 5000 tons, steering S.W. Two patrol boats steering E.

6.45. Norwegian wood steamer _Christiania_, 3000 tons, steering W. in East Deep--

I write, and one after another I visualise the vessels as I record their positions for the benefit of the authorities.

As soon as the report is finished I give it to a messenger, who takes it down to the motor-boat which is waiting to carry it to a warship. Then I rush across the marsh on my motor-bicycle to the mess, and to a late but welcome breakfast.

The small amount of impression left by any particular flight is remarkable. If in the middle of the breakfast some one had said, "You have been fifty miles out to sea, charging through the air at sixty miles an hour, this morning!" I should almost have been surprised, and might have denied it. After your return you quickly forget the voyage you have made. I found the same in night-bombing. You are called away at dinner after beginning your soup. You go to Ostend, drop bombs, and return and carry on with the fish. By the time your are helping yourself to the vegetables you have a vague remembrance of a disturbed dinner, but little more.

You have a distant memory of innumerable searchlights waving like long weeds in an evil pool, and of the dim sweep of the Belgian coast, with the star-shells of Nieuport; but it is like the faint remembrance of a weird dream, and little more.

This brief description of a seaplane patrol is an introduction to the portrayal of a night-flier's existence, because these flights over the sea were the prelude to my flying among the stars, and I found in them the strange allurement that I found later, in an even greater degree, in my night journeys.

It is a glorious sensation to roar on, a few hundred feet above the sea, with a white clinging mist all around in a vapoury circle, knowing by instinct where you are, and looking ahead for the little chequered buoy or red lightship to appear at its due moment; to hear the pilot's shouted inquiry, and to write "The Cat" or "Deep Sands" or "King's Channel" or "Long Deep," or one of those splendid-sounding sailor's names, on a piece of paper for him; to fly low over the lonely lightship, and wave a dawn greeting to the watchmen on the deck; to see a long British submarine rise dripping, to welcome the morning, from its all-night sleep far below the restless waters; to fly like a gull, flashing white wings towards the flaming East.

I found the same delight in poring over my charts and drawing a line right out to sea and back again, as later I found in checking on the map the villages and bridges over which I passed on my way to Bruges and Ghent.

Once or twice I had a forced landing at sea. One incident is peculiarly vivid in my memory. Lightly clad, I flew on the seaplane about fifteen miles from land. There was a flaming sunset, and it was growing dark. We were about to turn when the engine began to splutter and pop. The pilot tried to cure its disease, but it was in vain. He throttled the engine back and slowly glided down. The few scattered ships and the dim line of coast slowly disappeared as we drew nearer to the surface of the water, and when we finally landed we were out of sight of any ship at all.

The pilot climbed on to the floats and tried to start the engine again by swinging the propeller, but with no success. Meanwhile it was growing darker. The red and orange splendours of the West were rapidly dying away before the creeping shadows of the East. The calm oily water reflected strangely the afterglow. As I sat on the float, the water lapped melodiously against it, and the shoals of jellyfish which passed by seemed to be jeering at me.

There were no ships in sight, and a cold night wind began to come across the quivering, shining surface of the sea, and the horizon vanished in a faint haze.

The pilot loaded his Very pistol with a cartridge and fired it. A great ball of white fire sailed through the air and dropped hissing in the water.

Meanwhile, in our scant clothes we were getting cold. Soon it would be quite dark, and we had only half a dozen signal lights left, while we were slowly drifting, we knew not whither, with the tide.

Every quarter of an hour the pilot fired a white Very's light. I found it very lonely sitting in the drifting seaplane, surrounded by a misty circle of water, with darkness creeping over the sea.

After some time we saw, far away, a red moving light. At once the pilot fired another signal. The red light moved on and drew nearer to us. Soon we could see the shape of the boat on which it was, and to our joy realised that it was a British destroyer. After a good deal of manoeuvring it drew alongside us. We hailed it and shouted our explanations. A boat was lowered from the destroyer, and rowed over to us carrying a hawser. When we had fastened this to the seaplane we got into the boat, and were rowed to the waiting vessel.

The commander explained that we had landed in the midst of sandbanks, and that it had been a difficult matter to draw near to us.

Soon we were dining in the little mess, and we were very glad to get under cover again, and to have something to eat. The "skipper" was most hospitable, and afterwards, I am ashamed to say, we played "Slippery Ann," and won some money off him.

At last we arrived once more in the harbour. A motor-boat left the slipway, and we were towed ingloriously ashore at about 11 o'clock.

There is an element of uncertainty in seaplaning, as in every branch of flying. There is the case of a seaplane which landed at sea with engine trouble. A German submarine came alongside and took the two unfortunate airmen aboard, and sank the seaplane, so that shortly afterwards the two officers who had been flying through the air were under the surface of the sea.

I remember another incident that happened during the attack on Verdun, which will demonstrate how an extraordinary chain of adventures may come swiftly and unexpectedly to an airman engaged on the most normal routine work.

One day five machines were to fly from one aerodrome in France to another one about fifty miles away. Both the aerodromes were well behind the lines. The leading machine was piloted by a man who knew the country "inside out," and so the last man of the formation knew that if he were to follow his lead he would be all right. It was an extremely cloudy day, and when they had drawn near to the new aerodrome, the last pilot lost sight of the other four machines in the clouds. He flew on for a little while, and climbed up through the barrier of vapour until he was above it. Then, to his joy, he saw ahead of him the four machines, which were flying several miles away, resembling little black dots.

After a time he drew close to them, and, to his great astonishment, they dived down on him, firing their machine-guns. Suddenly he saw that they were marked with the German mark--the black cross. Realising that he was hopelessly outnumbered, as he was on a comparatively slow machine, he put his nose down and tried to get away. He was flying east towards the German lines, but he could not turn, for every time he looked back he saw these four machines just behind his tail, firing frantically at him.

At last he outdistanced them, and they turned away. He flew on under the deep blue of the sky, and over the sunlit white fields of cloudland, which lay like a tumbled carpet of cotton-wool beneath him, as far as he could see.

He looked at his watch, and saw that he had been flying east for twenty minutes, so he turned and flew due west, towards the French lines. He flew for another ten minutes to make sure of regaining his own lines, and then, throttling his engine, he glided down towards the barrier of cloud. He reached it, and flew for several minutes through damp grey vapour, and at last burst through, and saw the sunless world below.

He looked round for an aerodrome in which to land, and in a few minutes saw a line of hangars some miles distant. At once he turned towards them, and when he was a mile away, he throttled his engine and began to glide down in order to land. He sailed just over the roofs of the hangars, floated a few feet over the grass, and was just about to land when he saw that the machines lined up by the sheds were marked with the black cross. It was a German aerodrome.

Even as he started up his engine and rushed across the grass, the German mechanics climbed into the back seats of the aeroplanes and began to fire at him, while other men started up the engines. Very soon several machines were pursuing him. He dare not climb, for he would lose speed, and would not be able to escape. He flew on, due west, twenty feet or so from the ground, dodging round farms and trees, and now and then jumping over houses, while a mile behind him the German scouts followed him in this strange steeplechase.

He realised now that the wind high up had been blowing strongly due east. It had taken him a long way over the lines, and so he had not allowed himself enough time to get back before he had dived through the cloud-bank.

Again he managed to escape in the chase, and left the pursuing aeroplanes far behind. Ahead of him he could see a line of curling smoke and vapour, with here and there little white puffs of smoke in the air. He was drawing near the lines, and evidently there was an action of some kind in progress. Soon he reached the belt of desolation, of broken houses, shell-torn trees, and devastated fields. Machine-guns on the ground began to fire at him. He could hear their staccato hammering, and could see the flaming streak of the bullets passing by him.

Now he could hear, too, above the roar of the engines, the thud and crash of the shells and of the guns. Everywhere below were great spouts of smoke and earth leaping up as shell after shell burst on the ground. The air was full of the shrapnel barrage against the infantry. Once he had a sudden inspiration to pull back his control-stick. The machine shot up into the air, and he saw just beneath the smoke-burst of a shrapnel shell. If he had continued on a straight course he would have been hit by it, and probably brought down.

Below him he saw something extremely interesting. In the sunken roads and shattered fortifications near Douaumont were masses of grey-green soldiers. The Germans apparently were gathered for an attack. He noted where these men were, and flew on across the shell-torn area behind the French lines, and landed as soon as he could. The machine ran into a shell-hole and crashed. He crawled out of the wreckage and stumbled across the churned-up ground to the nearest headquarters and reported what he had seen. Immediately action was taken by the French, the counterattack was forestalled, and the whole course of the battle was changed.

Soon afterwards the airman reached the aerodrome without his machine, and found he had been reported as missing.

That such an extraordinary chain of adventures can come to a man unexpectedly shows vividly the uncertainty and the romance of flying. The night-bomber, as he leaves his aerodrome, never knows whether, when dawn comes, he will be in his bed at the camp, or in a Dutch guard-room, or hiding in a German wood.

For several months I led an agreeable placid life at the seaplane station. At dawn or at dusk I flew over the sea on my long solitary flights. During the day I wandered round the station, learning about the machines and the engines, and spending many hours in the wireless hut, with the vulcanite receivers over my ears, hearing ship after ship sending its messages in a variety of notes--some high-pitched whines; some urgent, impetuous; some tremendously loud--great cruisers thundering their unquestionable commands; some faint and remote from lonely vessels far away on distant seas.

Wireless telegraphy is a romantic thing. I remember one night walking down a path at a Naval Air Service Station in England and passing a lighted window in a little hut. Some one handed to me through the window a pair of telephone receivers attached to a twisted cord. I put the receiver over my ears and heard the regular scratch, scratch, scratch of the Morse Code.

The operator inside told me that it was a German merchant sending messages from a wireless station outside Berlin to a friend in Madrid, and in that quiet dim path in England I was overhearing their conversation.

One day I was unexpectedly summoned to the Commanding Officer of the Squadron. He handed to me a printed sheet of paper. To my surprise it ordered me to report to No. X Wing (Handley-Page Squadron).

I could hardly realise it at first. I thought that many months of this quiet dreamy life lay before me. I expected no transfer, and at any rate not to this most strange of all squadrons. In those days a Handley-Page was a freak machine that was a topic of conversation in flying circles everywhere.

A Handley-Page then seemed a grotesque giant. There had been no intermediate steps between small machines and this Colossus, which rumour had it could carry twenty-two men. It was as though a fifty-storey sky-scraper, as large as the Woolworth Building in New York, had suddenly been erected in London.

I had seen, at my training aerodrome, the first of these great machines looming in its hangar. I had clambered over it with astonishment. I had been one of a large crowd which had stood on the aerodrome, and had wondered, as the great structure moved clumsily across the grass, if it really would mount in the air. I had seen it rise and roar round the aerodrome with its deep, double throbbing note, and had gone away full of excitement, proud to have been there.

Little did I imagine that I was to be on the very first which flew to France, and that I was to be on the pioneer squadron of the gigantic night-bombers.

So when I received my orders, I packed my bags a little bemusedly, and with a sad heart left the little harbour, the rows of seaplane sheds, the mess, and my friends--taking away many a memory of quiet days in the marshes, and of almost ecstatic dawn patrols over the grey and silver levels of the North Sea.

I was going on to unknown destinies and unknown destinations. I knew the familiar sensation every man in the service going to a new place must feel so often--of leaving a certain existence and going on towards an uncertain one.

Although I did not know it, I was going to a year and a half of adventure, of travel, of war and excitement--I was going to a romantic and strangely appealing life, full of successes and disappointments, full of dreams and realities. The gods had smiled on me, and were leading me to the fantastic and fascinating work which I would have chosen above all others in the world--Night Bombing.

II.

To France!

"The wings are stretched: the mighty engines roar; And from this loved land I must depart."

--_Crossing the Channel._

When I arrived at the Handley-Page aerodrome I realised that, for the second time in the war, I was to have the good fortune to be attached to a pioneering branch of the Air Service, and that, instead of going to a cut-and-dried task, I was to assist in operations which had been untried and were entirely experimental. I had been, as a second-class air mechanic, a balloon hand on the very first kite balloon used by the British, and had accompanied it to the Dardanelles on a tramp steamer early in 1915. Now I was to be the first observer on the huge night-bombers, which were to prove of such tremendous value to the British.

I found the squadron to be as a new-born babe, blinking at the light of day. In a couple of vast green hangars slept two gigantic machines. The skeleton of a third hangar reared its wooden lattice-work against the deep August sky, and everywhere lay heaps of material and stores.

A few officers were already there--among them the squadron commander, whom I soon learnt to know as a giant among men from a commanding point of view. He was one of those splendid leaders that are rare, but are never to be forgotten when they are met--the type of man who, by sheer personal magnetism, could make a body of men achieve almost impossible feats.

On one occasion he wished to move an enormous hangar, complete with its canvas curtains and covers, a hundred feet long and forty feet across, about four times as big as an average cottage. The whole was extremely heavy, and weighed many tons. The C.O. called a bugler, and the call _Clear Lower Deck_ was sounded. When every hand, from cook to clerk, had fallen in, he distributed the men round the hangar, gave the order, "One, two, three, _Lift_," and marched the unwieldy structure across the ground to its new position in a few minutes. In this way he rearranged the whole aerodrome.

The C.O.--"_our_ C.O.," as we called him--would never call on his officers or men to do work he would not be prepared to do himself. One day, in the stress of action on the Western Front, an order came to the squadron to undertake an operation which meant grave danger to the airmen taking part in it. The C.O. decided, against regulations, to pilot the leading machine himself. He never told the senior command, and he knew that he would probably never return to receive censure. However, he would not send out his officers on a dangerous task without himself taking the same risk. Fortunately, the orders were cancelled, but his heroism was not forgotten.

Quickly the station expanded. More and more officers and men arrived. More and more machines landed, and were stowed in the newly-erected hangars.

I soon had my first flight in a Handley-Page, standing on a platform in the back, looking below as though I were on a high balcony. In front of me the two little heads of the pilot and observer protruded from the nose; on either side were the two great engines between the wings; behind me was the thirty foot of tapering tail, with the great double tail-plane vibrating at the end.

One evening I went on the most beautiful flight I ever made. For the only time I can remember, I saw the world look lovely from the air. We were flying in the heart of an early autumn evening, and the west was ablaze with pale gold and decked with rose-tinted clouds. On the country beneath me lay a rich mantle of blue mist. The whole air was warm with the glowing colours of the sunset. Over the machine, over the face of the pilot, and over my hands lay a faintly luminous hue of amber-red. Below there stretched a view of field and farm, and wood and lane, enchanted by the sapphire haze. The world lay under a spell of exquisite beauty, and a tranquillity of peace which was sheer pain to see, so lovely was it. Here and there shone a light in some happy cottage, where the contented labourer sat beside the welcome fire with his wife and children. Far on the right lay the sea, dim and vast, and apprehensive of the night which was advancing with its banners of darkness from the east.

Silently we glided over the unreal world. The sunset faded slowly, and we sank into deeper and yet deeper blue. The gold crept from our faces and hands, and the solemn silence of the evening enveloped us more and more. Soon we drifted low over the trees, whose leaves quivered gently with the fragrant breeze of the twilight. The last shades of dusk turned the landscape into a sombre dream of scarce-seen hills, and the gloomy edge of a woodland. Over a field we floated gently, and ran softly over the dewy grass....

The earth has usually no beauty for the airman. Mountain peaks, valleys, ravines, and curving downs are absorbed in one flat plain, strangely patterned with dull brown and yellow and green shapes, with dark patches here and there for woods and white ribbons for roads; with black lines for railways, red blotches for villages, grey and brown stains for towns. A person who loves the beauty of nature, and has artistic sensibilities, should never fly. If he must, he should fly only at the edge of the evening, and should glide into the blue magic of the dusk.

Meanwhile, at the squadron, the days of preparation passed--days of superintending the erection of hangars, of sunny flights over the long surf-lined sands, of mushroom picking in the wind-blown grass of the rolling fields. October came, and with it the order for departure.

The great machine was prepared. Heavy tool-boxes, engine spares, tail trolleys, and a mass of material were packed into its capacious maw. The tanks were filled with petrol, oil, and water. The engines were tested again and again. The day came. A pile of luggage stood on the ground beneath the machine; farewells were said; gloves, goggles, boots, and flying caps were collected ... and it rained.

Back into its hangar went the machine. Back into the tents went the luggage. Back into the mess went the disappointed airmen.

For three or four days this happened, but at last a gentle breeze, a clear horizon, and a blue sky greeted the morning. Once again the suit-cases and trunks were packed inside the machine. I put my little tabby kitten into her basket and tied a handkerchief over the top, and lashed the whole on to the platform in the back of the aeroplane.

The six airmen dressed themselves in their sky-clothes and took their places--the C.O. at the wheel. A whistle was blown; farewells were shouted; the engines roared, and we mounted triumphantly into the air over the countryside of Thanet. For a time we circled over England, and saw the villages shrink to red flowers on the carpet of harvest gold and brown plough and dull green meadow land, which was fringed by the yellow and white line of the curving shore. The little haycocks became mushrooms; cows looked like little dots of white and black on the green fragments of the mosaic; and more and more the sea, the wide glittering sea, dominated the landscape.

Then the machine turned S.E. towards France. Looking ahead, with the glorious wind rushing across my face, I could see the three leather-helmeted heads of the pilot, the observer, and the officer in the front cockpit, and below them the shining Channel. Looking through the slats of the platform between my feet I could still see hedgerows and plump red farms. Then we passed over the cliffs, whose summits appeared to be on the same level as the sea, and below me I saw the waves.

I was leaving England behind! I had to look back over the tail to see the white line of the cliffs and the sweep of the Isle of Thanet coast from Birchington to Ramsgate. I began to feel a lump in my throat. I was not eager to look forward to see the first glimpse of France through the sea mist. My thoughts were full of the sadness of bereavement. I knew not what lay ahead--what France and war might bring me. I knew not how long I would be from my own well-known country, or even if I would ever return. Later on, after leave in England, I found no heart-sinkings when I left Dover on a destroyer--for I had grown used to leaving England--but now my departure was potent with sorrow. I felt almost inclined to fling out my arms to the fast-fading homeland.

At last it died away behind me, and France mocked me with its twin line of cliffs and sweep of coast. I lay down on the platform and wrote letters to be posted in Paris. Between the strips of wood on which I lay I could see the grey and silver sea far below me, and here and there a tiny boat, apparently motionless, though a thin line of white foam stretched behind it.

To my horror I suddenly became conscious of the kitten sitting beside me carefully cleaning her paws, and probably supremely unconscious that she was 6000 feet in the air, half-way across the Dover Straits. Apprehensive for her safety I gave her no time to learn her position, but quickly pushed her into the basket, and, undoing my flying coat and my muffler, I took off my tie, which I tied across the top of the basket to prevent the spirited young lady from emerging once more.

Now the machine was almost over the French coast, so I put the letter away and clambered on to my feet to look over the side. Though I was far from the ground, it was easy to tell that the country was an unfamiliar one. The houses had a different tint of red, the villages looked strange, and were arranged differently. The whole country looked peculiar and un-English. It was the opening gate of a new world and a new life.

Over sand-dunes and small pine-woods we roared. Etaples slowly passed us, with its wide estuary spanned by two bridges, and its huge hospital city. Over the mouth of the Somme, near Abbeville, we flew into the brown and yellow autumn land of France--above old chateaux and their withering parks; above little ugly villages; above long straight roads, lined with trees blown half-bare by the equinoctial gales.

I soon forgot my freezing feet in the interest of reading. As I grew more and more absorbed in 'The History of Mr Polly,' the thundering pulse of the engines and the slight vibration of the machine slipped from my consciousness. The everlasting anaesthetic of literature had rendered me unconscious of being in the air nearly a mile from the ground.

Suddenly the machine began to sway, and to "bump" a little. I stood up and saw that we were passing through the outskirts of a cloud-bank. Little patches of vapour appeared to rush by, though they probably were scarcely moving. The air grew perceptibly cooler, and every now and then the ground would be hidden, as the white vapour streaked by, under the wheels, in a misty blur. Then suddenly the little houses of a village, a forest, and a curving road would appear far below, only to vanish again behind the next swift-moving edge of white.

We were near Paris. The pilot decided to go beneath the cloud-bank so as to keep on his course with greater accuracy. The noise of the motors stopped, the urgent forward motion of the craft became slower and gentler as we drifted down through the cloud-bank, being thrown up and down a little by the eddies caused by the different temperatures of the air levels.

Soon, in the distance, appeared a slender tower, hanging high above the mist. A great expanse of houses and streets, half obscured in haze, revealed itself to our left. Here and there sparkled a winding river, and under us were ragged suburbs with great factories and scattered groups of houses clustered round wide straight roads that pierced the heart of the city like white arrows.

_Paris!_ I felt the trumpet-call of the name of a large capital, though Paris has perhaps the weakest name of all. What worthy stirring names do Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, and above all, London, bear! In the very sound of them you hear the dying song of long trains gliding majestically into domed stations; you hear the roar of traffic in crowded streets; you hear the dominant throbbing of huge subterranean newspaper presses.

These giant cities with the splendid names should be entered by train. You should thunder over populated suburban roads, and clatter under iron bridges. You should see more and more gleaming rails pouring together in ever wider streams; you should have glimpses of grey old buildings, rising sublimely above a sea of smoking chimney-pots--if you wish to feel the thrill of entering a metropolis.

To approach a great city by the air is disappointing. You can see too great an expanse of it at once. I should dread to fly high over London, lest I saw the fields to the north and to the south of it at once, and realised that this great city of ours _had_ limits which were comprehensible by man. It would be a disillusion which would haunt me all my life.

Fortunately it was misty over Paris, and we only saw occasional stretches of boulevard, and white and red houses, half hidden by the haze through which glittered here and there the Seine.

On one side lay the white buildings of Versailles and its wide tree-lined avenues; on the other lay the square ugly factories of the suburbs; between was a great expanse of field lined with countless sheds--Villacoublay!

With silenced engines we floated lower and lower towards the soil of France. Gently over the trees we glided; above the grass we swept a moment; the machine shook a little, and came to rest below the level of the tall hangars.

A crowd of British and French mechanics and airmen came streaming from all sides to the machine, as minnows dart and cling to a fragment of food which drops into a pool. We climbed out, gladly stretched our legs, and were soon in a car, driven by a French chauffeur in a black leather coat, on the way to Paris.

I mention the French driver and his coat because, in spite of what I have said about the disillusion of approaching a great city by air, yet aerial travelling does at least accentuate a change of country. Just as gradually approaching a city, or a new country on the ground, makes it seem more far-flung and mysterious, so does it introduce you step by step to its personality and language. If you go to France by boat you feel, even at Dover, that you are approaching a foreign country. You hear French spoken, and see French people during the crossing. At Calais you see the strange uniform of the Custom officers and policemen, and a notice in English and French greets you at the side of the quay with its warning against pickpockets. So you gradually become acclimatised to French ideas before you go ashore.

If, on the other hand, you fly to a foreign country, you are, until the moment when you land, attached by a thread to the place you have left. You dressed there, you breakfasted there, you shaved there, your sandwiches were cut there, and the hot tea in your Thermos flask was heated there--the aeroplane is merely a detached, floating piece of Margate or Broadstairs, or wherever it may be. So when you land the change is abrupt. A man in a curious dress shouts up to you--

"_Ah, Monsieur! C'etait bien la-haut?_"

The thread snaps: England recedes a hundred miles in an instant. You are French, and the aeroplane becomes Villacoublay!

We spent several days in Paris. Every morning our car awaited us outside the hotel. Bills were paid; bags were packed; we inserted ourselves into the car and drove to Villacoublay. The weather would be bad, and (to our secret delight) we returned. I got very used to this life after a time. I have left so many various hotels in France, day after day, in the morning, and have returned two hours afterwards, looking foolish, that the proprietors must have thought that it was a British custom.

At last the machine started once more--unfortunately without the kitten. She was seen just before we left, but I think she had friends on the aerodrome who hid her at the critical moment. We delayed our departure while a search was made. It was in vain. We left without the kitten, and (superstitious people note!) were dogged by misfortune until six months later when we acquired a black cat at Dunkerque.

The aerodrome to which we were flying was at Luxeuil, near Belfort, in the foot-hills of the Vosges. We left Paris and flew towards the East. Slowly the character of the country changed, and the towns and villages grew different. I had a roller map, and as I lay on my chest in the back of the machine, I wound forward the map just as the living map beneath unrolled itself. On the paper would be marked a little white line, a little black blob, and a little dark-green patch. Below, in a square frame of wood, I could see a little white road, a little red village, and a little dark-green forest. Sometimes I read for a quarter of an hour and forgot my surroundings entirely, and then I would suddenly become conscious that I was in the air and would look below. There lay a curving river, and a canal beside it, across which was a grey stone bridge.

I would wind my map forwards, and would identify the river and the canal and the bridge. North of the river would be, perhaps, a forest and a railway line. I would look below me; there would be the forest and a thin black line near it, on which was a puff of white smoke coming from a railway engine. The little village which lay near the canal would be marked on the map--_Pont St Maure_, or something similar. It was to me a name. The red mark below had to me no more reality than the black mark on the map, yet at that very moment it must have been full of housewives cooking fish. Its shoemaker, and farrier, and priest, and mayor must have been busy. Maybe a marriage, the most wonderful incident of some simple country girl's life, was in progress, and as the wedding party walked in a procession they looked up to see the great bird with the shining wings which boomed overhead. To me it was only a little red patch which had appeared above the pages of 'The History of Mr Polly.' Flying is a strangely aloof business, and gives the aerial traveller at times an almost divine point of view.

Three hours slowly passed. Dusk began to creep across the land. The country below changed more and more. Forests became frequent, and the scenery grew wilder and more interesting. Suddenly the noise of the engines died away. I quickly stood up and looked below. We were just over a quaint town with a curious church tower. I looked round and could see no aerodrome. Lower and lower we glided. The wind whistled and moaned in the wires. I could see no field in which to land. Over the tops of some trees we drifted. A great cluster of shrubs appeared ahead of us above the level of the machine. We swept over it, dropped down again, and I saw we were a few feet above the uneven ground. I shouted to the other man in the back to hold on, and got myself ready to take a shock. We touched the ground, bounced up a little, ran along, and stopped in a sloping field near a road.

I jumped out at once and ran round to the front. The pilot shouted--

"Go and 'phone to Luxeuil! Say we've had engine failure!"

On the way to the road I passed a French priest--an amazed little figure in black--who had seen this winged monster drop out of the skies to his feet. Already from the town were pouring the excited people, who had thought at first that our machine was a German one.

Before I got into the town I met a grey naval car, which was attached to the aerodrome, and had chanced to be near, and had followed us when we came down. I hurried back to the machine. It had been landed with wonderful skill by the pilot on a sloping field, into which he had side-slipped. Not a wire of it had been broken in spite of its weight and its heavy load.

The rest of the evening is a confused memory of a high tea in the little hotel--a meal of countless omelettes, grey vinegarish bread, coffee, and butter of sorts: of a long, long drive, sitting in the floor of a crowded car, rushing under the stars and the trees which hissed at us one by one for mile after mile as we whirled down the winding roads: of arriving in the dark at an apparently limitless aerodrome, strangely full of British and Canadian officers in this remote corner of France: of going to bed in the Hotel de la Pomme d'Or in the town of Luxeuil.

Next day we returned to the machine, which was surrounded by an enormous crowd of curious peasants. My pilot wished to open a tool-box, and asked the C.O. for the keys. The C.O., dreading that he might lose them, had handed them on to me. When I looked for them, I found I had lost them! My pilot, in his irritation, stood me up in front of the open-eyed French people and searched me all over. To my shame he found the keys in one of my pockets! The C.O. said to me afterwards--

"Thank Heaven, I gave them to you, or he would have searched me!"

The machine was repaired. The engines were started. I stayed on the ground and helped to keep the field clear. (French people _will_ insist on running in front of an aeroplane as it gathers speed on the ground--in order to see it better!) It rose up into the air, and turned round towards Luxeuil, to which I went in a car.

Then began strange months in the wild forest country of the Haute Saone. They were days of flying over the snow-clad country, when you could see, hanging like dream-castles above the haze of the horizon, the whole panorama of the Alps from the Matterhorn to Mont Blanc--sublime summits, pure sun-kissed white against the thin blue of the November sky. They were days of long drowsy motor drives through the Vosges to the deserted city of Belfort, with its few collapsed houses to give witness of its nearness to the lines,--days in which I became an inhabitant of the historical town of Luxeuil-les-Bains.

This old town was very interesting. Some of its buildings went back to 1200 A.D. Its thermal establishments (so frequent in this part of France, where every town almost is--_les-Bains_) were full of relics of the former Roman baths.

In the old cathedral I saw one of the most crude and striking examples of modernity which I have ever met. As I sat in the tall and gloomy building at twilight one day, the verger asked me if I would like to see how he rang the Angelus. He led me to an old stone room, on one wall of which was a large shiny black switch-board, studded with copper switches and other electrical devices. He pulled down one switch--high in the belfry a bell chimed three times. He pushed the switch up and pulled it down again. Once more the bell chimed three times. He did this a third time, and then rang the bell continuously for a little while.

He seemed to have great pride in such an up-to-date affair, but to see the Angelus rung by electricity in an old church was distressing. He followed up the performance by tolling a knell for the dead. He pulled another lever, and left it down for five minutes, during which a deep bell slowly rang.

"They pay five francs for that!" he said with gusto, as he looked at his watch and pushed up the lever again.

There were no British troops within a hundred miles of the place. The officers and men of the naval flying wing were the only British there, and they must have seemed strange to the French people.

We had amusing evenings, and became quite French in our ways. We dined off frogs' legs and pike fresh taken from the tank in the yard of the restaurant. We went to organ recitals in the cathedral, and paid visits to learn French and to exchange conversations. Of course, in our turn, we introduced the custom of taking tea in the afternoon. Wherever we were in France, we demanded, at four o'clock, tea, bread and butter, honey and cakes. It amazed the French people, but we generally got it. I do not think they understood it at all, because one evening after dinner I asked for a cup of tea instead of coffee, and it came accompanied by a plate of cakes, and, I believe, bread and honey. I had to explain that an Englishman _can_ drink tea alone. It is amusing how an Englishman always takes his customs with him, and, instead of doing in Rome as the Romans do, rather makes Rome do what is done in London.

Bacon and eggs for breakfast; meat and vegetables _together_ for lunch; tea and cake and bread and butter and honey for tea in the afternoon--says the Englishman. If he does not get this, he exclaims--"My hat! What a place!" as he walks indignantly out of the hotel.

Among other things, I learnt how to fly, at Luxeuil, and found it very much like learning to ride a bicycle. It has the same fascination and the same characteristics. You have the same certainty, to begin with, that you will never be able to do it; you know the same triumph of achievement when you fly ten yards alone; and when you are flying along smoothly in complete confidence that the instructor is holding the controls and is checking you the whole time, you turn round, see he is looking over the side, become overtaken with nervousness, and dive and climb, and slip and slew, in a fever of anxiety and dread.

The advantage of being able to fly yourself is that if you feel depressed and weary of the ground, and of the people on it, you can get a book, jump into an aeroplane, and shoot up into the solitude of the sky. When you have climbed three or four thousand feet you can bring out your book, and go round and round in great circles far away from the earth in utter seclusion, reading sublime verse, and dreaming of any unreality you desire.

The tranquillity of these days was ended suddenly by a rather welcome order to proceed to the advanced base at Ochey-les-Bains, near Nancy, from which raids were to be carried out at once.

Over miles of ravine and forest, over Plombieres and Remiremont and Epinal, over winding river and rolling down, we flew till we approached the region of Nancy, where a few kite-balloons hanging above the haze showed us that we were near the lines. We landed on the wide French aerodrome, and once again met a crowd of English officers in a strange corner of France.

We began to prepare at once for a night raid on some blast-furnaces beyond Metz. My pilot and I had never flown before at night, and had never crossed the lines. With mingled trepidation and excitement we awaited the first voyage amidst the darkness and the stars beyond the frontier of Alsace into what was then Germany--with its unknown dangers and its unknown difficulties.

III.

The First Raid.

"Around me broods the dim mysterious Night, Star-lit and still. No whisper comes across the Plain."

--_The Night Raid._

Night! Before I knew I was to fly through the darkness over the country of the enemy; night had been for me a time of soft withdrawal from the world--a time of quiet. It still held its old childhood mystery of a vague oblivion between day and day, an unusual space of time peopled by slumberous dreams in the gloom of a warm, familiar bed.

Night was a time in which busy and scattered humanity collected once more to the family hearth, and careless of the wet darkness outside, careless of the wind which howled over the roof and moaned down the chimney, sat in the sequestered comfort by the glow of the fire in a lamp-lit room. Night did not mean a mere temporary obscuring of the daytime world. One did not feel that out there in the gloom beyond the dead windows lay the countryside of day, hidden, though unchanged. One felt that for a time the real world had ended, and that as one drifted to sleep, the real house faded and melted away to ghostly regions beyond the comprehension of man.

In the days before my first raid, I used to wander away from the lighted windows of the little camp, down the long road to Toul, beneath the glittering stars, looking up into the blue immensity of the sky, thinking how I was going to move high up there--above the dim country, across the distant lines to some remote riverside factory, beyond the great fortress of Metz.

From that moment the whole meaning of night changed, and changed for ever. Night became for me a time of restless activity; the darkness became a vast theatre for mystery and drama. The midnight obscurity became a thick mantle whose friendly folds hid from the sight of its enemies the throbbing aeroplane in its long, long flights over a shadow-peopled world.

The night became my day. _Dusk is our dawn, and midnight is our noon_, is the song of the night-bombers. To them daylight is a time of preparation, a time of rest, but never a time in which they can fly upon their destructive expeditions.

The pale evening star gleams above the gold and crimson glories of the sunset. The eastern sky becomes deeply blue. Out of the hangars come the giant machines. The night-flying airman begins to rouse himself, and with the first rustle of the twilight breeze amidst the black lace-work of the bare branches comes the awakening action of the brain, and into his head troop a thousand thoughts, a thousand problems, a thousand impulses.

Over a map I bent, day after day, looking at Metz, looking at Thionville, following the curved black mark of the lines, and pondering the round spots which represented anti-aircraft batteries--going on my first raid a thousand times in anticipation. At times fear held me--the fear of the unknown. What would happen? What would happen? We might get "there," but would we return? Would a German air patrol await us--would a fierce impassable barrage bring about our downfall? Surely, surely, we argued (my pilot and I), they would be waiting for us on our way back.

We knew nothing of night-bombing, nothing of flying across the lines. Before us lay a curtain through which we had to pass. We did not know what lay on the other side, or if we would return through the closed draperies.

At times the thrill of romance, of high star-touching adventure, stirred my imagination. I thought how I was to move undaunted and triumphant over the moonlit river, over the forests of the Vosges, with my twelve bombs ready to drop at my slightest order. I realised how I was to bring destruction to far-off blast-furnaces where the sweating Germans poured out the white blue-flamed metal to make shells and long naval guns--how I was perhaps to ride homeward down the vast avenues of the skies to the waiting aerodrome with the exhilaration of a conqueror!

Then came the third mental phase of those days of waiting for the raid--the phase of pity. I shall kill to-night! thought I. I shall kill to-night. Even now the worker eats his contented dinner with his wife and children before going on the night-shift--the night-shift which will never see day. Even now is a young man greeting his beloved whom he will never live to wed. Is it true that those plump yellow bombs with their red and green rings are destined to rip flesh and blood--to tear up people whom I have never seen, and whom I will never know that I have slain?

So through my imagination went pouring the strange processions of thought. Brighter and brighter grew the moon; clearer and clearer grew the night. Far away to the north, near Pont-a-Mousson, I could see, as I stood on the road to Toul, the luminous white star-shells which hung quivering in the air, and dropped slowly as they faded away. There in the dark road beneath the tall bare trees I would stand, a little figure, in a great solitude under the ten thousand watching stars, gazing out to the lines, wondering and wondering what lay beyond.

The days passed slowly. The possibilities of each night were doomed by the French report, "_Brume dans les vallees!_" Mist was considered a great danger to navigation, so night after night the raid was postponed.

French _Breguets de Bombardement_, huge unwieldy machines, carrying two men and twenty or so little vicious bombs, were also operating from the aerodrome, and the French authorities had arranged a detailed and very useful system of ground lights to assist navigation.

At several places were groups of lights, each group separated by a certain number of miles, to give the airmen an opportunity to learn his speed across the ground. There were rocket positions. There were groups of flares pointing north. Here and there were emergency landing-grounds. The whole dim country was going to be twinkling with little messages, with lights and flares and friendly rockets. More and more in these days of waiting I became obsessed with the idea of the long journey I was so make through the blue vagueness of the night above the moonlit country.

Then one night the moon rose clear and clean above a mistless world. The more brilliant stars burnt steadily in the velvet of the night. A silence brooded over the rolling downs and the deep-shadowed valleys. On the aerodrome was deliberate activity and suppressed excitement. The Handley-Page, on which the C.O. intended to carry out the first raid, spread its long splendid wings under the eager hands of the mechanics, who for long days had been preparing everything--had been testing every wire and bolt, and had kept the machine on the pinnacle of efficiency. Now they swarmed round it like keen and careful ants, pinning up the wings, filling the engine tanks with hot water pumped up from a wheeled boiler, known as the "hot potato waggon," exercising machine-guns, and testing the controls.

The two engines were started up, and roared with a surging vibrant clamour for ten minutes. Then the full power was put on, and for a few minutes the noise became ear-splitting, and the waves of sound rolled across the aerodrome and came echoing back from the hangars. The wheels strained restlessly against the triangular wooden "chocks." The tail and the wings shook and quivered with repressed emotion. The exhaust-pipes of the motors grew red hot, long blue flames streamed out of them, and thousands of red sparks went whirling along through the shivering tail-planes into the darkness behind. It was an awe-inspiring sight. I asked the silent preoccupied warrant-officer engineer, a rugged naval man who knew the soul of the mighty Rolls-Royce engines, if it was all right. I could not believe that those red-hot pipes and blue flames were not a sign of an engine gone amok and hopelessly overheated. The thunder and the awful expression of power frightened me. The engineer, however, assured me that it was all correct, and explained that the engines were just the same in the daytime, though the heat and the sparks could not be seen in the light.

Near the towering bulk of the machine with its two deafening motors stood the pilot, the C.O., who was a frail-looking figure, with his youthful fair-haired face almost hidden in the wide black fur-lined collar of his thick padded overall suit. He stood there with his flying-cap and his goggles in his hand, waiting to climb into the machine when the mechanics had finished the test of the engines.

I went over to wish him luck, feeling awestruck at his coolness. On the grass of the aerodrome shone the great flares. Above hung the heartless stars, and the blank-faced moon swung rather mockingly, it seemed to me, above the dim patterns of the wooded landscape. The little fair-haired figure stood by the hot-breathed steed which he was going to ride, and it seemed that he was too small, too frail--that any human being was too frail--to take that monster of steel and wood and canvas into the unknown dangers which lay beyond the cold glare of the star-shells on the horizon.

Then the C.O. climbed into the machine, and his head and shoulders appeared just above the blunt nose which stuck out six feet above the ground. He shouted down an order or two. The little triangular door on the floor of the machine was shut. The blocks of wood were taken away from beneath the wheels. The engines roared out, and the machine moved slowly across the grass. It turned slightly, its noise leapt up suddenly again, and with a beating throb the huge craft began to move across the aerodrome with its blue flames and showers of red sparks shooting out behind it. Faster and faster it went--every eye watching it, every mouth firm and voiceless. At last it roared up into the air, and then a curious thing happened which showed the strain and the nervousness under which we were all working that night.

In a few moments the noise of the engines died out, and beyond the slope of green over which the machine had climbed appeared a dull red glow.

"Oh! he's crashed!" almost sobbed somebody in those awful vibrant tones, full of fear and excitement, almost passionate with terror, which are so often heard when there is a swift sudden accident.

Babel broke out. "Quick! _Pyrenes!_ Quick! Start up the car! It's burning! Quick, _quick_! How awful! Drive like blazes, driver!"

Round the aerodrome the loaded car jolted and bumped, going as fast as the driver could make it, glittering with the fire-extinguishers held by the agonised white-faced passengers.

Behind some hangars we rushed, and suddenly we heard the glorious sound of a _bavoom_, _bavoom_, overhead, as the Handley-Page swept triumphantly above us.

"Safe! Oh, good, good, good!" thought every one. Over the crest of the little swell in the ground we saw some dull red landing flares burning in a flickering line. The sudden cessation of the engine's clamour owing to a change of wind, and the sudden burning up of the flares, had brought at once to overwrought nerves the worst fears. As we rode back, pretending we were very ashamed of ourselves, we decided not to tell the C.O. what had happened when he landed. We were very fond of him....

For ten minutes or so the machine roared round and round the aerodrome. We could see its shape black against the starshine for a little while, and then we could distinguish it no longer, for to our great delight it was hidden by the darkness in spite of the moonlight. Then it turned towards the lines, was heard booming faintly for a moment, and finally its noise died right away. The aerodrome lay silent under the magic of the watching stars and the silver frozen moon.

Restless minutes passed. From mess to cabins, from cabins to the aerodrome with its dazzling acetylene flares, we moved uneasily. Had he crossed the lines now? we wondered. Had he got to Metz? What was he doing? Had he dropped his bombs yet?

An hour and a half had gone. He was due back. Still the deep immensity of the night gave no signal. The moon had climbed a little, and its tarnished face was smaller and brighter. There was no sound on the air save the sighing of the wind, the low murmur of a dynamo, and the occasional clear quiet chime of a clock in the village church tower.

Then somebody said, "Listen! Hush!" Faint but surely sounded the throb of the motors. Every moment it grew more distinct. The crowds on the aerodrome increased. The relief of a strain ended moved pleasantly through them.

Then in the air appeared a glittering ball of light which dropped in a curve and faded away. Another ball of light shot up from the ground in answer. The noise of the engines in the air stopped as the machine glided in wide circles towards the ground. Suddenly it appeared a few hundred feet in the air, brilliantly lit up by two blindingly white lights which burned fiercely below both wing-tips, and from which dropped little gouts of luminous liquid. The powerful illumination lighted up every face, every dress, every shed and pile of stones in clear detail with its quivering glare.

Now every eye was watching the machine as it drew nearer and nearer to the ground. This was the first time that a Handley-Page had been landed at night, and landing is the most difficult and uncertain problem of flying.

Lower and lower it floated, then flattened out, and drifted on just above the grass. With scarcely a bump it touched the ground, ran forwards a little, and swept round towards us.

"Good! Priceless! Thank Heaven that's done!" muttered a dozen watchers. The waiting crowd streamed across to the machine from whose wing-tip flares, now dull and red, still dropped hot drops of liquid.

Some stooped at once under the machine to examine the brown paper which had been temporarily pasted across the bottom of the bomb-racks, as the bomb-doors had not yet been fitted. Scarcely a piece of paper remained--the bomb-racks were empty--the bombs had been dropped!

Then was a scene of excitement. The night travellers were welcomed and congratulated, and a thousand queries were rained on them. "How did the engines go? Any searchlights? Any shell-fire? Where did you drop the bombs? Did you find the way easily?" and so on in an endless stream. It had been a flight which had broken new ground--the first flight of five thousand night flights by Handley-Pages. It was the climax of an experiment. The machine had gone up into the night, and had returned with its cargo discharged.

A night or two later our turn came. The machine stood on the aerodrome: the wings were stretched and pinned up; the tanks were filled with hot water. I went to my little cabin with its rose-shaded lamp, and with a heavy heart began to prepare for the raid. I dressed myself in thick woollen socks; knee-high flying boots lined with white fleece; a sweater or two, a muffler, and the big overall suit of grey-green mackintosh lined with thick black beaver fur with a wide fur collar. On my head went my flying-cap. I strapped it under my chin and got my goggles and gloves ready. I felt very out of place, so clumsy and grotesque, like a deep-sea diver, in the little room with its bookshelf and neat white bed and soft lamplight.

I had the terrible sinking sensation which I had felt before when about to be caned, and when in the waiting-room of a dentist.

I looked at three or four photographs of well-loved friends and of grey London streets, knelt down for a moment by the bed, and went out after a last long look at the room and the unavailing invitation of the white sheets. I knew it might be the last time, and I felt quite a coward.

Towards the aerodrome I walked behind the towering line of moonlit hangars, beyond which I could hear the murmur of the engines "warming-up." Between two tall sheds I stumbled, and came on to the wide grassy expanse where stood my machine surrounded by busy mechanics.

The engines opened out with a terrifying burst of noise. I collected my map-case and my torch, and walked round to the front of the machine. I faced the two shining discs of the whirling propellers and gingerly advanced between them to the little rope-ladder which hung from the small door in the bottom of the machine. Up this ladder I climbed, and found myself in the little room behind the pilot's seat. I knelt down and shone my torch on the bomb-handle, the bomb-sight, and on the twelve fat yellow bombs that hung up inside the machine behind me. Then I walked forward till I came to the cockpit, where sat the pilot on a padded armour-plated seat, testing the engines. I let down my hinged seat beside him, and sat with my feet off the ground. I put away my pencil and note-book and chocolate, and examined the different taps and the Very light pistol, and began to adjust the petrol pressure of the engines, which was indicated by little dials in front of me.

I was about seven feet off the ground now, sitting up in the nose of the machine, feeling very small and helpless, with the two great propellers screaming on either side a foot behind me, at 1700 revolutions a minute, and I felt very much like a lamb going to the slaughter.

Minutes slowly passed. I was itching with impatience. I longed to start so that I might have something to do to occupy my attention.

The pilot blew a whistle. The pieces of wood in front of the wheels were pulled away by the mechanics. The pilot's hand went to the throttle, and we moved slowly across the aerodrome. The front engine roared out, he turned round and faced the wind, with the lights of the flares behind us.

On went the engines with a mighty throbbing beat. At once we began to roll across the ground. Faster and faster we rushed. Below streaked the flare-lit grass as we swept onward at a fearful speed. The hangars were just in front of us. I sat, feet off the ground, with my left hand on the padded edge of the cockpit, nervous and apprehensive.

Then slowly, surely, the machine left the ground and began to move upwards, and soon cleared the top of the hangars. Below lay the moonlit sweep of the dim forests, the curving hills and the deep-shadowed ravines, looking pale and unreal in the ghostly radiance.

In front of us the phosphorescent finger of the height-indicator slowly crept to 1000 feet. The speed-indicator wavered between 50 and 55 miles an hour, and the dials which recorded the petrol pressure on the engines obeyed faithfully my alterations to the little taps at the side.

Above us was the wide expanse of the starlit sky and the cold moon. We soon found that flying at night was like moving through a dimmer daytime sky. Though the airman is hidden from the ground, yet below he can see a detailed panorama, a little more limited in range than that of noonday, but not much less distinct. This is, of course, on a clear night of ample moon. On dark and misty nights the change is very much greater. As we flew on we realised that the task was not going to be so difficult as we had imagined.

For a time I felt too nervous to look over the side, as I always have felt, flying by day or night, until the preliminary dread of a wing falling off which has ever haunted me has grown less poignant. Then I began to look over the side, and the love of experience and excitement battled and pressed down the feelings of dread.

Far away on the moon-ward horizon a luminous silver mist veiled the distant view. Below, the scenery of thin white roads, soft patchwork forests, little tightly-clustered villages, and the quaint mosaic of fields, unrolled away from me as we mounted higher on the long wings whose edges now and then gleamed in the moonlight. Here and there were the little glowing specks of candles or lamps burning in distant houses, and some of the twinkling illuminations of the French signals. Far away in the mist a star-shell gleamed watery white and slowly faded away. Beneath were the four white flares of the aerodrome and the little space of lit-up ground with an occasional gleam of light near the long line of hangars which I could see faintly below me.

Higher and higher we climbed. Every now and then I stood up and shone my torch on the two engines to read their dials, and to see if they were giving full power. Towards the north we moved, towards the gleaming Moselle and the distant star-shells of the lines. Then the French observer grew restless, and looked over the side, and down at the compass in his cockpit, and at the timing signal-lights beneath. At last, when we were eight or nine miles from the lines, he gave his verdict--the almost inevitable word _Brouillard_. He thought it was too misty. He stood up and leaned back to the pilot, and shouted his words of explanation--

"_Trop de brouillard!_ No good! It will be very bad by Metz!"

We turned back disappointed, and drew nearer to the lighted rectangle of the aerodrome far below. The pilot pulled back his throttle. A sudden and almost painful silence followed the roar of the engine. In an agreeable tranquillity after the incessant clamour we had known so long, we glided downwards towards the queer world of the deep shadows. Slowly, slowly over the dazzling acetylene flares we floated. The most critical moment had come: the pilot was going to make his first night landing. I sat silent and unmoving, my left hand again subconsciously holding the edge of the machine in readiness. The ground grew imperceptibly nearer. We were below the level of the sheds. I felt a little vibration quiver through the machine, and then another. We had touched ground.

We slowed down and drew up near our hangar. I dropped out of the machine, beneath which the disappointed mechanics were gazing at the unbroken surface of the brown paper pasted below the bomb-racks, and walked over to my cabin through a little pine wood. The rose-shaded lamp still shone softly. As I took off my heavy flying kit I recalled with a feeling of foolishness my fears and dreads when I had left it, and felt how wasted my sentiment had been.

Almost the next night we started again. Once more I dressed in the heavy flying clothes, and collected my maps and impedimenta. Again I bade a sad farewell, and again sat beside the pilot, feeling weak and frail. Again we rose up in thunder across the lighted aerodrome towards the stars.

The world lay before us hard and clear. No white scarves of mist were flung over the dark woodlands. The horizon lay almost unveiled, and above was the deep immensity of the night. Here and there across the country we saw the scattered lights of cottages and the twinkling of the French guiding stations. To the north were the brilliant star-shells, and far, far away in the mist glowed dully the little red flame of some blast-furnace beyond the lines.

As we drew nearer and nearer to Pont-a-Mousson, I felt how the meaning of the lines had changed. Formerly they had come to be a barrier almost impassable even by thought. I had felt that this was _our_ side, that was _theirs_! Long had the trenches lain in the same place in this area. Now it seemed wonderful to be able to see signs of occupation beyond the German war-zone. Our intended crossing seemed a sort of sacrilege, the execution of an act seemingly impossible. I felt as though I had put out my hand to the moon, and had touched a solid surface. It was hard to believe that our machine could in a flash change from the area of one great sweep of nationality and ideas and character to the other, and could pass unhindered, untouched across that frontier of death to every living thing upon the ground.

So as I grew nearer and nearer to Pont-a-Mousson and saw a few scattered lights beyond the star-shells, I began to wonder who sat beside the light--what German soldier or officer read a despatch or wrote a letter, in what sort of hut or dug-out. Then the pilot's hands would move with the wheel, and we would swing round in a circle. Again before us lay the French signal-lights, and far away the faint glow of our aerodrome.

Then we swung round again towards the north. The Frenchman's arm went up, and dropped, pointing straight ahead across the star-shells which rose here and there slowly, white blossoms of light which burst out into a white dazzling flare, and gradually drooped and faded away.

I sat with my legs dangling, and my hands crossed in my lap, feeling I had got to take what was coming unprotesting. Defenceless and frail I seemed as I sat beside my pilot, with nothing for my hands to do--with no control over the machine or over my destiny. My heart sank lower and lower ... and then we were right above the lines. In the pool of vague darkness below I saw the star-shells rising up and lighting a little circle of ground, and dying away, to be followed by small and spitting flashes of rifle fire from either side of the lines, where I knew some wretched soldier lay in No Man's Land, flat in the mud, in fear of his life.

A few minutes passed, and I began to realise that I was over German territory. The height indicator recorded 7500 feet. The engines clamoured evenly, and the speed-indicator registered fifty miles an hour, showing that we were still climbing steadily. The pilot sat immobile on my right--his heavy boots firmly on the rudder, his fur-gloved hands on the black wooden steering-wheel, which scarcely moved as we flew steadily on. The electric bulb in the cockpit shone on his determined chin and firm mouth, but his fur-edged goggles hid those eyes which looked, now forwards to the horizon and to the dark shape of the Frenchman with his curious helmet in front, now downwards to the compass and the watch and the instruments of the dashboard. Keen eyes and ready were they, I knew well, watching everything, noting everything.

I wondered what lay in his brain, and what were his real feelings as he steered the enormous machine dead ahead into the hostile territory. My own fears had begun to leave me a little. I looked round with interest to see what was going to happen, and began to hum my invariable anthem of the night-skies, which I have chanted during every raid--the Cobbler's song from "Chu Chin Chow":--

"I sit and cobble at slippers and shoon From the rise of sun to the set of moon ..."

Then on my left, a mile or so away, I saw four or five sharp red flashes whose spots of light died away slowly, like lightning. I felt excited. They were anti-aircraft shells. They were meant for us. We had been heard, then, and our presence was realised. I glanced at the pilot, but he had seen nothing. His face was fixed steadily forwards, so I decided not to tell him. Now I began to look all over the sky, above, below, and on either side, looking for shell fire, and trying to pierce the gloom to see enemy machines. I was on the alert, for I realised that we were heard though unseen, as we crept like thieves above the land of a people who wished us ill.

Then ahead of me I became aware of a beautiful sight, which I have never since seen near the lines--a city in full blaze. There lay a sea of twinkling, glittering lights with three triangles of arc-lamps round it. It was Metz and its three railway junctions. I stood up and looked down on the amazing scene. There lay to our view vivid evidence of German activity. I could see here and there through the jumble of lights the straight line of a brilliant boulevard. It seemed strange to think that down there moved and laughed German soldiers and civilians in the streets and cafes, all unconscious of the fur-clad airmen moving high up among the stars in their throbbing machine.

The explanation of the fearless blaze was simple. The Germans in those days had an agreement with the French that Metz should not be bombed, and therefore they realised that it would be safer if its lights were kept on, so that it might not be mistaken for any other place. Gradually, however, we passed by this city lined in glittering gems, leaving it a few miles on our right. Ahead of us the intermittent red glare of scattered blast-furnaces burst occasionally on the dim carpet of the country, blazing out for a moment and then fading slightly--to blaze out again before they died away, as the unavoidable _coulees_, or discharges of molten metal, were being made.

Still there was no apparent opposition. No searchlights moved in the skies; no shells punctured the darkness. The French observer, who was responsible for the navigation, looked carefully below and then at his map. We were evidently drawing near to the blast-furnaces of Hagendingen. Then he turned round and began to shout instructions. The pilot could not quite understand what he said, so I assisted him. It was strange to be arguing in English and French, the three of us, a mile and a half in the air, fifteen miles beyond the German lines. We became so interested in our explanations and translations that we forgot our surroundings altogether.

"Let me talk to him. Qu'est ce que vous desirez dire, monsieur? Ou est Hagendingen?"

The Frenchman pointed an energetic finger downwards.

"La! La!"

"He says it's just ahead, Jimmy! Shall I get into the back?"

"Just a minute. Monsieur--c'est temps maintenant to drop the---- What's drop, Bewsh?"

"Laisser tomber! I'll tell him. Est ce ... all right! _You_ tell him, then! Look at the port pressure. I'll give it a pump!"

So went the conversation high above the earth at night in a hostile sky.

Then I lifted up my seat and crawled to the little room behind, which vibrated fiercely with the mighty revolutions of the two engines. I stood on a floor of little strips of wood, in an enclosure whose walls and roofs were of tightly stretched canvas which chattered and flapped a little with the rush of wind from the two propellers whirling scarcely a foot outside. Behind was fitted a round grey petrol-tank, underneath which hung the twelve yellow bombs.

I lay on my chest under the pilot's seat, and pushed to the right a little wooden door, which slid away from a rectangular hole in the floor through which came a swift updraught of wind. Over this space was set a bomb-sight with its sliding range-bars painted with phosphorescent paint. On my right, fixed to the side of the machine, was a wooden handle operating on a metal drum from which ran a cluster of release-wires to the bombs farther back. It was the bomb-dropping lever, by means of which I could drop all my bombs at once, or one by one, as I wished.

The edge of the door framed now a rectangular section of dark country, on which here and there glowed the intermittent flame of a blast-furnace. I could not quite identify my objective, so I climbed forwards to the cockpit and asked the French observer for further directions. He explained to me, and then suddenly I saw, some way below the machine, a quick flash, and another, and another--each sending a momentary glare of light on the machine. I crawled hurriedly back, and lay down again to get ready to drop my bombs.

Below me now I could see incessant shell-bursts, vicious and brilliant red spurts of flame. I put my head out of the hole for a moment into the biting wind, and looked down, and saw that the whole night was beflowered with these sudden sparks of fire, which appeared silently like bubbles breaking to the surface of a pond. The Germans were firing a fierce barrage from a great number of guns. They thought, fortunately for us, that we were French Breguets, which flew much lower than we did, so their shells burst several thousand feet beneath us.

I was very excited as I lay face downwards in my heavy flying-clothes on the floor, with my right hand on the bomb-handle in that little quivering room whose canvas walls were every now and then lit up by the flash of a nearer shell. Through the quick sparks of fire I tried to watch the blast-furnace below. Just in front of me the pilot's thick flying-boots were planted on the rudder, and occasionally I would pull one or the other to guide him. The engines thundered. The floor vibrated. Below the faint glow of the bomb-sights the sweep of country seemed even darker in contrast with the swift flickering of the barrage, and here and there I could see the long beam of a searchlight moving to and fro.

Then I pressed over my lever, and heard a clatter behind. I pressed it over again and looked back. Many of the bombs had disappeared--a few remained scattered in different parts of the bomb-rack. I looked down again, and pressed over my lever twice more,--my heart thumping with tremendous excitement as I felt the terrific throbbing of power of the machine and saw the frantic furious bursting of the shells, and realised in what a thrilling midnight drama of action and force I was acting. I looked back and saw by the light of my torch that one bomb was still in the machine. I walked back to the bomb-rack, and saw the arms of the back gunlayer stretching forwards, trying to reach it. I put my foot on the top of it and stood up. It slipped suddenly through the bottom and disappeared.

In a moment I was beside the pilot.

"All gone, Jimmy! Let's be getting back, shall we?"

I leant forward and hit the French observer on the back. When he turned I asked him what luck we had had. He was encouraging, and said that the bombs had gone right across the lights of the factory. Below us now still burst the barrage of shells, whilst one or two stray ones burst near the machine. From the direction of Briey a strong searchlight swept across the sky and hesitated near us, and began to wave its cruel arm in restless search in front of the nose of the machine. As it drew nearer and nearer my hand tugged the pilot's sleeve a little, with a hint to turn. He looked down at me and smiled, and carried on. I knew that he felt no fear, and was less nervous than I was. Little did I guess when I watched, like a frightened rabbit pursued by a slow hypnotising snake, that one searchlight moving in the pool of the night skies above Briey, how I should, later on, steer the machine through a forest of moving beams over Bruges or Ghent. That solitary searchlight was bad enough, and was full of the evil cunning which makes searchlights a greater dread to the night airman than shell fire. To be searched for by searchlights is ever more demoralising. It is as though you stood in the corner of a dark room and an evil being with long arms came nearer and nearer, sweeping those arms across the velvety darkness, and you knew that there would come a time when they would touch you, and then....

Past Metz we flew onwards, and the city could no longer be seen. It lay in darkness, for our bombs had been dropped. Its lights had served to keep it safe. Now, lest it should be used as a guide, the city had died like a vision of the brain, and where had lain that filigree of sparkling diamonds was the unlit gloom.

The shell fire died away and stopped. The white beam of Briey moved vainly across the sky, darting in one swift swoop across a quarter of the heavens, and then hanging hungrily in some suspected corner before it moved onwards again.

I felt supremely confident and at home. I felt I could "dance all night." I felt that for hours I could go soaring onwards over the country of the enemy with this triumphant sense of power. Fear had left me. I was not conscious of being in the air. I sat solidly and at ease on my little padded seat beside the pilot, whose arm I had affectionately taken. I peeled the scarlet paper and the silvery wrappings from the bars of chocolate, and pushed a fragment into his unresisting mouth. We were three or four miles from the lines, but from the danger point of view we were as good as across them. I stuck a photograph behind one of the dials in the cockpit, and it kept on falling on to the floor so that I had to replace it. I fished out three or four mascots from my pocket, and stood them up inside the machine. I began to sing loudly. It was a mild reaction after the strain, which I had not been conscious of, but which had nevertheless been there.

It was a wonderful feeling to know that the job which I had dreaded was done, and that I had come through it safely. I wondered what the Germans thought of that huge load of explosives which had fallen all at once, for a Handley-Page could drop then about three times more bombs than any other machine in use on the Western Front. The Gotha, with its smaller load, had not yet come into action. The Germans must have realised that it was the beginning of a very unpleasant time for them.

At last the white star-shells rose and fell beneath us, and we left them behind. Towards Nancy I could see a silver strip of river and a few twinkling lights. Near it lay the glare of a night landing-ground. Ahead of us rose coloured rockets from one of the guide positions. On and on we flew, and then we saw the lights of our own aerodrome far ahead. The pilot throttled the engines, and we began to glide down through the darkness to the row of flares. When we were over the rectangle of illuminated grass we circled down in wide sweeps, and landed gently in a long glide.

We stopped by the hangars, and the crowd poured round us again. This time with what delight the eager mechanics saw round the edges of the bomb-racks only small shreds of brown paper, which showed that the machine they had tended so well had done its work, and had taken destruction for them beyond the lines!

With what glow of pleasure I climbed down from the machine, and arm-in-arm with the engineer officer walked awkwardly though joyfully to our cabin! The photographs of my friends seemed to smile on me with genial thanks, and the bed seemed more than ever inviting. We talked, and talked, and talked. The raid was described a thousand times over as we drank hot coffee and munched biscuits. Looking backwards, it seems strange that we should have been so excited after a short raid like that; but it had been a new thing achieved--an adventure successfully carried through.

When at last I got back to the cabin alone I began to think of the effect of my bombs. I pictured the ambulances hurrying down the distant roads to the hospitals. I thought of the women even then learning the news of their husband's or son's death. My head was throbbing and aching with excitement. A mad procession of unending thought went pouring through it at a headlong pace. I lifted the blind and looked out of the window to the wet chill dawn. The sickly stars flickered like pale gaslamps. The dirty moon staggered towards the East, while the West wore a dingy dressing-gown of crimson and tawdry green. The scenes of the night were thronging through my imagination. I could picture it all--the white faces of the dials before us; the pulsing of the engines; the pressing of the bomb-handle; the clat clatter of the falling bombs; the waving searchlights; the impetuous flashing of the shells; the ride home across the dim country; the landing, and the release from fear.

I felt restless and unwell. Again I looked at the humid greasy dawn. Thoughts of the silly death and destruction and agony beyond Metz came to me. I got into the white sheets, but they could not cool my throbbing forehead. My frantically working brain would not let me sleep. I tossed and turned, and dozed off for a moment, only to find myself once more in the air--only to see once more the cold electric light shining on my pilot's fur-gloved hands and set mouth, only to hear the deafening thunder of the motors--and to wake up again.

So passed a sleepless night. Morning brought to my tired eyes and tight-drawn skin, to my strained nerves and slack body, no joy or happiness in life....

Thus was achieved the first raid. I felt anxious for more. I forgot the fear, and remembered the excitement, as human nature always does. I wanted to go to Friedrichshafen or Karlsruhe. Night meant at time of travel. The stars called to me to be up amid their steely glitter, thundering onwards to some far distant place.

Then came the usual sudden order. Again we had to change our aerodrome. We were told to return to Luxeuil, whence we were to fly to Dunkerque.

Farewells were said in cold grey Nancy, strange city of the Vosges with its genial populations, its jolly cafes.

Through a hailstorm we flew to the long-loved aerodrome at Luxeuil. Old friends were met again, but even in our brief absence it had changed and many familiar buildings and faces had gone.

I managed to borrow a Curtiss machine and flew alone, very badly, in order to take my ticket.

The next morning, in spite of the threatening weather, we flew to Paris. At a height of a thousand feet or less, just under the troubled grey masses of cloud, we flew on. I followed the country below with anxious eyes, relying on landmarks to show me the way. I identified each road and railway and village. I checked by the map each little patch of forest, each little lake.

Once I was carried away by the chorus of a song which made me dream a little as I sang. I looked down. There lay the straight road quite in order as I left it, but alongside appeared a forest which was not marked on the map. I became worried. I knew that once I had lost the way I would be badly adrift.

Just in time I discovered that I had passed a fork in the road as I sang to myself, and we had not turned as we should have done. Thereafter I kept my eyes on the alert, till finally we reached the outskirts of Paris.

When we were low over the roofs near Villacoublay I happened to look at the height-indicator. To my surprise it registered zero. I gave the pilot a violent nudge and pointed it out to him. Then I realised that the aerodrome at Luxeuil, on which the indicator had been adjusted, was several hundred feet above sea-level, and that, now we were over lower country, our height might be registered as nothing, when in reality we were a few hundred feet above the roofs.

If there had been a mist we might have been in a difficulty, as our height-indicator would have been useless. We would not have had the good fortune of an airman who on one occasion got overtaken by a thick mist in England and wished to land. He knew the country was flat, so he glided down into the mist very gently, and when the height-indicator was just above zero he climbed out of the machine and sat on the edge. He saw the finger of the dial actually touch the zero mark, and jumped.... So accurate was the instrument that he was not hurt. He was flung down a bank, and was badly shaken up, but was no worse for it. The amazing part of it was that the aeroplane, a very stable machine, landed itself correctly and was found in a field a little farther ahead without a wire broken.

We landed at Villacoublay, and rushed into Paris by car to spend a gay glittering evening in the capital. We were up early next day, and motored out to Villaconblay, and were soon on our way to Dunkerque.

A little past Boulogne the low-drifting clouds were left behind, and we flew into glorious April weather. On the left, to my great joy, was the sea and the surf-lined sweep of the coast. Below was the patchwork of fields and meadows, whose colours were so soft in the sunlight that the country looked like a carpet of suede leather dyed with many a rich shade of cream and brown and purple and dull green, in oblong patternings. Across this lovely mosaic ran straight roads which linked up the compact little towns. Here and there lay a canal like a bar of steel, blue and slender.

The machine moved forward with an absolute steadiness. The pilot took his hands off the wheel, glad to rest himself after the terrific bumping we had been enduring under the clouds since we left Paris. The engines droned contentedly. The burly engineer P.O. in front looked downwards with delight at the sunny plain which moved towards us with such a stately and even progress. Flying became really comfortable for once, and very monotonous.

Calais passed. Gravelines, with its starfish fortifications, moved by on our left-hand side. Dunkerque lay ahead. I began to look for the aerodrome. I had not been told exactly where it was. I knew it was between Dunkerque and Bergues, near the canal. Nearer and nearer to Dunkerque and its line of docks and its ramparts we drew. Still I could not find the aerodrome. The pilot grew impatient. Then I saw in the air ahead of us the familiar form of a twin-engined machine. It was another Handley-Page. It swept downwards in wide curves. I looked below it and saw, by a wide field, a few brown hangars in front of which stood other machines.

The noises of the engines ended. We drifted down and landed. We were met by an officer with a megaphone, who gave us very curt instructions as to where the machine was to stop. We expected to be greeted as heroic travellers, so this abrupt welcome rather surprised us. When we disembarked, however, we found that several Handley-Pages were coming back from a daylight patrol off the coast to Zeebrugge and back. I caught the edge of my pilot's eye and knew he was wondering as I was--what nasty new business was this?

We went into the mess, very tired after our long journey by air from one end of the lines to the other, and while we were sitting at the table a heavy-booted and furred observer came in with very bright eyes and said to the C.O. of the station--

"Rather good luck, sir! We saw a couple of destroyers ten miles north of Zeebrugge. Dropped our bombs on them. Direct hit on one! Seemed to be sinking when I left!"

The C.O. was delighted, and as the observer left the room I felt what a fine spirit of adventure there was in flying when a man could land out of the skies so flushed with achievement. He had sunk a destroyer in the enemy's waters. What a splendid conquest for one man! I felt near the sea again. I felt proud of my naval uniform. I felt glad I was in the Naval Air Service. A breath of the sea swept through the room, which drove away all the sad memories of rather bitter days far, far away near the Vosges.

That night I walked alone under a haggard moon down a treeless road that wound beside a canal. The wind sighed across the flat ploughed fields. Towards Ypres I saw the incessant flash and flicker of artillery fire. For a moment I stood looking to the north-east, towards the lines.

Then would it have been fitting to have seen, as a fantastic prelude to my fantastic nights, what I often saw later from Dunkerque--a glittering string of emerald green balls rise slowly up in the profundity of the night, to droop over and hang awhile in the blue velvet of the night skies before they died away.

IV.

Up The Coast.

"Towards the silver glittering sea we go And cross the foam-streaked coast, and leave behind The fields...."

--_Crossing the Channel._

In the train on the way to Dover my pilot told me, with a dismal expression over-shadowing his face, a piece of bad news.

"Do you know," he said, "while we were on leave a Handley got shot down off Zeebrugge! ---- was the pilot, and I think he was drowned. One gunlayer was saved, badly wounded. A French seaplane which picked up the other got shot down too! We were well off at Luxeuil!"

With this discouraging information, casting a gloom over the immediate outlook, we crossed the Dover Straits by destroyer, and arrived at the aerodrome to find it busy with these daylight patrols.

My pilot had no machine in action, so, though he was not wanted, I was allocated to a machine on the first patrol that took place. There was a certain amount of concern at the aerodrome in connection with the missing pilot, who was very popular, and I was glad to hear that we were to be accompanied by a patrol of triplanes. This was good news.

One of the pilots, who had been on a daylight Handley-Page patrol, had described it in his inimitable way as follows:--

"We were tooling along merrily, about ten miles off the coast, when a Hun seaplane came up from Ostend--a nasty little green blighter. A 'tripe' just turned round--just turned round, mind you, and the Hun seaplane looked at him and went down quick. When we were off Zeebrugge, Sinjy, my observer, saw some little specks off the Mole. Of course he wanted to have a look at them--he is a full-out beggar--said they were Hun torpedo-boats. We turned on and flew right towards the coast. Sinjy was full out and got ready to drop the bombs. Then he decided they were just trawlers. It was just in time, then--_woof_--about a hundred shells burst all at once just behind our tail. Every battery on the coast must have opened fire at once. They were just waiting for us to come right in and then let go. I shoved the nose down to 80 knots and shifted like smoke out to sea!"

That was very encouraging, especially the part about the triplanes, so really I felt very anxious to go, although I was frightened. I have often felt this mingled eagerness and apprehension, and I have come to the conclusion that although I do not want to do the job, I want to have _done_ it, to have had so much more experience behind me. Perhaps this is the impulse behind so many deeds done against personal inclinations. You think far enough ahead to realise how pleasant your feelings will be when you have passed through some danger or some excitement.

One afternoon, after many delays, we started on a coastal patrol. The machine had a crew of five: the pilot, a tremendous fair-haired fellow, resolute and impulsive, a real Viking, who towered above me, and three gunlayers, one in the front and two behind. We carried a small load of bombs, and were under orders to bomb any vessel which was attacked by the leading machine, and were also told that no vessel this side of the Nieuport piers, the seaward end of the lines, was to be touched.

The flight was a small one, of three machines only, and the leading machine was distinguished by white streamers attached to the outside struts of the starboard and port wings.

It was a sunny day when we left the ground, and rose up in great circles over the huddled red roofs of Dunkerque, and the pink-and-white seaside suburb of Malo-les-Bains.

The leading machines started to fly down the coast towards the lines before we had gained any height at all. Our engines were running badly, and we were well below the other machines, so the pilot asked me what I thought.

"Leave it to you!" I said--one half of me whispering "Go back!" the other half whispering "Push on!"

"Well, I'll see!" he said, as he pulled back the control wheel almost as far as he dared without "stalling" the machine. The engines complained; the finger of the speed indicator wobbled undecidedly about 48 miles an hour, and the height indicator slowly moved to 4000 feet.

So we passed over La Panne, as the two leaders flew bravely along the coast soaring upwards like swallows, while we followed gamely but ignobly behind. When we could distinctly see the Nieuport piers and the Belgian Hoods stretching down towards Dixmude, the leader turned out to sea. Then to our joy he evidently realised our plight, for instead of flying on at an angle away from the coast, he swept round in a big circle to give us a chance to rise up to his level. Then he turned once more out to sea, the second machine followed him, and we, still many hundred feet below them, straggled behind.

Above us now flew, gleaming white against the blue afternoon sky, several triplanes, whose flashing wings brought us their message of protection. The outlook did not seem so bad after all. The pilot, in a red silk pirate cap with its tassel blown out by the wind, looked down at me smiling. I wore a blue silk cap and was wearing an ordinary overcoat and a muffler, and my thin walking shoes looked very silly hanging a few inches off the floor in that great machine. The sunlight came streaming into the cockpit, the sea glittered with a friendly spaciousness beneath us, and this voyage in the wind seemed a pleasant spring adventure far from the dangers of war.

We steadily drew away from the coast, whose misty outline lay some way below us to our right. When we were abreast of the Nieuport piers, and were about to cross into enemy waters, we could scarcely see more than the edge of the shore and a mile or so of country inland.

When we had flown on for a few minutes more, I heard a sudden loud crash. At once I looked to the engine to see if its indicators gave hint of trouble. They were quite normal. Then I looked back and saw, through the square framework of the tail, a cloud of smoke.

I turned quickly to the pilot and shouted, "We're being shelled!"

He looked back, and turned to me dubiously.

"What the blazes is it? It can't be the Westende guns--we're too far from the coast!"

Then I saw below me three or four shell-bursts leaping out near the water, not far from two destroyers which were lying below us, small and slim lines of black on the sparkle of the sea.

"I can't make it out!" he said. "It's very rum. Let's push on!"

Some way ahead of us rose and fell the dark outlines of the two other Handley-Pages, and we could notice that curious optical delusion of the air, the apparently slow revolution of their propellers, blade after blade appearing to go round in a jerky fashion, though in reality they were whirling invisibly at a speed of 1600 revolutions a minute, or even more. The only explanation of this spectacle, which can often be seen by an airman, is that the vibrations of his machine affect his eyes like the rapid shutters of a cinema camera, and he has continual momentary glances of the propeller in a fixed position.

Soon we were abreast of Ostend, and we could see the inland lake of its Bassin de Chasse lying beyond the edge of the coast. We passed Ostend, and far ahead of me to my right I could see the curve of the Zeebrugge Mole, very small and dim in the distant haze.

I scanned the sea with my eyes, looking in vain for submarines or destroyers or seaplanes. No mark of any kind broke the shining surface of the water. Now and then a triplane or a "D.H._{4}," flying on some coastwise expedition, slid up to us and dived down past us, or flew a hundred feet above our heads, showing its distinguishing letters and its red, white, and blue cockade. The pilot sat beside me, his huge body almost half out of the machine, his aquiline nose and pronounced chin driving firmly through the rush of the wind, which flapped and fluttered our silk caps; the sunlight shone with the pale gold of spring across our shoulders and arms, and though I was ten miles out to sea in a land machine off an enemy shore, I felt curiously safe, curiously unafraid. The sea seemed to be a safeguard. Little did I know that I was passing over the scene of my midnight tragedy a year later, when I was to regard the sea in a different aspect--when I was to learn by a bitter lesson its pitiless power.

The machines in front of us swung round to return. We swung round too, to give ourselves a chance of gaining height before we were passed. This was not needed, for to our amusement we saw that whereas, as was only natural, the other machines had flown up the coast with their nose well in air, climbing steadily, now they were returning homewards with their noses well down, getting out of the danger zone (and it _was_ a danger zone for a slow cumbersome Handley-Page) as quickly as possible.

They passed nearly a thousand feet beneath us, and this time we followed them easily. When we were almost abreast of the Nieuport piers once more I suddenly saw a little puff of hard black smoke appear in the air in front of us. Its clean-cut outlines grew less distinct and more hazy as it spread and grew thinner. Another puff appeared near it and a little above it, and in turn began to enlarge and dissipate.

"Why! They're shelling us!" exclaimed my pilot.

I looked below. There lay the two destroyers steaming slowly in circles.

"I believe it's those confounded destroyers!" I said. "They must be British too, off here. Can't they see our marks, blame fools?"

Two or three more shells appeared between us and our two companions, who were now going round and round in circles evidently very mystified. It looked so amusing that we could not help laughing, now that the fire was not meant for us. Then the shells came over to us again. It was a curious sight. You would look out into the blue sky and the mist-bound coast, and suddenly, in absolute silence (for the roar of our engines deafened us), would appear, out of nothing, a perfectly hard outline, looking as solid as a piece of coal or a crumpled top-hat. There it would appear in a second of time and would hang in they sky--an apparent mockery of gravity. Its outline would flux and change, it would writhe and roll round into an ever larger expanse of vapour, its edge would grow soft and more ragged, and in a few minutes it would be a little cloud of haze and nothing more.

Suddenly the pilot exclaimed, "It _is_ them, the swine, I saw them fire!" and impetuously threw round the wheel and pushed forward the rudder. The machine swung round at a tremendous pace, and a most curious incident occurred. Ahead of us were the two machines, some way below us, with their noses pointing downwards. Now to our amazement we saw them mount up, up, up, into the sky, with their tails down as though they were climbing furiously, and then the coast shot round and rose up into the sky as well.

In the midst of this mad inversion of the universe the pilot turned to me and calmly said--

"What the blazes has happened, Paul--it looks all wrong? What shall I do?"

"Shove her nose down, old man!" I said. "It looks mighty rum to me--but we'll get out somehow!"

The universe swept round us again, the coast fell down, the Handley-Pages dropped below us with their noses towards the sea. The pilot looked at me, I looked at him.

"What on earth was that?" he said.

"Must have been jolly nearly upside down!" I suggested, feeling a bit dazed.

The memory of that brief and mystified conversation, as we sat side by side in a machine which had assumed some incomprehensible position, has remained in my memory as one of the strangest moments I have known.

The shells still burst near us and the pilot got annoyed.

"Let's drop our stuff on them! Get in the back! They can't be British. They must be able to see our marks. We're only seven thousand."

"Well! What about the leader? We daren't do it unless he does--we'll get in a thundering row. Anyway they are just off our coast!"

The leading machines still flew round undecidedly. The destroyers below still fired their occasional shells. One burst rather near us.

"I'll bomb them and chance it--the swine!" said the pilot, "You get in the back!"

"All right, you take the responsibility!" I said, and climbed into the back of the machine and lay on the floor under his seat. I pulled open the sliding-door and a burst of wind came blowing up on my face. Below me lay a little square of sea, on which I could see no destroyer, but I could tell by the way it was racing under us that we were doing a steep turn.

Still the two little black shapes of the destroyers did not come into the frame of the picture. I put my head out below the machine and looked for them. I could not see them. If I had I was determined to drop my bombs on them whatever they were.

I hurriedly got back beside the pilot and asked him what he was doing.

"I decided not to touch them, old man! I want to bomb them--whatever they may be. Anyway the leader's gone off--we better follow."

Some way ahead of us were the two other machines flying homewards. We toiled on behind them, receiving a few parting shell-bursts as a farewell. Out to sea we flew till we were off Dunkerque, and then we turned in towards the coast. We passed over the crowded docks, and over the brown roofs of the town, gliding down with our engines throttled back, when suddenly I looked to the left and saw that one of the propellers had stopped dead. My heart jumped into my throat, and I took the pilot by the arm.

He looked round and told me to get into the back in order to try to start up the engine. I hurried into the little canvas-walled room and gripped the metal starting-handle, and tried to turn it again and again in vain. The sweat poured off my forehead, my arm ached, but I could do nothing. It would not move.

I got back to the pilot, and told him.

"All right!" he said. "I'll land her somehow!"

We were getting near the aerodrome, on which, to my great relief, a machine was "taxying" towards the hangars. It was a relief to see that the aerodrome was clear, because, with no motive-power to take us off the ground again, or to swing us round in a hurry, we should be helpless if we were to land when some other machine was in the way, and we had to land at once. So, as we faced the wind, and I saw the pilot very wisely stop the other engine, I felt rather anxious, and hoped it was going to be all right. If we "undershot," we might land on a shed or a hedge; if we "overshot," we might run into a ditch--there would be no means of preventing the calamity. The pilot must have perfect judgment, and must touch the ground at the right moment.

So I sat beside him, very tense and on the alert, longing to give my advice, but knowing it was best to keep silent, even if I thought he was wrong, lest I should confuse his judgment.

Knowing he was probably feeling the strain of responsibility, since four other lives than his own depended on his skill, I just gripped his arm and said--

"Priceless ... priceless ... we're going to do a topping landing...."

To the right we swung, and then to the left, as we did an "S" turn, to lessen our gliding distance.

"Ripping, old man! We'll just--do--it--nicely.... Hardly a bump!... Well! that was some landing!"

The feat had been achieved, and we had landed with both propellers stopped.

Soon we were in the mess eating our "41/2-minute" or hard-boiled eggs, drinking tea, and talking excitedly about the flight, our faces flushed with the wind, our hair dishevelled.

Then the glow of pleasure is felt, when the flight is finished, the danger is over, and you can rest, feeling that the rest is well deserved.

An evening report from a reconnaissance squadron informed us that the destroyers had been seen steaming into Ostend harbour. Our feelings can be imagined. Lost chances like that bite deep, and when I met the pilot many many months later on his return from a German prison camp, after the Armistice (for he had landed with engine failure behind the German lines), he said to me--

"Oh, how I wish we _had_ bombed those two destroyers! What a chance! What a chance!"

This incident illustrates well the curious point of view of an air-bomber. If those destroyers had been British, and the pilot had ordered me to bomb them, I could have done so with equanimity. If at any time I had been sent at night to attack a British town I would have released my bombs with no feeling of horror; indeed I would not have had any feelings at all. At first sight that statement sounds brutal and incredible. Let me say that I could not stand on a beetle without a feeling of repugnance. It has made me feel sick to shoot an animal in pain. The idea of killing is repulsive to me.

The explanation is that the airman dropping bombs does not drop them on human beings. He presses a lever when the metal bar of his bomb-sight crosses a certain portion of the "map" below him. It is merely a scientific operation. You never feel that there are human beings, soft creatures of flesh and blood, below you. You are not conscious of the fear and misery, of the pain and death, you may be causing. You are entirely aloof.

I have knelt in the nose of the machine over my objective, and have pressed the bomb-handle at the critical moment without ever having seen the bombs in the machine. After a certain time I have seen in the darkness below flash after flash leap up from the dim ground. In my mind those _flashes_ have been caused by the movement of my handle. I have not thought of yellow bombs dropping out of the machine, whirling through the air with an awe-inspiring scream, and exploding with a cruel force as they strike the earth. It is as though I had pressed an electric switch, and had seen a lamp glow in response in some far distant signal station.

If I had been taken to a scene of devastation, and had been shown a line of mutilated bodies, and had heard some one say, "You did this!" I should have been overcome with remorse and sickness, and would have gone away in tears of shame and loathing. Yet in the air, when the handle has been thrust home for the last time, and the bombs are actually scattering their splinters of death, I would get back to my seat and laugh and say--

"That's done, Jimmy! Let's push home!"

Once at Dunkerque I saw a street closed by a barrier, round which was a crowd of quiet people. There in the middle of it was a house which had been demolished by a German bomb during the night, and in the cellar lay thirty or forty dead or dying people. Men worked frantically at the crumbled wreckage. An ambulance drove through the barrier. Next to the driver sat an old man with the tears streaming down his cheeks. His wife lay dead in the back.

I turned away with a feeling of horror, and said to my friend--

"I never want to bomb again!"

V.

Coastwise Lights.

"The cunning searchlights haunt the midnight skies, Where chains of emerald balls of fire rise, To mingle with the spark of bursting shells-- High in the darkness where the bomber dwells!

We know the meaning of the sudden glare Of dazzling light which blossoms in the air: For us the green and scarlet rockets blaze And whisper urgent secrets through the haze."

--_The Night Raid._

From the aerodrome at Dunkerque five Short night-bombing machines were operating. These were large single-engined machines with a very long stretch of wings, and, apart from the Handley-Pages, were the biggest machines in use on the Western Front, and carried the heaviest weight of bombs.

While the Handley-Pages were getting ready, these Short machines, with their ten wonderfully skilled pilots and gunlayers, slipped off unostentatiously into the dark to Bruges and Zeebrugge, night after night, and would come back to the dark aerodrome and land quietly, about two and a half hours afterwards, with their bomb racks empty.

We would crowd round curiously, eager to learn what was to face us when we started raiding on the bigger machines.

The airmen said little as they removed their helmets and coats, or drank coffee in preparation for another raid the same night.

"Bruges is getting a bit hot. Good many flaming onions to-night. Seem to be more searchlights!" was the kind of comment made.

These airmen continued their raids, a little disdainful of the fuss and excitement about the Handley-Pages. They realised that they were doing the job, and that four bombs dropped are better than fourteen about to be dropped.

When the larger machines were ready to go, it was decided that they should operate from another aerodrome near the coast in order that our own aerodrome might be left clear for the Shorts.

I was not allowed to go on the first raid, as my pilot's machine was not in action, so I drove down to the aerodrome at dusk to act as an assistant ground officer. The machines were ready in a corner, and were to proceed to Ostend.

Night fell. The engines roared. One after the other the machines swept up and blotted out the stars in their passage. The noise of the engines died away, and the uneasy night was left undisturbed.

I climbed over the sand-dunes on to the beach, and stood looking north-east towards the lines. Far away I could see many a sign of the restless activity of the war-time night. Flash succeeded flash on the horizon, some dull and red, some brilliant and white. Here and there I could see the faint, almost invisible, arm of a searchlight waving evilly across the sky. Then I would see very slowly, very deliberately, a row of "green balls," like a string of luminous jade beads, rise up from the ground and climb up, up, up, into the darkness, begin to bend over like a tall overburdened flower, and vanish one by one. Another string would follow them, apparently on an irregular curve. Though fully twenty-five miles away, they had all the hard glitter of jewels, and were very luminous and beautiful.

As I stood watching this strange alluring sight, there were two deafening unexpected reports behind me--the most vicious urgent noises I have ever heard. I flung myself flat on the sand, face downwards, arms thrown out. Report after report followed, each one drawing nearer to me. I began to dig, in my desire to be as little higher than the ground as possible. I wished that I were a razor-shell. I felt convinced that the next bomb would be on my back. At last the succession of awful crashes stopped. I lay still, my mouth dry with fear, waiting for the fall of a "hang-up"--the most unreliable bomb of all.

However, no more explosions shook the ground, and the noise of the French anti-aircraft batteries broke the silence of the night instead. I stood up and ran to the aerodrome, stumbling across the sand-dunes and the tufts of dry grass. In the gloom on my right I could see the black columns of smoke which tower above the ground, recording the position of the explosions.

When I reached a deep ditch, I waited a little. I did not want to cross the flat expanse of the aerodrome without feeling sure that the danger was all over. I had the same lingering desire to remain near safety that you feel when playing "musical chairs" and you are near a vacant seat.

I saw a French marine, with the fear of death in his face, coming towards me. He had probably been in the ditch. (Lucky fellow!)

"What was it? Did you hear?" he said. "Not nice, was it?"

He was evidently delighted to see somebody. He wanted the moral support of a companion--another terrified human being. I felt the same, and was glad to see him. He looked so terrified that it made me feel I must not appear to be in the same condition.

So I replied airily--

"Oh! Not at all nice! But not very near. Not dangerous, you know!" (My heart had hardly then left my throat.) "I'm going back to the hangars!"

He walked with me. Maybe he felt that I would be some sort of cover if any more bombs were dropped. I felt the same.

Thereafter the whole night was full of hidden mysteries. In the direction of Calais, tracer shells, like curving hot coals, moved through the sky continuously. The air was full of the hum of engines. There was a talk of Zeppelins. Everything was uncertain.

Then one by one the machines returned and landed with dazzling flares blazing away beneath their wing-tips.

Before dawn we drove back to our own aerodrome, and went to bed.

Our machine was ready for the next raid, and we were detailed to go to Ghent.

In order to save repetition I will describe the first raid, and include in it other incidents which happened during subsequent night trips.

I wish to draw the contrast between the first few flights, when we made mistakes, and had to find out everything by doing it--and the later trips, when we had evolved a better scheme of attack, and, knowing what to expect, countered each move of opposition before it came, almost as in a game of chess. So in this chapter I will give a composite description of earlier raids, and in my next chapter give a detailed account of a cold determined attack on a highly-fortified objective of whose defences we had gained experience.

The machines are lined up on the seaward aerodrome. I have my celluloid map-case with its coastwise map on one side, and on the other the more detailed map of the district round the aerodrome which we are to bomb.

I climb into my seat and sit beside the pilot. The door is slammed behind us. The pilot blows a whistle, and the chocks are pulled away from the wheels. With our engines running gently on either side we await the order to leave. Then, half a mile in front of us, we see the wide slow flash of a bomb. Another follows it a short time after, and then another. Each is nearer to us, and I can hear the crash of the explosions.

"Bombs!" I say to the pilot. "I don't like this! Bit rotten being bombed before we leave the ground!"

As the last bomb flashes in front of us we receive the order to start away. On go the engines with a roar, and we move across the grass. The nose drops down slightly as the tail leaves the ground and we begin to assume flying position. It is very unpleasant rushing across the dim aerodrome like this, not knowing when a bomb is going to burst on you or near you, and conscious of the fact that somewhere in the darkness above is a German aeroplane, perhaps waiting for you.

Suddenly there is a jerk at my head, and my invaluable fur-lined mask-goggles have vanished, being snatched away by the rush of air. This means that I shall have no goggles to wear during the whole raid.

The nose shoots up into the air, and with a vibrant beat from the engines we mount into the star-bestrewn sky, and turn out over the sand-dunes towards the sea. We move away from the aerodrome at once, and the occasional red flashings of bursting bombs show us that we are wise.

Dunkerque passes on our starboard side. Its defences are very suspicious, and we are taken for a German machine. Shells begin to burst near us, though we are scarcely a thousand feet off the ground.

I load my Very's light pistol with a cartridge, and fire over the side "the colour of the night." I continue to do so until the shell-fire stops. The town lies in darkness, but I am faintly conscious of its hidden wakefulness as it lies angry and apprehensive. Below can be seen a few faint specks of light from the ships anchored, for safety's sake, off the shore.

We fly onwards along the coast, climbing steadily. We keep the pale line of the beach near enough to our starboard side to be able to follow it easily. The engines run evenly. The dials are steady. In front of us the air-speed indicator hardly wavers. It is a time, not of trouble and anxiety, but of mere waiting. The strain has not yet begun. With the near approach of the German territory the whole mental outlook of the airman changes, and every nerve automatically becomes on the alert. Now, however, there is the same sense of mild interest felt in an ordinary daytime flight over friendly territory. The country lying to our right is creditably dark. Not one gleam of light shines in the stretch of vague shadows, save where at a large coastwise munition plant a red flame leaps up for a moment and dies away.

In the far distance can be seen an occasional misty flash from the volcanic region of Ypres. A little nearer a tremulous star-shell glows white through the haze, and slowly droops and dies.

La Panne is passed, and we begin to turn out at an angle away from the coast. We are nearly six thousand feet from the ground, and are still climbing. We sweep round in three or four wide circles to gain a little more height, and then fly straight ahead.

At the end of the lines by the piers of Nieuport we are six miles or so from the coast. At Ostend I can see a vague cluster of searchlights moving restlessly and rather undecidedly across the sky, dredging the sky with their slim white arms in an evil and terrifying manner. I ask the pilot to turn out at a sharper angle, in order that he may pass Ostend quite ten miles out to sea. There is a visible menace in searchlights, and we avoid them like poison unless it is essential to go near. It requires a very strong nerve to fly right ahead to a thicket of moving beams of light. We used to allow six or seven miles margin, and would willingly add several miles to our journey on the wrong side of the lines in order to make a detour.

As we are passing Nieuport I see two small points of light suddenly appear. They rise up and swell into two bright flares--one scarlet and one emerald. These flares die away, and at once several more searchlights become active near Middelkerke. It is the German "hostile aircraft" signal. Off Middelkerke itself we see two more flares, and when Ostend, with its forest of moving beams, lies far to our right, yet another sinister group of red and green lights rises up as we are "handed" along the coast from point to point.

Below us now is the expanse of sea. Above us are a few scattered stars, which have challenged the radiance of the moon. To the right lies the dimly seen line of the coast, fringed, as far as we can see, with a line of searchlights waving outwards over the sea. At Ostend an aerial lighthouse flashes at a regular interval, giving signals of guidance to the German aircraft abroad in the darkness. Slightly behind us are the occasional star-shells, and a hurried flash gives evidence of military activity on the land.

We are almost 8000 feet up, and with the fringe of searchlights as a barrier I am not easy in my mind.

"Pull her up to nine thousand, if you can, Jimmy; it's hardly high enough yet! Try and pull her back a bit! We'll have to cross the coast in about ten minutes."

I am feeling that my scheme of going to the objective by land was by far the best one. The coastal section of Belgium had two fronts--the trench-line from Nieuport to Ypres, and the coast-line from Zeebrugge to Nieuport. There was a strong searchlight barrier by the sea; there was none behind the German front lines. Therefore, if you were to proceed to a land objective by the sea route you had to face two organisations of defence--first at the coast, and then at the objective. If you went by the overland route you had only the searchlights at your objective to tackle. The fewer obstacles there were to meet, the better I was pleased; and I felt that it was bad management if in an attack on an objective I was troubled by the defences of any other point.

Thereafter I used the overland route, even when attacking places on the coast, until my final accident. It was as much a question of morale as anything. If you crossed the German lines about Nieuport there was no opposition. Your lights were extinguished. You moved into an unopposing darkness. You never felt that the people below knew that you were there. Ghistelles on the left shot up a couple of towering lights, which moved vainly towards you. Thorout gave birth to one pale beam, which you might ignore. If, on the other hand, you moved down the mast, you saw that cruel waiting fence of white weeds stretching up into the dark pool of the night--a visible and threatening sign of hostile activity.

So, as we pass Ostend, I look along the coast-line with a feeling of fear. We are going to cross the shore between Zeebrugge and Ostend, at Blankenberghe, which is the most weakly defended spot.

Suddenly my pilot strikes my arm.

"Look! There's one of their patrol machines with a searchlight! There--_there_--to the left!"

I turn and see, moving very swiftly, half a mile in front of us, a brilliant light. The pilot shouts again.

"It's turning towards us! Get in the front, quick!"

I crawl through the small wooden door into the nose of the machine, and unstrapping the Lewis gun get it ready for action. The light sweeps round to the right, but it is going downwards, and the German airman has evidently not seen us. I wait a minute or two and examine the sky all round us, but can see nothing. With a feeling of relief I kneel on the floor and wriggle back into my seat behind.

"By _Jove_! Did you see that, Bewsh?" says the pilot. "The devil! We'll have to look out."

Ahead of us now we can see the tall powerful searchlights of Zeebrugge moving in slow sweeps over the sky. Under our right wing lies Ostend. We are off Blankenberghe, and the time has come to cross the coast. We are eight thousand five hundred feet above the sea, and are not likely to gain much more height, and, at any rate, we are anxious to get the work done and to return home.

To the right we turn and move steadily towards the waiting coast. In front of us lies the waving line of searchlights. Inland, to the left, can be seen in the distance the turmoil of Bruges. The beams of light sweep across the stars; shells burst in the sky; and now and then there float upwards strings of fantastic green balls, sparkling like gems as they bubble towards the upper levels, where they float gaily for a moment parallel to the ground before they fade away.

Below, near the coast by Blankenberghe, an aerial lighthouse flashes and flashes--_Four shorts_--_one long_--darkness: _four shorts_--_one long_--darkness. Now we are getting near to the restless weeds of light which begin to move outwards in search of us. The pilot throttles the engines slightly, for we are getting within the range of these clutching tentacles. I feel very nervous and frightened.

On either side of us now move the slow gliding beams--broad and pale shafts of light stretching high, high up above us in the darkness, blotting out the stars, and stretching far, far beneath us to a tiny spot of light on the black edge of the coast.

With these arms of light coming up to us from the ground we begin at once to have a sense of height, which normally you never have when in the air. The searchlights, running from the earth to our level and past us, join us to the ground and give us a measure of distance and an opportunity of contrast. With these tall, enormously tall, thin pillars of light near us moving to and fro in a hypnotising swing, we feel very, very high off the ground, and realise how remote from the earth we sit on our little seats in the fragile structure of linen and steel and wood.

Beneath us now lies the vast and bottomless pool of the night sky. From the blue depths there comes pouring up, like the exhalations of some sinister sea creature in the primeval ooze, bubbles of green fire. Suddenly in the darkness appears a round bead of emerald light, another one appears beneath it, and then another, and a whole necklace pours upwards as though a string of gems had been pulled out of a fold in a black velvet cloth. In simple curves they soar past us into the upper sky, where perhaps they die out on their upward rush, or turn over and begin to drop downwards before they fade into mere red sparks falling swiftly.

Now are we towering high over the black edge of the coast in the pinnacles of the slim searchlights which challenge us in front, and move to the right and left of us. We are conscious of our hostility to those below, and rejoice to creep unseen, unnoticed, across this sentinel barrier. Around us the occasional ropes of brilliant emeralds wander upwards in regularity and silence, and for a rare moment we are conscious of being in the air at night. To our left Zeebrugge flings into the sky a dozen beams of powerful light, fortunately too remote to challenge us. To our right Ostend echoes the threat. We are just between the two danger zones, unassailable, but by a short distance only, by both of them.

I am learning the mistake of crossing the enemy's sea frontier instead of his land frontier. I am worried and harassed at the very beginning of my travel across his territory, instead of becoming settled down and used to being in an enemy sky before the visible danger of searchlights appear to challenge my passage.

We pass slowly, silently, through the suspicious beams of light. To the right and left we twist and turn as one of the swords cuts the sky near us. I draw my arms to my side to make myself smaller so that I may wriggle through the sharp edges of danger without being touched. Apart from the risk it is exciting, though very nerve-trying. When at last we are through the barrier, and regain the undefended inland region, there is a great feeling of relief.

Our engines are opened out, and we fly level again. Beneath us are the pale roads, and the dark lines of canals, and the chiaroscuro of villages and forests. Five or six miles to our left we look down into the cauldron of Bruges. It is a wonderful and awe-inspiring sight, and as it does not threaten us to-night we look at it with keen interest. The most noteworthy feature is a vicious-looking row of four searchlights, near together and spaced at even intervals, like a line of footlights at a theatre. These four beams of light move across the sky in strange and unpleasant formations. Now the two end ones stand upright while the two central ones sweep forward. Now the whole four move to and fro in a determined and formidable sweep. Now the two middle ones cross each other in a gigantic X of light, and the two outer ones sweep to and fro with the beat of a mighty metronome. We called these four lights the "Lucas Cranwell" lights, as they were like a landing light set of this name which we were experimenting with on our machines. Later on in the year, to our great relief, they were removed. The moral effect of a group of lights like that is very great. You were frightened before you approached the objective. They were a clever set of lights, too, because on one occasion they were _switched_ right on to our machine and held it, without any preliminary groping in the sky.

In addition to the "Lucas Cranwell" lights are five or six other powerful searchlights standing in a circle round the town, moving to and fro in a languid and sensuous way. Ferocious little spurts of light on the ground in a dozen places indicate the position of anti-aircraft guns, and here and there in the sky appear the quick and vivid flashes of the bursting shells. To complete the picture of activity the lovely necklaces of flaming jade rise up in great curves--sometimes only five or six in a string--sometimes twenty or thirty at once.

Now comes the time when I have to begin to seek my objective. Up to the present, the coast-line and the centres of activity at Ostend, Zeebrugge, and Bruges have rendered the use of a map unnecessary. I have scarcely had need to look over the side. Now, however, I have to begin to do some work.

I know by the waving searchlights that I am about six miles south of Bruges. I look over the side and see a main road running S.S.E. I identify it on the map and see that a railway should shortly appear. Soon I distinguish, with difficulty, the thin line of a railway track, which is a difficult thing to see by night or day--the best guide being any kind of water--canals, rivers, or lakes--then a good white road, or a forest, and lastly a railway line.

We cross the railway, and I identify a branch line running away from it. We turn N.E., and at the end of seven or eight minutes I see the bold black line of a canal whose peculiar curves it is very easy to identify. The volcano of Bruges flames up into the night to our left, while beyond it we can see the aerial lighthouses of Ostend and Blankenberghe flashing regularly on the hazy horizon. Flushing sparkles cheerfully ahead of us, and along the Scheldt glitter the Dutch villages.

We turn round to the right and fly on. We are now moving on a straight course, and I identify in turn each bend in the canal, each thin road, each queer-shaped forest. The aerodrome draws near. I see in the distance the little wood near which it lies. Then I can see the pale shape of the landing-ground, which looks slightly different to the surrounding fields owing to its made-up surface. We sweep round in order to be able to face the wind and to approach it in a good line. We turn again and begin to fly straight ahead.

"I'm getting in the back now, Jimmy," I shout. "Fly straight on. If I give two greens or two reds swing her round quickly. Turn very slowly for one green or one red!"

I crawl into the back, throw myself on the floor, kick my legs out behind me, and slide to the right the door beneath the pilot's seat. A biting wind beats on to my face, making my eyes water and blowing dust all over me. I remove a safety-strap from the bomb handle to my right and look below. There lies a square of pallid moonlit country. The aerodrome is not in view yet. I push my head out, turn it sideways, and look forward.

A mile or two ahead I see the little forest. I try to calculate whether we are steering straight for it or not. It seems to me that we are flying too much to the left. I pull myself inside the machine again, take off a glove, shine a torch on a little row of buttons on the frame of the door, and press the button on the right. A green light glows in the cockpit, and, looking at the bomb-sight, I see that the machine is swinging towards the right.

I poke my head through the bottom of the machine again and see the position of the aerodrome a good deal nearer. Now, however, we are too much to the right. Inside I pull my head and press the left-hand button. A red light glows in front of the pilot. I look down again. The small wood is in view, but even as I look the bomb-sight travels across it from the right well over to the left as the pilot swings the machine round in obedience to my signals.

Anxiously I press the button to the right again. Five or six times I press it quickly. Across the aerodrome the sight swings toward the right. Just before it crosses the middle of it I press the middle button. A white light glows before the pilot--the "straight ahead" signal. I have not given it soon enough, however: the machine is not checked on its rightward swing in time. It stops the turn with the sight well to the right of the aerodrome. I look at the luminous range-bars of the sight. We are almost over the objective. If I do not alter the direction I shall not be over the aerodrome when the time has come to drop the bombs. I flash the red light a second. The machine flies on. I press my finger on it and hold it there. Round to the left it swings. I look carefully down the range-bars of the sight. They are almost in line.

I press the central again and again, trying to judge the moment when I can check the pilot, so that the swing of the machine will stop as we come over the aerodrome. I misjudge it. The bomb-sights are in line with the aerodrome, but we are swinging rapidly to the left. I press the bomb lever once quickly to release two bombs. If I released any more they would straggle in a line right off the objective. My hands are almost frozen, my eyes are running. I feel discouraged and unhappy. Down below I see two red flashes appear near the hangars, leaving two round moonlit clouds of smoke on the ground.

I climb up beside the pilot, but before I have time to speak he asks eagerly--

"Dropped them all, old boy? How did you do it?"

"Couldn't do it, Jimmy. I'm _awfully_ sorry. It's this beastly signal light system. It isn't direct enough; I wish I could guide you better. It isn't your fault, but I can't stop you in time. I'll try again in a second if you swing her round."

In a great circle we sweep round to our old starting-point, and I get ready to make another attempt.

"I'll try very hard this time, old man. Let's get into the wind as near as we can, and you steer by some light, and I'll try to give as few changes in direction as I can. The worst is, I can't see the beastly aerodrome till we are almost on top of it, and then I can't get a decent 'run'. We must get that front cockpit position!"

I stand up and look over the front, and try to fix the exact position of the aerodrome and its surroundings in relation to the machine.

I hurry into the back and look through the trap-door again. I can hardly see, owing to my running eyes; but I wipe them dry, and look intently ahead in a horribly uncomfortable position, my head and shoulders hanging out of the bottom of the machine. Right ahead of us is the pale shape of the aerodrome. The pilot is flying magnificently. We are moving steadily forwards. As we draw nearer, I wriggle back into the machine and look down the bomb-sight. The thin direction-bar lies right across the aerodrome. I joyously press the middle button, so that the white light laughs out: "Good! Good! Good!" into the pilot's face. We begin to drift slightly to the right. I do not touch the key-board, but stand up and push my body forwards beside the pilot and shout furiously--

"Turn her very slightly to the left, Jimmy! We're doing fine! We'll get her this time! I'll press central when we're on it."

In a flash I am underneath the seat and looking at the bomb-sight. It swings slowly, slowly to the left. Just before it arrives over the aerodrome I press the white light button deliberately. The movement stops, and the bomb-sight begins to creep steadily forwards over the hangars and surface of the aerodrome. With my anxieties past I have a wonderful feeling of relaxation and happy excitement. Just before the two luminous range-bars actually touch the edge of the line of hangars, I grasp the bomb-handle and begin to press it forward slowly. I hear the sharp clatter of opening and closing of the bomb-doors behind me, and I see two plump bombs go tumbling downwards below the machine. Again, and a third and a fourth time, I press forward the bomb-handle, and can feel the little drags on it as I release bomb after bomb. I look behind, and see that they are all gone. I shine my torch through the racks to make sure, and I see the gunlayer busy with his torch also. I look below through the door, and see four or five bomb-flashes leap out across the aerodrome, while behind them lies apparently the smoke of others near the hangars. I slam the door to with a feeling of thankfulness, and get back to my seat.

"All gone, Jimmy! No 'hang-ups.' You did jolly well; they went right across the aerodrome. Let's push north-west back to the coast. I'm absolutely frozen."

I have a hurried look at my pressure-dials, to see that they are all right; and when I have adjusted them, I uncork my Thermos flask, have a comforting drink of hot tea, and eat some chocolate. I beat my gloved hands together and try to restore the circulation, and stamp my feet on the floor. Feeling tired and cold, I sit on my seat with my head on my breast, feeling languid and limp after the subconscious strain.

Towards the distant coast-line, with its steady flickers of lights at Ostend and Blankenberghe, we move, forgetting already the place on which we have just dropped our bombs. The turmoil of Bruges has subsided--only two wary searchlights stand sentinel at either side of the town, alert and scarcely moving. Those two are enough to give us warning, however, and we sweep to the left to leave the simmering inferno well to our starboard.

Below lies the pallid moonlit country,--field and forest, chateau and canal,--clearly etched in a soft black pattern of shadows and dim light. Far, far to the south Ypres flashes and flares on the horizon, with its night-long artillery fire.

Now that our job is done, we are not so fearful of being over enemy country, partly because we are used to it by now, and partly because we are leaving the interior farther and farther behind us, minute by minute, as the coast-line draws nearer.

Unexpectedly I notice below the machine a curious white patch on the face of the country. Then I see others behind it, and realise that the coast-line is becoming swiftly blotted out under a layer of clouds.

"Jimmy! Look--clouds! We'll have to go carefully," I remark, and have a look at the compass. "Let's turn a bit more south-east, and we are bound to see Ostend."

We turn swiftly, and in a few minutes are above a white carpet of cloud, through which, to my joy, I can see very hazily the flashing light of Blankenberghe to my right. Over towards Zeebrugge rise a few parting strings of green balls as the last British machine turns out to sea.

For ten minutes we fly on by compass, which I check by the coldly glittering North Star, that shines faithfully for us high in the deep blue of the sky.

Then I see, running to and fro, and round and round, on the carpet of the clouds, little circles of light. Now and then one comes to a rift on the bank, and for a moment a beam of light shoots up into the sky, only to vanish again. The Ostend searchlights are vainly looking for us; our engines have been heard.

Now we are approaching a new formation of clouds, lovely towering masses of cumulus, pearl-white in the light of the moon. Over an unreal world of battlement and turret, of mountain summit and gloomy valley, we move in a splendid loneliness beneath the scattered stars. This billowy world of soft and silvery mountain ranges is made the more strange by the restless discs of radiance which run and swoop and circle and dance in a mad maze of movement across the curving pinnacles and ravines. Now and again a searchlight, striking into the heart of some towering summit of cloud, illuminates it with a glorious radiance, so that it seems for a moment to be woven of the fabric of light.

Suddenly the scene becomes even more fantastic, for in one place on the clouds appears a spot of vivid green. The spot of light spreads and spreads until it is a circle of emerald light, a mile or more in diameter, and from the extreme centre appears a ball of brilliantly green fire which pops out of it quickly, to be followed by another and another, until the whole chain of beads have freed themselves from the entanglements of the vapour and rush gaily upwards high over our heads, to end their brief career in a lovely splendour above the milk-white billows of the cloudy sea.

Another point of cloud glows green, there is another swiftly expanding circle of colour, and another string of these quaint gems float upwards in a swaying curve. The sight is one of such exquisite loveliness that it is difficult to describe it. It is all so beautiful--the star-scattered vault of night, gold flowers in a robe of deepe