, for the town had
been a troublesome centre of anti-aircraft devilries. Our field-guns now
being too close for Herr Archie, he had moved to more comfortable
headquarters.

Some eight miles east of Bapaume the Bois d'Havrincourt stood out
noticeably. Around old Mossy-Face, as the wood was known in R.F.C.
messes, were clustered many Boche aerodromes. Innumerable duels had
been fought in the air-country between Mossy-Face and the lines. Every
fine day the dwellers in the trenches before Bapaume saw machines
swerving round each other in determined effort to destroy. This region
was the hunting-ground of many dead notabilities of the air, including
the Fokker stars Boelcke and Immelmann, besides British pilots as
brilliant but less advertised.

Below the Pozieres-Bapaume road were five small woods, grouped like the
Great Bear constellation of stars. Their roots were feeding on hundreds
of dead bodies, after each of the five--Trones, Mametz, Foureaux,
Delville, and Bouleaux--had seen wild encounters with bomb and bayonet
beneath its dead trees. Almost in the same position relative to the
cluster of woods as is the North Star to the Great Bear, was a
scrap-heap larger than most, amid a few walls yet upright. This was all
that remained of the fortress of Combles. For two years the enemy
strengthened it by every means known to military science, after which
the British and French rushed in from opposite sides and met in the main
street.

A few minutes down the line brought our machine to the sparkling Somme,
the white town of Peronne, and the then junction of the British and
French lines. We turned north-west and made for home. Passing over some
lazy sausage balloons, we reached Albert. Freed at last from the
intermittent shelling from which it suffered for so long, the town was
picking up the threads of activity. The sidings were full of trucks, and
a procession of some twenty lorries moved slowly up the road to
Bouzincourt. As reminder of anxious days, we noted a few skeleton roofs,
and the giant Virgin Mary in tarnished gilt, who, after withstanding
bombardments sufficient to have wrecked a cathedral, leaned over at
right angles to her pedestal, suspended in apparently miraculous fashion
by the three remaining girders.

We flew once more over a countryside of multi-coloured crops and
fantastic woods, and so to the aerodrome.

* * * * *

Snatches of familiar flying-talk, unheard during th