und the glare of the sun oppressive, and having
some time to wait threw down their equipment and betook themselves
to the cool shadows of a neighbouring wood. Along came an enemy
aviator. From his lofty height the haversacks, blanket-rolls, and
other pieces of dark equipment lying upon the grass looked like a
body of troops resting. After sailing over and around the field
twice as though to make assurance doubly sure he sailed swiftly
away. In a very few minutes shells from a concealed battery began
dropping into that field at the rate of several a minute. Every foot
of it was torn up, and the French soldiers from their retreat in the
woods saw their equipment being blown to pieces in every direction.
The spectacle was harrowing, but the reflection that the aviator
undoubtedly thought that he had turned his guns on a field full of
men was cheering to them in their safety.

An art which the fighting aviator must master early in his career is
that of high diving. Many of us have seen a hawk, soaring high in
air, suddenly fold his pinions and drop like a plummet full on the
back of some luckless pigeon flapping along ungainly scores of feet
below, or a fishhawk drop like a meteor from the sky with a
resounding splash upon the bosom of some placid stream and rise
again carrying a flapping fish to his eyrie in the distant pines.
The hunting methods of the hawk are the fighting methods of the
airman. But his dives exceed in height and daring anything known to
the feathered warriors of the air.

Boelke, most famous of all the German airmen--or for that matter of
all aerial fighters of his day--who in 1917 held the record for the
number of enemy flyers brought down, was famed for his savage dives.
He would fly at a great height, fifteen thousand or more feet, thus
assuring himself that there was no enemy above him. When he sighted
his prey he would make an absolutely vertical nose dive, dropping at
the rate of 150 miles an hour or more and spattering shots from his
machine gun as he fell. Six hundred shots a minute and the sight of
this charging demon were enough to test the nerve of any threatened
aviator. In some fashion Boelke was enabled to give a slight spiral
form to his dive so that his victim was enveloped in a ring of
bullets that blocked his retreat whichever way he might turn for
safety.

Personality in fighting counted much for success. Boelke's method,
its audacity and fierceness, placed him first in the list o