chine-guns was
the only sound as both Germans and British watched this unique battle.

Suddenly the German machine showed signs of distress, pitched suddenly
forward, and started a long glide for the German trenches, our aeroplane
still pursuing and forcing the enemy even lower.

But the German had followed our trench line too far down, for at this
point our trenches ran forward nearly a quarter of a mile where a
French cavalry brigade in a dismounted action the year before had made a
last effort to retake Messines.

And now, when it became apparent their machine could not regain the
German lines, their gunners began to shell their own plane, containing
as it did two of their own men, in an effort to destroy the machine.

But, though they fired over a hundred shells into the little wood behind
which the aeroplane landed, they were unable to prevent the men of our
Royal Montreal Regiment, who occupied the trenches at this point, from
capturing the observer and his papers, the pilot having been killed in
mid-air at the time the machine made its fatal plunge.

Then occurred one of the strangest of coincidences, vouched for by the
official Canadian Eye-witness, when, on examining the wrecked aeroplane,
the Royal Montrealers found the machine-gun with which it had been armed
to be one formerly the property of this same regiment, but lost during
the fighting around St. Julien just six months before while loaned to
another battalion.

The "Mad Major" may have been only a myth, but Lorraine certainly was
not, and for this exploit both he and his pilot subsequently received
the Military Cross.

But there were a lot of tales that had their origin in a desire to suit
the "Cook's tourists." These individuals were officers sent over from
the Canadian Training Base for short periods of one or two weeks to
receive practical instruction in trench warfare. Incidentally they
brought with them some wondrous ideas about the proper methods of doing
things, gathered from some official publications known as "Notes from
the Front," and were greatly surprised to find we were not in touch with
this "trade" journal.

Like the "Daily Summary of Events," known to us as "Comic Cuts" or the
"Daily Liar," these little handbooks are written by wise men wearing red
tabs and living miles away from the front, where the continuity of their
thoughts is only interrupted by the tea hour, and not by the "Jack
Johnson" shells. Here they design "wire me