ss or
dining-room and beyond this was the "galley" or kitchen. While the
Bedouins were inflicted with a cook who had been in pre-war days an
expert electrician, the kitchen would not have been your most attractive
route to the officers' sleeping-quarters.

Presuming that you left the mess through its more congenial exit, the
ward-room, the next hut you would have come to was the officers'
quarters. There at eleven o'clock in the morning you would have heard a
full symphony rendered by twenty lusty sleepers. "Is this war?" you
might have asked yourself if you did not have in mind that you were
visiting a night-bombing squadron. The officers in this hut had returned
but five or six hours previously from an all-night raid over Germany.

Beyond this hut are the men's quarters which are deserted at this hour.
Across the road is the workshop or repair factory which, under the eye
of "Bill," the engine officer, runs "full blast" from six in the morning
to nine or ten at night. Next to this miniature factory is the armorers'
hut where all the machine guns are overhauled daily, ammunition tested
as regards rims, sunken caps, etc., and every possible precaution taken
to render the guns thoroughly efficient.

Near by are the huge, camouflaged hangars, or buildings containing the
aeroplanes. Here the mechanics are "tuning up" the engines; the riggers
are trueing up the aeroplanes, tightening a flying wire here, loosening
a landing wire there, testing controls; in fact, doing all that
scientific knowledge and care can do to reduce the chance of accident
from mechanical imperfection. And upon these patriotic, scientific
mechanics, working for their country and their ideals and recompensed
from a pecuniary point of view with a shilling or two a day, rested to a
large extent, the lives of the aviators and the success of their various
adventures.

Back of the hangars and near the officers' quarters is the squadron
office. Here are several clerks constantly engaged in recording all the
details relating to the men's pay, their military records, their issues
of clothes, blankets, etc.,--in fact, recording and filing everything
dealing with the squadron's activities.

Next to the squadron office is the large map-room. If a squadron on
active service can be compared to the human body, the map-room is the
brain of the squadron, for here is kept all the information essential to
the aviators. On one wall is a huge map of the whole war zone