volunteers, inflated during the
night, and launched in the morning. Promptly at 10:00 o'clock, when it
was ready for raising, the German planes hummed busily overhead. Despite
their activities, the balloon got well up and was doing good observation
work on its way over to the naval nuisance; there it reached its
objective, making the necessary notations and records. Then--Kr-kr-kr-p!
Kr-kr-kr-p! And the shells commenced to scatter around it. Then it was a
case of getting the bag down, which was not so easy. These observation
balloons are operated from a large armored truck, to which they are
fastened, and the truck runs along carrying the air-bag with it,
attached with a long cable; it is handled just as a toy balloon would be
carried by a boy,--when the boy runs along, the balloon runs with him.
Attached to the bottom of the gas bag is a basket, usually holding four
observers, with a parachute for each man, and while in the air they have
to work as fast as possible, because their stay in the azure is as short
as the energies of Fritz can make it. If the wind is up and the sky
cloudy, it is one chance in a dozen that they will escape before the
planes get them, as the swing of the basket makes it difficult in the
extreme for them to notice the danger until it is upon them.

On this morning the first indication that they had that their time was
up was the swooping down of a cluster of birds of death on all sides.
The weather was foggy, a stiff wind blowing and the basket swinging
from side to side. This was the first time an attempt had been made to
float a balloon in the Ypres salient, as the danger was too obvious to
take the risk. However, as I say, the chance was taken. It so happened
that our guns were taking a breathing spell, and we stood on the top of
our gun pit eagerly watching the fall of the balloon and its escape. The
road along which the armored truck had run ran at one point quite close
to the German lines, and the airplanes were now coming thicker every
moment and bombing it from every quarter. Telephone and telegraph wires
running from trenches to headquarters and all parts of the lines
intervened between the balloon and safety, and there was nothing for
them but to cut the wires to let the bag get through. Each minute the
danger increased, but the men in the truck scrambled up the poles,
nipped the wire with their nippers, and the balloon passed through. This
was done repeatedly before it reached its ha