t. One minute later the
anti-aircraft guns were thundering away and the shrapnel was breaking
in tiny patches around this plane while the search-lights played on
both the plane and the shrapnel patches of smoke against the sky,
making a wonderful picture. Military writers say that the enemy planes
are more afraid of these search-lights than of the guns.

[Illustration: One night I had the privilege of seeing a plane caught
by the search-light.]

But perhaps the most thrilling sight of all is that dark night when one
sees for the first time the star-shells along the horizon. At first
you may see them ten miles away making luminous the earth. Then as you
drive nearer and nearer, that far-off heat-lightning effect disappears
and you can actually see the curve of the star-shells as they mount
toward the skies over No Man's Land and fall again as gracefully as a
fountain of water. Sometimes you will see them for miles along the
front, making night day and lighting up the fields and surrounding
hills as though for a great celebration.

BURSTING BOMBS

The light of bursting shells as they fall, or of bursting bombs from an
aeroplane, is a short, sharp, quick light like an electric flash when a
wire falls or a flash of sharp lightning, but the light of the great
guns along the line as they thunder their missiles of death can be seen
for miles when a bombardment is on. One forgets the thunder of these
belching monsters, and one forgets the death they carry, in the glory
of the flame of noonday light that they make in the night.

Then there are the range-finders. These suddenly shoot up in the
night, steady and clear, and remain for several minutes burning
brightly before they go out. I used to see these frequently driving
home from the front. They were sent up from the hangars to guide the
French and American planes to a safe landing by night.

Then there is the moonlight. Moonlight nights in towns along the war
front are dreaded, for it invariably means a Boche raid. Clear
moonlight nights with a full moon are fine for lovers in a country that
is at peace, but it may mean death for lovers in a country that is at
war. But moonlight nights are beautiful even in war countries, with
dim old cathedrals looming in the background, and the white villages of
France, a huge chateau here and there against the hillside or crowning
its summit; and the white roads and white fields of France swinging by.
One forgets there