ensive patrols around German air
country, occasional escort for bombing craft, and occasional
photography. I have but touched upon other branches of army aeronautics;
though often, when we passed different types of machine, I would compare
their job to ours and wonder if it were more pleasant. Thousands of feet
below us, for example, were the artillery craft, which darted backward
and forward across the lines as from their height of vantage they ranged
and registered for the guns. On push days these same buses were to be
seen lower still, well within range of machine-gun bullets from the
ground, as they crawled and nosed over the line of advance and kept
intelligent contact between far-ahead attacking infantry and the rear.
Above the tangled network of enemy defences roved the line photography
machines, which provided the Staff with accurate survey maps of the
Boche defences. Parties of bombers headed eastward, their lower wings
laden with eggs for delivery at some factory, aerodrome, headquarter,
railway junction, or ammunition dump. Dotted everywhere, singly or in
formations of two, three, four, or six, were those aristocrats of the
air, the single-seater fighting scouts. These were envied for their
advantages. They were comparatively fast, they could turn, climb, and
stunt better and quicker than any two-seater, and their petrol-tanks
held barely enough for two hours, so that their shows were soon
completed. All these varied craft had their separate functions,
difficulties, and dangers. Two things only were shared by all of
us--dodging Archie and striving to strafe the Air Hun.

Since those days flying conditions on the Western Front have been much
changed by the whirligig of aeronautical development. All things
considered, the flying officer is now given improved opportunities. Air
fighting has grown more intense, but the machines in use are capable of
much better performance. The latest word in single-seater scouts, which
I am now flying, can reach 22,000 feet with ease; and it has a maximum
climb greater by a third, and a level speed greater by a sixth, than our
best scout of last year. The good old one-and-a-half strutter (a fine
bus of its period), on which we used to drone our way around the
150-mile reconnaissance, has disappeared from active service. The
nerve-edging job of long reconnaissance is now done by more modern
two-seaters, high-powered, fast, and reliable, which can put up a fight
on equal terms wit