appreciable time.
He destroyed one more enemy before the Boches got him. In the dive he
got right ahead of the two machines that followed him. As these hurried
to his assistance, they saw an enemy plane turn over, show a white,
gleaming belly, and drop in zig-zags. C.'s bus was then seen to heel
over into a vertical dive and to plunge down, spinning rhythmically on
its axis. Probably he was shot dead and fell over on to the joystick,
which put the machine to its last dive. The petrol tank of the second
machine to arrive among the Huns was plugged by a bullet, and the pilot
was forced to land. Weeks later, his observer wrote us a letter from a
prison camp in Hanover. The third bus, perforated by scores of
bullet-holes, got back to tell the tale.

C. was one of the greatest pilots produced by the war. He was utterly
fearless, and had more time over the German lines to his credit than any
one else in the Flying Corps. It was part of his fatalistic creed that
Archie should never be dodged, and he would go calmly ahead when the
A.-A. guns were at their best. Somehow, the bursts never found him. He
had won both the D.S.O. and the M.C. for deeds in the air. Only the
evening before, when asked lightly if he was out for a V.C., he said he
would rather get Boelcke than the V.C.; and in the end Boelcke probably
got him, for he fell over the famous German pilot's aerodrome, and that
day the German wireless announced that Boelcke had shot down two more
machines. Peace to the ashes of a fine pilot and a very brave man!

Two observers, other than C.'s passenger, had been killed during our
patrol. One of them was "Uncle," a captain in the Northumberland
Fusiliers. A bullet entered the large artery of his thigh. He bled
profusely and lost consciousness in the middle of a fight with two Huns.
When he came to, a few minutes later, he grabbed his gun and opened fire
on an enemy. After about forty shots the chatter of the gun ceased, and
through the speaking-tube a faint voice told the pilot to look round.
The pilot did so, and saw a Maltese-cross biplane falling in flames. But
Uncle had faded into unconsciousness again, and he never came back. It
is more than possible that if he had put a tourniquet round his thigh,
instead of continuing the fight, he might have lived.

A great death, you say? One of many such. Only the day before I had
helped to lift the limp body of Paddy from the floor of an observer's
cockpit. He had been shot over t