nderful panorama unfolding itself
out beneath me, I glanced at my camera and tested the socket. Yes, it
was quite firm.

"We are nearing the lines now," my companion shouted. "Can you see them
on your right? That's the Belgium area. Our section, as you know, begins
just before Ypres. Will this height suit you? Shall I follow the
trenches directly overhead or a little to one side?"

"Keep this side, I'll begin taking now." Kneeling up in my seat, I
directed my camera downwards and started filming our lines and the
German position stretching away in the distance.

We were nearing Ypres, that shell-battered city of Flanders. White balls
of smoke here and there were bursting among the ruins, showing that the
Huns were still shelling it. What a frightful state the earth was in.
For miles and miles around it had the appearance of a sieve, with
hundreds of thousands of shell-holes, and like a beautiful green ribbon,
winding away as far as the eye could see, was that wonderful yet
terrible strip of ground between the lines, known as "No Man's Land."

We were now running into a bank of white fleecy clouds, which enveloped
us in its folds, blotting the whole earth from view. I held my
handkerchief over the lens of the camera to keep the moisture from
settling upon it. After a time several breaks appeared in the clouds
beneath, and the earth looked wonderful. It seemed miles--many
miles--away. Rivers looked like silver streaks, and houses mere specks
upon the landscape. Here and there a puff of white smoke told of a
bursting shell. But for that occasional, somewhat unpleasant reminder, I
might have been thousands of miles away from the greatest war in
history.

Who could imagine anything more wonderful, more fantastic? I had dreamed
of such things, I had read of them; I even remembered having read, years
ago, some of the wonderful stories in _Grimm's Fairy Tales_. To my
childish mind, they seemed very wonderful indeed. There were fairies,
goblins, mysterious figures, castles which floated in the air, wonderful
lands which shifted in a night, at the touch of a magic wand or the
sound of a magic word. Things which fired my youthful imagination and
set me longing to share in their adventures. But never in my wildest
dreams did I think I should live to do the same thing, to go where I
listed; to fly like a bird, high above the clouds. It was like an
adventure in fairyland to take this weird and wonderful creation of men,
called