e--but they
were not made by a shell. A cluster of bullets from the machine-gun of a
German plane at close range has passed in at one side of the seat and
out at the other. The rifle which the observer was carrying dropped from
his hands out into space, and the pilot saw it fall just before he
dived.

The German pilots are sometimes youngsters too--not very unlike our own.
Our first sight of active war in France was when the train stopped at a
country siding many miles behind the lines, and two British soldiers
with fixed bayonets marched a third man--a youngster with a slight fair
moustache--over the level crossing in front of us. He wore a grey peaked
cap and a short overcoat jacket with a warm collar and tall,
tight-fitting boots--very much like those of our own officers; and he
walked with a big, swift stride, looking straight ahead of him.
Somewhere, far over behind the German lines, they were probably
expecting him at that moment. His servant would be getting ready his
room. He had left the aerodrome only an hour before, and flown over
strange lines which we have never seen, but which had become as familiar
as his home to him, with no idea than to be back, as he always was
before, within an hour or so. And then something seems to be wrong with
the plane--he has to come down in a strange country; and within an hour
he is out of the war for good and all. He strides along biting his lip.
His comrades will expect him for an hour or so. By dinner-time they will
realise that there is another member gone from their mess.

While I am writing these words someone runs in to say that a German
aeroplane has been shot down--came down in flames, they say, and tore a
great hole in the roadside. There seems to be some such news every day,
now it is one of ours, now one of theirs. It is a brave game.

I suppose it needs a sportsman, even if he is a German, to fight in a
service like that. The pity of it that he is fighting for such an ugly
cause.

CHAPTER VIII

THE COMING STRUGGLE: OUR TASK

[Up to this time the Australians had been in quiet trenches in the green
lowlands near Armentieres. From this time the coming struggle began to
loom ahead.]

_France, May 23rd._

I sat down to write an article about a log-chopping competition. But the
irony of writing such things with other things on one's mind is too much
even for a war correspondent. One's pen goes on strike. One impression
above all has been brought home