wn to the other,
and saw only one light, a faint glimmer which came from a slit of a
cellar window almost on the level of the pavement. We were curious, no
doubt. At any rate, we looked in. A woman was sitting on a cot bed
with her arms around two little children. They were snuggled up
against her and both fast asleep; but she was sitting very erect, in a
strained, listening attitude, staring straight before her. Since that
night we have believed, both of us, that if wars can be won only by
haphazard night bombardments of towns where there are women and
children, then they had far better be lost.

But I am writing a journal of high adventure of a cleaner kind, in
which all the resources in skill and cleverness of one set of men are
pitted against those of another set. We have no bomb-dropping to do,
and there are but few women and children living in the territory over
which we fly. One hundred hours is not a great while as time is
measured on the ground, but in terms of combat patrols, the one
hundredth part of it has held more of an adventure in the true
meaning of the word than we have had during the whole of our lives
previously.

At first we were far too busy learning the rudiments of combat to keep
an accurate record of flying time. We thought our aeroplane clocks
convenient pieces of equipment rather than necessary ones. I remember
coming down from my first air battle and the breathless account I gave
of it at the bureau, breathless and vague. Lieutenant Talbott listened
quietly, making out the _compte rendu_ as I talked. When I had
finished, he emphasized the haziness of my answers to his questions by
quoting them: "Region: 'You know, that big wood!' Time: 'This morning,
of course!' Rounds fired: 'Oh, a lot!'" etc.

Not until we had been flying for a month or more did we learn how to
make the right use of our clocks and of our eyes while in the air. We
listened with amazement to after-patrol talk at the mess. We learned
more of what actually happened on our sorties, after they were over
than while they were in progress. All of the older pilots missed
seeing nothing which there was to see. They reported the numbers of
the enemy planes encountered, the types, where seen and when. They
spotted batteries, trains in stations back of the enemy lines, gave
the hour precisely, reported any activity on the roads. In moments of
exasperation Drew would say, "I think they are stringing us! This is
all a put-up job!" Cert