itions over enemy country. Thanks to them, our
aircraft were able to carry out reconnaissance, artillery observation,
and photography with a minimum of interruption, while the German planes
were so hard pressed to defend their place in the air that they could
seldom guide their own guns or collect useful information. To this
satisfactory result must be added the irritative effect on enemy morale
of the knowledge that whenever the weather was fine our machines hummed
overhead, ready to molest and be molested.

Offensive patrols are well worth while, but for the comfort of those
directly concerned they are rather too exciting. When friends are below
during an air duel a pilot is warmly conscious that should he or his
machine be crippled he can break away and land, and there's an end of
it. But if a pilot be wounded in a scrap far away from home, before he
can land he must fly for many miles, under shell fire and probably
pursued by enemies. He must conquer the blighting faintness which
accompanies loss of blood, keep clear-headed enough to deal
instantaneously with adverse emergency, and make an unwilling brain
command unwilling hands and feet to control a delicate apparatus. Worst
of all, if his engine be put out of action at a spot beyond gliding
distance of the lines, there is nothing for it but to descend and tamely
surrender. And always he is within reach of that vindictive exponent of
frightfulness, Archibald the Ever-Ready.

As we climbed to 4000 feet the machines above threw glints of sunlight
on the screen of blue infinity. We ranged ourselves and departed.
Passing the red roofs and heart-shaped citadel of Doulens and a jagged
wood suggestive of a lion rampant, we followed the straight road to
Arras. Arrived there, the leader turned south, for we were not yet high
enough. As we moved along the brown band of shell-pocked desolation we
continued to climb. Patches of smoke from the guns hovered over the
ground at intervals. A score of lazy-looking kite balloons hung
motionless.

By the time we reached Albert our height was 12,000 feet, and we steered
eastward over the ground gained in the June-July advance. Beyond the
scrap-heap that once was Pozieres two enormous mine craters showed up,
dented into the razed surface, one on either side of the Albert-Bapaume
road. Flying very low a few buses were working on trench reconnaissance.
The sunshine rebounded from the top of their wings, and against the
discoloured eart