DAWN TO DAWN.

I suddenly wake, and sit up in bed with strained ears. I have a dim recollection of a noise. Then I hear three or four dull explosions like distant gunfire, and out wails the piteous appeal of "Mournful Mary" at the Dunkerque docks.

Zoop-zoop ... bo-o-o-o-m!

The last is a tremendous explosion.

I wonder what is happening.

"Did you hear that? Any one awake?" I call out softly.

"That you, Paul—what can it be?" answers a voice in the darkness from some near-by cabin.

"I'll go and see."

I step out of bed and walk to the door at the end of the hut. In bare feet and thin pyjamas I look straight out to the east, but faintly lighter than the dark skies above in which the stars still shine undimmed. The night is very cold and silent. On the left of Dunkerque a few pale searchlights move slowly across the sky. I see a few flashes and then hear the sharp reports of the guns. It must be an air-raid.

I hurry into bed again and call out: "Can't see much! must be a raid!" and then begin to drop off to sleep, when again I hear the wail of the hooter, followed by the dull reverberating crash.

Sleep comes with difficulty. Again and again I become conscious of tumult in the real world beyond my dreams. Again and again I hear the distant thunders. When I next wake it is getting light, so I walk to the door of the hut. Outside I now can see the flat countryside, desolate in the greyness of early morning. To the left are the towers and chimneys of Dunkerque, and on the little road running past the aerodrome are a few rough carts, piled high with bundles and shawled women, leaving the town.

Zoop-zoop wails the syren. Out leaps the sudden roar of an explosion, and suddenly I see towering high above the roofs a tall column of dust and smoke, from which little black fragments are dropping back in a shower.

"Bob! Bob!" I call out.

A sleepy "Hullo!" answers me behind my back.

"They're shelling Dunkerque! It must be a fifteen-inch gun!"

The pitiful column of refugees, of women taking their children and a few precious bundles of clothes, or articles of furniture, away to some place of safety, rapidly increases.

As far as you can see the road is dotted with the little groups. Some of the poor people are riding; some follow a cart; some push perambulators.

Again the syren wails; again the tall plume of black smoke shoots up near the town; again the shower of wreckage drops from it.

Sleep is impossible. I get up and dress, and go to the mess for breakfast. We now know that the shells are bursting every seven minutes, and when six minutes have passed we talk less, and listen, and wait. There is the sudden crash, and through the window can be seen the earth shooting up in a field a little to our side of the town. The next shell is only a few fields away. I hurriedly finish the meal, and walk out of the mess to go to a hangar at the other end of the aerodrome, whose erection I am supervising.

I have just left the camp behind me, and am beginning to walk across the great field, when, in the very middle of it, some two hundred and fifty feet away, appears a solid black fountain of smoke and earth, quite seventy feet high. I stand transfixed with amazement and excitement as the roar of sound sweeps by me, and a few seconds later I hear the remote boom of the gun, twenty-eight miles away, near Ostend. The earth drops down again, the smoke clears, and I run panting across the ground to the low heap of earth which I can see in the distance, above the grass.

When I get there I find there is a huge crater some thirty-five feet across and twelve or fifteen feet deep. At the edge are two pilots, who shout breathlessly—

"We've got the base-plug! Look here! Don't touch it—it is almost red hot!"

There in the yellow loam lies the drum of clean white steel marked with the symbols M 38 and a crown. I touch it with a wettened finger and hear a quick hiss. The metal is unbearably hot still, and it is small wonder when it is realised that it has travelled twenty-eight miles, and risen and dropped thirty-three thousand feet in a little over a minute. Though it is only the base-plug, it is some twelve inches across, and later, when cold, requires removal in a wheelbarrow into which two men can scarcely lift it.

Meanwhile I search eagerly for fragments. I find half-hidden a twisted piece of metal, and am just about to lift it when the syren in the docks gives warning of the approach of the next shell. Taking advice from the axiom that a shell never falls twice in the same place, we slide down into the crater and wait, a little nervously. We hear the dull boom of the explosion, and scrambling to the top, see to the south of the hangars a cloud of smoke rapidly disappearing. The wind is evidently causing the shells to deviate, as they are falling farther and farther away from the town. The German spotting machines have been driven away by the British scouts, and so the gunlayers at Leugenboom (descriptive name!) are trusting to luck, as their early shells were so successful. One of the first, indeed, struck the Casino at Malo clean in the middle, and cut a slice out of it as with a knife. Only the previous night a divisional headquarters staff had moved into it, and thought it a rare billet after weary days behind the lines in the French sectors further south. Dawn brought to many of them a swift and unexpected death.

Carrying my hot lump of steel in my handkerchief I hurry over to the skeleton of the semi-erected hangar. The men, only naturally, seem little inclined to work. For five minutes they stand to their duty, and then, as the hooter blows, I give the order to take cover, and they go down the sides of the canal until the crash of the explosion shows that the menace has passed.

The French have very quickly organised the hooter system. Some one says that a look-out at the lines, on seeing the flash of the gun, presses a button which rings a bell in Dunkerque. The signal is sent on to the man in the light-ship at the docks, and he pulls the string of his syren. The complete operation only takes some ten or twelve seconds, and as the shell is travelling for well over a minute it gave ample warning. As a matter of fact, such a system, if it does exist, is not necessary, as the shells are falling at an exact interval of just over seven minutes.

The order is now given by the C.O. for work to be abandoned, and for the men to take cover. With one of the pilots I make a tour of the neighbourhood, examining the shell-holes in the surrounding fields. The columns of earth and smoke shoot up at regular intervals some half a mile away, and we do not trouble much about them.

I return to the aerodrome and, meeting another friend, walk back across the field. A whistle is blown.

"That's old Charlie!" he says. "He's sitting in the canal with a stop-watch and a whistle. The C.O. put him on to it. Let's sit down till it has gone off!"

I suggest going on, as we are just as safe anywhere. He sits down on the edge of a small patch of growing corn; I sit beside him. Suddenly, while we are arguing whether we should go on or not, I seem to see something through the back of my head. I look quickly round, and there, towering some eighty or ninety feet high, only a few yards from us, is a tall fountain of black earth and uprising smoke, like the great genie which whirled upwards from the bottle in the fairy story.

"A shell—lie down!" I yell, and throw myself face forwards on the ground with my hands over the back of my head. In the moments of waiting before anything happens, I realise that I cannot be killed by the actual explosion of this shell although it is so near, as I have lived to see it, and then ... thump, thump, on my arms, my back, and my legs the pieces of earth begin to beat. They are heavy and, since they are dropping from some fifty feet or more, are very painful. The dust and stones rain down all over me and all round. I can hear the returning earth thundering on the ground. Faster and faster come the blows upon me; it is very much like being caned, and I know that at any moment a heavy piece of metal may drop and crush my skull. I cannot get up and run; I am in some way hypnotised. Beside me I am conscious of my friend cowering close against the ground as well. For seeming hours the hail of missiles continues, and I receive some very severe blows. At last it ceases. We scramble to our feet and begin to run away through the smoke, and then the eternal instinct grips us. We turn, and run back to get souvenirs from the crater. The size of it staggers us. It is almost big enough to put a motor omnibus in ... and the place where we were sitting is only a few feet away from the edge of the hole.

"By Jove, Milly! We are lucky! It's a good thing it's a fifteen-inch shell. If it had been a small bomb the splinters would have killed us!"

We slither and slide to the bottom of the pit and gather fragments of steel. The shell seems a very personal one to my mind, as it has fallen within five feet of me when it was fired twenty-eight miles away. As I turn over a piece of hot metal with my foot it is difficult to believe that that piece of metal ten minutes ago was near Ostend, and now it is here at Dunkerque. I seem to see the portly German sergeant-major in his grey-green uniform pressing the lever on the great gun to cause the mighty explosion which hurled that shell, which is as tall as me and weighed a ton, nearly thirty miles. Even now the coatless gunners sweat at the loading of the next shell into the grooved and shining breech.

We have decided that the canal bank is safer, and we hurry in that direction. It is lined with mechanics and officers, sitting low down near the edge of the water. My pilot greets me with mingled reproof and joy. He had seen me stagger out of the smoke of the shell rubbing the more bruised portions of my body, and thinking I was wounded he had sent off for the ambulance.

It is rather amusing in the canal. At the end of five minutes some of us become restive, and climb up to the top and walk about. "Charlie," dapper as usual, with his monocle screwed in his eye, sits looking at his watch.

"Six minutes!" He says, "Now then, some of you blighters, do you want to get killed?" He lifts the whistle and blows. Leisurely, but not too slowly, we walk down the side of the bank and make ourselves comfortable. We look at our watches. Six minutes and a half have passed since the last explosion. Now comes the uneasy time. We know the gigantic shell will explode somewhere near us in thirty seconds. There will be no warning whistle or sound of any kind. We will simply have to wait. Such precautions and nervousness in regard to shell-fire on active service may sound strange, but it must be remembered that we are twenty-two miles behind the lines, and so have been far, far beyond the range of shell-fire. We have had no previous experience, and there are no dug-outs of any real use for our protection.

The seconds slowly pass. People cease talking. Then, somewhere—its position cannot be located by the ear—there is a dull thud. That is the shell actually striking the ground. It has a delay fuse of a fraction of a second. Then the roar leaps out and dies. We rush up to the top of the bank and see the column of smoke just on the other side of the mess. A few seconds later the stones and earth come rattling down on to the roofs of the hangars and huts.

So passes the morning. As soon as a shell bursts the C.O. despatches an officer on a motor-bicycle to its position, if it is near any farm buildings, to see if he can render any assistance. This is a very good scheme, for on the left we can see thin red flames, flickering palely in the sunlight, rising from a farmhouse. Another big barn on our right later receives a direct hit, and when we visit it we find the labourers frantically throwing aside great bales of hay, under which is buried an unhurt cow.

At last the shelling stops, and in a little while work is resumed. In half an hour or so the syren wails out again, and it is thought that Leugenboom has once more fired. This is not the case, however, for against the pale blue of the sky we see the tiny white puffs of shrapnel smoke. The noise of the anti-aircraft batteries grows louder and nearer. More and more white puffs appear in the sky, but we cannot see the machine. At last some one shouts, "There it is!" A little, almost transparent, white shape crawls infinitely high over our heads. The shells are nowhere near it, and it is hard to keep it in sight. It is some four miles high, and is a photographic machine which has been sent over to make records of the damage done by the shelling.

As with craned necks we watch this little bird-shape, so far from its own friends, it is strange to think of the two little muffled figures high up there, probably very frightened, but going on to do their work. I, at any rate, have a secret hope they will get back. On and on the aeroplane moves away from its lines. The guns around us crash and bark, the seconds pass, and one, two, three, the white shrapnel puffs leap into existence and rapidly enlarge into thin vapoury clouds. There is a continuous roar of the engines of the scout machines which, with their tails well down, are climbing upwards as fast as they can, to attack the machine above.

The pallid bird turns slightly and passes over our heads, photographing the vicinity of our aerodrome. The shrapnel comes tinkling on to the roofs of the camp, and now and then, with a long, rapidly growing whistle, a "dud" shell or large fragment of steel drops near us.

After a leisurely quarter of an hour the German machine turns to the east and rapidly increases its speed noticeably, with its nose down and the wind driving it homewards. Soon we can see nothing but the distant shrapnel puffs. The machine has gone, with the precious plates in its camera, to a remote aerodrome near Ostend.

"Bob" comes to me and says he is going to test his machine, and offers to let me take control. Soon we are three thousand feet over Dunkerque, and I can see dotted around the fields the great craters of the shell-holes and smoke rising here and there from fires in the town itself. After a while he says—

"Like to fly her now? I'll get right into the wind. Slip into my seat quickly when I get out!"

He carefully turns the machine till it is facing the wind, takes his hand off the wheel to test the stability, alters direction slightly, and feeling satisfied pulls back the throttle. The noise of the engines dies away as the machine begins to glide downward. He stands up on the rudder and I crawl in behind him and sit on his seat. He moves his body to the left so that I can grasp the wheel, and as soon as he takes his feet from the rudder I place mine firmly on the foot-rests of ribbed rubber. With my hands and feet on the controls, I sit in the huge machine as we glide downwards singing. The speed indicator creeps back to thirty-eight miles an hour.

"Shove her nose down—keep it at fifty, you fool!" the pilot yells.

Forward goes the wheel, and the fingers of the height indicator creep up to fifty-five. I find I can easily steer the machine, and it is no more difficult than the little Curtiss's of old days at Luxeuil.

"Shove on the engines now,—slowly!" orders the pilot.

I catch hold of the aluminium throttle and push it slowly forward. The engine wakes to energetic life. I am conscious of the new forward impulse given to the machine, and the rudder begins to vibrate frantically beneath my feet. The country in front of my eyes begins to sway to the right. I am slipping. I try to remember which to turn to the right in order to convert it—the wheel or the rudder. I move the wrong one, and the country sways to the right still more and more. I get excited and push the nose down and turn the wheel over, and at last, amidst the curses of the pilot, regain a more or less even balance.

I then try to make a turn. I push the rudder to the right, and it goes hard over. As a result the machine slips violently, and the little bubble in the "slip tube" rushes from the centre and tries to creep out of one end. I fling over the wheel to reduce the slip, and the machine banks terrifically, but a little more accurately, for the reluctant bubble returns towards the middle of the tube. The pilot curses more and more luridly, but I have learnt the lesson that the rudder has to be allowed to go over a little way, instead of being pushed over, as it has a natural tendency to go hard forward on one side or the other. For a while I fly the machine fairly decently, to my great joy, and then I change places with the pilot, who, to instruct me, does some steep banks, but so accurately that not only does the bubble remain motionless in the middle of its tube, but a little wooden rabbit-mascot, which I stand on a shelf inside the machine, does not fall over, though we are at an angle of some sixty-five or seventy degrees to the ground.

We glide gloriously down through the sunlight and land on the aerodrome, avoiding carefully the three deep craters.

There is an interesting interlude before lunch which gives a momentary agony to many of us. An American flies over to the aerodrome and begins to carry out the wildest acrobatics with his fast "Spad" machine. He dives downwards till he is moving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, flies at that speed a few feet over the ground between two lines of hangars, and shoots vertically upwards and rolls the machine over and over in every possible way. For five minutes or more he does this, growing ever and ever more reckless and daring. Then he climbs up, up, and up, and over the middle of the aerodrome stops still and dives downwards in a steep spiral. Faster and faster drops the machine till it is spinning like a leaf. Lower and lower it drops in a terrible mad whirl ... and vanishes behind the hangar without changing its direction or coming under apparent control. There is a groan from those who have seen the tragedy. Every face grows white—every heart grows heavy. We have been behind the hangars and luckily have not seen the end.

"I'm not going to see. It's no good. It will only turn me up!" I say, and walk to the edge of the hangars. There in the middle of the aerodrome is a scarcely discernible pile of broken wreckage—just a crumpled heap a few feet higher than the ground. Towards it from all points of the compass are streaming crowds of mechanics. I stand watching. I will not go over. I can do no good, and the sight will unnerve me for days. It is a fatal mistake for those who fly to see those who have died while flying.

Then I see standing by the machine a little figure. I wonder who it can be so quickly on the scene. The little figure seems to take something of its head, and to unwind a muffler from its neck. I begin to run over toward the wreckage, a wild hope surging through me. It is—it is the airman. He is alive and seemingly not hurt. His face is yellow with bruises and is red with blood. It is a terrible sight, but he is laughing gaily, perhaps a little hysterically.

"Oh! I am all right! I'm all right! I got into a spin and couldn't get out in time!"

An ambulance comes up, and he gets into the back and drives off, waving his hand cheerfully. Amazing fellow! It appears that just before he struck the ground he pulled the machine out of the spin into a steep bank and struck the ground with one wing when he must have been flying at nearly two hundred miles an hour.

I may say that never once during the war did I see a crash happen in which a man got killed—nor did I ever see a dead man; and I may also say that the first fatal accident which happened to anybody in any of the squadrons to which I was attached, from October 1915 to April 1918, occurred in my last flight when my pilot was drowned and, owing to my injuries, I left the squadron. Night flying in those days was, so it appeared to me, a safe though exciting occupation. At any rate (and I touch wood as I say it!) not only did I lead a charmed life, but wherever I went trouble seemed to fly away. There were no accidents of any serious nature, or any damage caused by enemy attacks at any place to which I was attached. Two months after my crash eight hundred bombs were dropped in two nights on Condekerque aerodrome, and it was so badly damaged that it was abandoned. There were also many casualties. This is, however, by the way.

When we have examined the wreckage curiously, and all the inevitable photographs have been taken, we proceed to the mess for lunch, and during coffee I suggest to a friend of mine, an eighteen-year-old baby with fair hair, that we have a look at the war and visit the lines in a car.

"All right," he says, "if you tackle Charlie!"

Charlie is the transport officer. He is not far from sixty, but by shaving twice daily and wearing waisted coats he preserves an air of perennial youth. He has been, and done, everything in his life—from ringmaster to pageant manager, from running flying meetings to the caring for Kings at royal performances. He is one of those wonderful young "old stagers" in the war who really were fearless. He would go over the lines every night if he could, and indeed had been low over the German trenches in the daytime—"shooting up the blighters" for fun. He was the raid officer, and, as such, stood to his post on the "band-stand" all night, despatching machines and seeing them back. In his hands were the responsibility of our life or death. He loved us all, and would do anything for us. When the man beside him was killed in the big raid, he carried on his work, smoking his cigarette, with his eyeglass in his eye. His favourite expression, if we did not raid owing to weather, was—

"Gor perishin' blimy with pink spots! If you put wings on my old band-stand I'd fly her through Hell backwards! Why don't you go on a raid to-night—you blighters never do any work?"

So having given him a whisky-and-soda, I take him into a corner and unveil the plot.

"All right! Tell Dimmock to give you a tender. Mind you draw that cartoon of me or you'll never leave the perishing aerodrome again!" he says.

In a few minutes we are on the Nieuport road, and for half an hour we rush in the tender beside a canal, past various kinds of French and British transport waggons. No one challenges us, and even as we pass the frontier the French and Belgian guards look at us with scant curiosity.

"Aviation Navale Anglaise!" we chant as we pass. Well they know the Royal Naval Air Service whose cars have haunted the roads now for many years. Well they know whose are the fighting scouts that rise up towards the skies above Dunkerque.

Through La Panne we clatter, and then the feeling in the air begins somehow to change. We sense now that the lines are nearer, and indeed they are only eight miles away. We pass through an area full of hutments and dumps and depots of various descriptions. The increasing number of notices and signs give unmistakable evidence of our proximity to the zone of action. The roads are now packed with lorries and cars through which we can hardly pass. On the left all the time is the unbroken line of the grass-covered sand-dunes hiding the not-far-distant sea from our eyes. Then suddenly the traffic thins and vanishes. We turn a corner and face a stretch of empty road, and know that now we are really near the front. Half-way down the road we pass a look-out tower built up among the trees, and near by is a warning notice.

The road is absolutely empty, and we begin to feel a little nervous. We come to another corner by which is a wrecked house, in a corner of which, however, the inhabitants are still dwelling. All round are shell craters filled with suspiciously fresh yellow clay. Here and there broken trees lean sadly against their neighbours. I see an officer in khaki near by and I hail him.

"Is it far to the lines?"

"Straight up the road—I wouldn't take your car any farther than the end of the trees, though, and if I were you I should leave this corner. The Huns are rather fond of it, as we have got a battery here. They fired a hundred and fifty shells, mostly six-inch, after tea yesterday!"

"Push on, driver!"

Down the road we move swiftly between the splintered trees of a little wood. On the left are tattered canvas screens on frames. In some places great holes have been torn in them by shell-fire and the ragged fabric trails downward towards the ground. A whistling sound steals faintly on to our ears; it grows louder and deeper, with a sense of progression, and it ends in a heavy crash somewhere to our left. Again and again we hear the shrill whine deepen to a roar, and end in a burst—as large shells sail over to some hidden mark near the coast.

We are beginning to feel a little nervous, but are very keen to go on. It is a weird drive in this still deserted road, with its roughly-filled shell-holes and its broken leaning trees on either side. The wood ends on the outskirts of the town, which lies in front of us, a queer panorama of wrecked buildings of pink brick whose bared and half-broken roof rafters lie against the sky like some dismal and gigantic snake, while the whole has the unreal aspect of stage scenery.

Here we leave the car, and tell the driver to drive away from trouble should the German shells begin to fall near him. We walk into the shattered town with its tawdry shabby appearance of the back of an exhibition. Along the road the canvas screens flap slightly in the wind, above them appear the crumbled tops of ruined buildings, while every now and then we hear a bang, bang, bang, from the direction of the German trenches, and this noise has all the hollow artificiality of imitated gun-fire at a show or a circus. A few seconds pass, and crash! crash! crash! sound three slightly better imitations of shells bursting. The whole thing seems unreal: the buildings are so pink and villaesque: chocolate and motor tyre advertisements are painted on them: their doorways and walls are decorated with ugly porcelain ware and coloured tiles. It is as though a great battle was waging through the prim little lanes of the most innocent-looking villa town on the English coast,—it indeed is what is happening on the Belgian coast, except that here the buildings are still even more ugly and modern. There is no feeling of real danger—in spite of the deserted streets, and the occasional sound of a door being loudly shut, which is some not far distant shell exploding behind the strange screens.

We turn to the left and enter the town. Here is evident a little more animation. Soldiers saunter up and down, as though on the promenade listening to the band, the straw hat of English summer being substituted by the yellow-painted shrapnel helmet. Shells are now whistling in the town, and give a slightly more credible impression of artillery fire as the hollow bang of the explosion is followed in each case, a few seconds later, by the clatter and tinkle of the roofs and walls of Nieuport returning in pieces to ground level.

We ask the officer the way to the front lines, as if asking the way to the pier at Margate.

"First to the left—across a canal—turn right—and across the Yser!" he says obligingly; and adds, "You better get gas-masks and shrapnel helmets at the Salvage Dump over there!" ("Towels and bathing costumes at the little hut on the left," he might be saying!)

We enter the salvage dump—an empty front room littered with all kinds of implements, and ask for the apparently necessary gas-mask and helmet, which are carefully dusted by a whistling sergeant. Carrying these helmets in one hand and the masks slung over our necks, we proceed towards the front. Now here for one moment we realise that we really are near a real war, for round the corner walk a couple of nonchalant Tommies carrying a stretcher, covered with a blanket, from beneath which protrude two heavy boots, toes towards the ground.

We hurry on and turn to the left and come out into the open, across which we move erratically, for, at the whistle of each shell, we sit in a crater until the noise of its explosion encourages us to proceed.

"I feel sure we should not be out here!" says my friend. I feel inclined to agree with him.

We reach a bank in which soldiers are hiding like rabbits in a warren. In little square holes the stolid, cheerful-looking men sit; here one smokes, there one cooks bacon, in another place one reads. Outside some of the cave doors a pair of socks or a shirt hangs out to dry. The existence seems to them the normal one, and returning to the life of the remote past they seem to have found a rough contentment.

At last we enter a trench and wander along it for five or six minutes, till through a turning on the left we see a narrow ditch leading to a wide muddy canal. We turn down this side trench and walk to the side of the water, over which is slung a narrow suspension-bridge about four feet wide, made of boards laid side by side.

We walk across this, and half-way over to the other side we meet an officer, and ask where the front is.

He laughs, and inquires who we are, and offers to take us to the mess, and suggests that we should wear the shrapnel helmet instead of our soft naval caps. We cross the bridge and walk down another trench to a farmhouse, covered with little white boards with D.A.Q.M.G.'s and D.A.D.O.'s, and other incomprehensible mysteries of staff hieroglyphics. I do not know quite what I have expected a staff mess to be like, but I know when I descend a damp ladder to a dim cellar lit by candles, and see a cheerful crowd of officers eating bread and butter and tea at a broken-down table, I am very surprised. I realise rapidly that a sub-lieutenant in the Air Service has a better time of it, as far as mere material comfort goes, than a colonel on his Majesty's staff.

"Found these two lads crossing the bridge with their shrapnel helmets swinging from their hands; may I introduce you to Major Smith and Captain So-and-so...." We are introduced all round and are given tea. No one questions our right to be there at all. Our story of being curious airmen from Dunkerque is believed. They are amused to hear of our big shell experiences. They have heard the shells passing overhead like express trains, although we had no indication of their approach at all. After we have received some friendly blame for keeping them awake at night with our engines when we pass over the Nieuport floods, the colonel who met us details an officer to take us to an observation post. We move down more trenches—Nose Alley, Nasal Avenue, Nostril Road, and others—till we reach a little broken-down building, inside which we penetrate through a small door. A pair of rickety staircases lead us up to a loft where an officer and a sergeant gaze through a narrow slit towards the east. On the ledge before them lies a map. They are keeping a particular sector of German trench under constant observation for the benefit of their own particular battalion.

Taking a pair of binoculars, I look and see the three British barricades of sandbags, for the ground here is too wet to permit of the digging of trenches. Men are seen sitting down or walking up and down behind these breastworks, and beyond can be seen the spiky curls and haphazard pegs of the barbed-wire entanglements. In the centre, a grey huddle of stone indicates the site of Lombartsyde Church. Now and again a cloud of smoke from a shell rises up behind the German trench. On the left are the sand-dunes on which the tall, red, broken houses of Westende stand desolate and fantastically suburban against the sky. I can see through the glasses the great painted advertisements on them, and notice here and there the missing roof, the shattered wall; but on the whole, save for the blank square of the glassless windows, they look untouched enough. It seems strange to think that the bare lifeless buildings of that watering town are full of an unseen life, that up in those roofs Germans are watching us only a few hundred yards away, as we are watching them. It is strange and uncanny. This, then, is the line—bleak, dead, full of a sense of ever-menacing danger, haunted by the hovering phantom of Death. We take a last look and start back to the car. The farther we go, the easier grows my heart. When at last we turn the corner of the town and see the old grey tender with its driver smoking beside it, I want to hail it as a welcome friend. Gladly we hear its engine throb—gladly we feel the thrill of movement—gladly we move down the eerie desolate road, by the canvas screens, the broken trees, where sounds the wail and bang of the shells, like doors in a great frightening empty house being shut and shut by some unseen and terrifying phantom hand.

Swiftly we leave the desolate loneliness of war behind, and welcome is the thought of the trim camp at the aerodrome with its flower-decked mess and fire-lit cabins. When at last we sweep across the little white bridge over the canal and stop beside the lawns of the quarter-deck, over which flaps the White Ensign, I realise keenly the comfort and the tranquillity of my life.

Now it is the twilight of dusk. Though day still reigns supreme in untarnished brightness, there is a feeling in the air that the end is coming, and night surely must vanquish soon. Out from the aerodrome are being wheeled the Handley-Page machines, and I hurry through my task of synchronising the watches. To-night I raid not, and from the beginning my feelings are mixed. I am glad I am not going, and I am bitterly sorry too, because I know when, in the late hours of starlight, one by one the huge machines glide whistling to earth, and into the mess the furred and helmeted airmen tramp on great fleece-lined boots, I will envy the glorious sense of achievement, of well-earned rest, which will then be theirs.

Now I am told to take over the task of the duty officer who is going on a raid. At once I proceed to the monotonous job of censoring letters, because it has to be done, and it had better be finished early. How weary a job it is, and how full of temptation! When you sit alone in a little room with the pile of two or three hundred letters in front of you, how easy it is to read but one in ten. It is then that a conscience is a really great disadvantage. The letters are all the same, and as they are read through it is very apparent what a race of bad letter-writers we are. Seventy-five per cent read like this:—

The one splendid line in all is the splendid prayer written beneath the signature:—

Roll on, Blighty, or Roll on, three months, with all the passion of loneliness and nostalgia throbbing in it.[Pg 229.png]

It must be confessed that the description of a typical sailor's letter is not far from the truth.

Dear Mother, How are you? So am I. Fags. George.

Letter after letter is read through and initialled, and I get no nearer to the soul of such of the writers as I know personally. Then I hear a bugle blow the Rum call, and I proceed to the Ship's Steward's office to superintend the issue of Rum. When the representative of each mess has been served, it is the duty of the officer of the Watch to witness the pouring out of the rum upon the ground, a proceeding watched with grief by any casual spectators.

The preservation of the naval traditions in the Royal Naval Air Service was of real value, and welded the service into a very loyal and proud body. To some it may seem ridiculous that, even at air stations in the heart of France, hundreds of miles from the sea, the "liberty men paraded on the quarter-deck to go ashore in the liberty boat," when they proceeded to Nancy by lorry. No one concerned, however, treated it as anything but a matter of course, which is one of the greatest assets of any tradition.[Pg 230.png] The "ship's company" would be summoned from the "mess decks" to hear the "orders of the day" read by the "First Lieutenant," and "the starboard watch had a make and mend." The whole service was "navy" and felt "navy." Naturally the sea-going navy looked on it with a little contempt and a great deal of scorn, but I doubt if it realised with what pride and admiration we of the new service looked up to our big brothers on the high seas. We watched them as a new boy at school watches the blasÉ young gentleman of two years' scholastic experience, and furtively draws his hands out of his pockets if he finds that such an attitude is not considered correct.

With the formation of the Royal Air Force, the naval branch of the air service, at any rate, lost a possession so cherished and so sacred that it scarcely dared talk about it. It was like being made to change a religion and to throw up in a moment the faith and the ceremonial habits of a lifetime. Underneath the khaki and the pale blue, to an officer and a man, we wore, and still wear, the dark blue and gold buttons of those splendid days.

Meanwhile the rum has been doled out in[Pg 231.png] the mess with care and argument, and I return to my letters. From the east now marches night with swift advance, while the west shines scarlet and orange over the chimneys of the huts of Dunkerque. The first primrose star of the evening burns with a lucent glory in the forehead of the sunset, and the whole evening is pregnant with coming events. Too beautiful is the hour for work, and as I walk alone over the rose-tinted aerodrome I can hear in the tranquil night the muffled beating of innumerable engines, and I can see the lustrous flares dropping from the skies as on the ground a thousand signals glow, a thousand lights are born and die. To the darkening east I look, and I can picture thirty, forty, fifty miles away the anti-aircraft guns, whose tarpaulin sheets are even now being removed. I can picture the lean-nosed shells in their numbered racks—the great glass lenses of the searchlights, the "green-ball" machines loaded with long belts of cartridges. I look to my right at the waiting machines, and it seems strange to think that those heavy structures of steel and wood are destined in scarcely two hours to set in furious action those silent lifeless weapons so far away across the shadowy[Pg 232.png] fields. The noise of an engine under trial sweeps over the ground in surging waves of sound and dies away. The giants are awakening, are stretching themselves, and are eagerly meditating the time to come.

Soon I am dining in the lamp-lit mess, where at flower-decked tables the laughing pilots sit, and I feel sorry I am not going onward with them to the hidden dangers and exhilarations of flight in the darkness beyond the lines; yet I feel glad also that my to-morrow is certain, but feel a hanger-on among heroes, a useless camp-follower of legioned gods.

One after one the cheerful youths glance casually at their watches and leave the mess for their cabins in order to prepare for the cold heights to which they will soon climb. Heavily muffled and coated I go out on to the dark aerodrome. Out roar the engines of the first machine as it sweeps across the grass, and I have one momentary glance of the resolute, preoccupied faces of the pilot and observer who are going to ride through the flaming avenues of Bruges and Ostend on their swift lean charger of steel and wood.

Machine after machine leaves, and, as[Pg 233.png] ground officer, I shout instructions upwards to the pilots through the clamour of the engines, and as the pilot waves his hand as a sign of his imminent departure, I cry—

"Cheero, Jack! Good luck!"

"Cheero, Paul!" comes the answer, and the engine leaps out into deafening thunder, and with a beating throb the machine slips by, going ever faster into the night.

Soon the last machine has left, and for a time we see the red and green lights moving above us through the stars, and we hear the murmur of the engines, and then at length silence reigns in the quiet uneasy night!

To the side of the canal I walk and peer out across the silent plain to the dim east. A pallid star-shell gleams, and quivers, and sinks: a gun flashes to the south near Ypres: then remote, remote, yet glittering clearly, rises a tiny chain of green balls which climbs up, up, up into the night. Near it can just be seen the pale arms of moving searchlights, seeming scarce lighter than the darkness. Already the great night-birds have pierced the frontiers of the enemy: already has the battle of the night skies begun.

Then with an unexpected suddenness wails the panic-stricken appealing cry of "Mournful Mary" at Dunkerque docks. Again and again it wails, and its dying echo is taken up by a chorus of shrill and undignified hooters and syrens in the district. What a sense of utter terror there is in the sound! The town seems to have a corporate existence, and seems to be screaming piteously, like some animal faced with a terrible and unavoidable death. Again moans the chilling sound of the great voice of Dunkerque, and down the coast the blue-white beams of the French searchlights begin to wave nervously in an uncertain sweep. Three or four anti-aircraft guns sound dully in the distance, and a few red and futile shells burst high up in the star-strewn sky.

More and more searchlights come into action; nearer and louder guns bark out their stupid blind anger. There is little movement in the crowd of watchers on the aerodrome. Every one listens. Faintly yet surely can be heard now the menacing chant of the enemy—bavoom, bavoom, bavoom—steady, unaltering, ever progressing forwards.

"Huh! That's old Oberleutnant Finkelbaum from Ghistelles. He's always first!" says a wit. "Come on, Finky ... you won't be found. That's right—keep up the coast. You're after the docks, I suppose. Look out; throttle, man—throttle, or you will get caught!"

Bavoom—bavoom, throb the two engines of the bold attacker, and our sympathies and interest somehow seem to be with him.

"Turn in now, old man, turn in! Stop your engine—that's good—glide and keep throttled—you'll be all right!"

Suddenly the droning above ceases, and the silence is more threatening and sinister than the clamour. We do not feel quite so assured about the unseen enemy, since we can no longer locate his position by sound. However, we know that he is almost certain to be attacking the docks, which lie some two miles away, so we do not altogether lose the sense of being spectators.

A long minute passes slowly, then a wide fan-shaped flash of red light appears beyond the town, whose roofs are for a moment silhouetted black against its glare. It dies slowly, and another leaps up near it.

Some one begins to count—

"One, two, three ..."

Then rises up with an awful splendour and a strange deliberation a tall, coiling column of fire, which, like a swiftly-growing tree, opens and expands until it is nearly five hundred feet high—a huge fountain of flame. Some oil dump has been struck. It is an amazing sight. Every face, with open mouth and wondering eye, is lit for a moment in its red light, and then it slowly fades and dies away, leaving a steady glow behind the dark houses to show that a great conflagration is now in progress.

"Nine ... ten ... eleven ... twelve!" ends the count.

Then crash after crash of ear-splitting noise sounds on our ears as the noise of the twelve bursting bombs comes to our ears. The anti-aircraft guns bark and crash stupidly round us, and among the stars appear the quick and random spurts of the bursting shells. Aimless searchlights, pale and puerile, move irregularly over the sky. Still there is no sound above us.

"Keep throttled, Finkelbaum! Jolly good shooting. You push off to dinner at Ghistelles; you've done your bit to-night," comments the wit.

Bavoom—bavoom—suddenly sounds the engine right above us, as the machine opens out its engines as it escapes southwards from the Dunkerque defences. Some of us stroll over towards the edge of the canal. Of course there is no danger—he has dropped all his bombs—yet there may be a "hang-up," and the back gunlayer may only just now be finding it out.

Crack, crack—crack, crack, crack, clamours the machine-gun over by our mess. Up rush the red sparks of the tracer-bullets.

"There he is—there—there—to the left of those two searchlights. Open fire!" calls the C.O.

With a flash and a roar the little three-inch gun speaks out, and the clatter of the falling shell-case can be heard above the scream of the whining projectile. More machine-guns start their staccato tumult. Tracer-bullets rush upward from a dozen places. The gun roars again. The aerodrome is now thoroughly enjoying itself. Pale in the moonlight a little bird-like shape on the dim blue tapestry of the night sky, I can see the German machine moving swiftly eastwards to the lines. The guns and machine-guns in a radius of five miles fire frantically and erratically towards it, and in the midst of this discord is heard a fast whistle which quickly develops into a scream. I slide down the side of the canal in a cloud of pebbles and dust. The sound of a very near explosion crashes on to my ear. I crawl up the canal and see a cloud of black smoke not many yards away in the ploughed field beyond the canal. The "hang-up" has been dropped. "Finkelbaum" has had his subtle revenge.

One after one now the twin-engined machines come roaring up the coast. One after one they lay across the docks their deadly line of bombs. Fire after fire is started, and in many places beyond the roofs can be seen the red glow of the flames. Each attacker in turn is greeted with the useless activity of the searchlights and the erratic flashes of scattered shells. "Mournful Mary" wails and wails in miserable and unavailing fear. One after one the great bombers, lightened of their loads, sail lightly homewards to rest in the distant aerodromes of Ghistelles or Mariaalter, followed, to be frank, with our congratulations on their success, for we have too much a fellow-feeling with them to wish them ill on their dangerous journeys.

It may seem strange, but if it was reported that eight Gothas had been lost on a raid in England, the instinctive feeling was—

"Rotten! Poor devils! This job is getting dangerous!"

If all returned safely, however, we felt—

"Good! Good! Things are not so bad after all! The job looks like staying pretty safe!"

Now some one reports that he can see the lights of a machine far away near the coast. A renewed activity moves through the quiet band of watchers.

"White light, sir!" chants the look-out.

Through the silver skies falls slowly a ball of glittering white fire. There is a short report, and from the upturned pistol of the raid officer a white light shoots upwards and falls in a graceful curve. Louder and louder grows the sound of the motors of the returning Handley-Page. The red and green lights on its wings can be clearly seen. Then the throbbing sound dies, the lights turn and vanish, and for a time the sky is silent and empty. A faint hissing is heard, the lights reappear, and then a dazzling glare breaks out in the sky, lighting up the underside of the Wing to which it is attached. Lower and lower floats the machine. Every eye is fixed intently on it as it draws nearer and nearer the aerodrome. An excited officer, whose invariable habit it is to land mentally each machine, begins to utter his hurried words of advice.

"Now then, Andy!" he says, "shove your engines on, boy! Shove your engines on! That's right! Pull her back! Hold her! Over the telegraph wires! Throttle! Throttle...! Throttle! That's right! Hold her back! Hold ... her ... back! Gently! Gently! You're really on the ground, boy! Take care—you're all right! Gently! On the ground! Thank God you're safe!"

With a triumphant roar from the engines, the machine sweeps round and rolls up to the hangar.

We crowd round the nose and greet the furred and helmeted airmen as they climb down from the bottom of the great machine.

"Yes! Dropped on Zeebrugge! Hell of a time! Caught three times! Yes! Lots of Archie! Green balls nearly hit my tail! Yes! Ten on the mole! Coming into the mess, Bill?"

So one by one these adventurers of the night skies, their eyes bright with excitement, stamp proudly into the mess, and I feel jealous of the glorious joy of life which is theirs, the sense of safety after passing through so many great dangers.

The last German machine has long since landed in his distant aerodrome. Two alone of our machines are to return. I walk casually up and down a ditch near the "band-stand," throwing stones at shadowy rats playing in the darkness, when suddenly I hear a voice say—

"There are two lights low down right over there ... yes! I can hear the engine. He's getting very low! My God! Did you hear that! He's crashed!"

At once a mad wave of activity sweeps over everybody. Being duty officer I at once rush to the garage.

"Ambulance away at once! Send two tenders with Pyrenes at once! Take axes and saws—get lanterns—go across the fields!"

Car after car starts up and thunders across the little wooden bridge. Over the fields hurry the men with saws and axes and fire-extinguishers. Their lanterns sway and flicker for a while like fireflies, and then disappear. The cold heartless beam of the aerodrome searchlight lies parallel to the ground, splitting the darkness in the surmised direction of the disaster. Somewhere out there in the gloom of the empty fields lies the wrecked machine. Even as we walk up and down in restless vain excitement they may be dead, or mangled and dying, these friends of ours. We do not know who it is. Our one desire is to save, save, save.

"My God! I wonder who it is! Thank Heaven, there is no fire yet! Can you see flames, look-out? No? Thank Heaven!"

A terrible and bitter silence lies around. We have no news. Minute after minute passes with awful slowness. The black night holds a secret which almost distracts us. Nobody returns. There is nothing we can do. We must wait, wait. Half an hour passes, and at last we see the headlights of a car which comes slowly up the road, crosses the bridge, and moves up to the mess. Carefully from the back seat are assisted two men. One has his head bandaged with a white linen band. The other, wearing only a tunic and a shirt, runs into the C.O.'s office on slim white legs.

"No one badly hurt," is the report. "Machine absolute crash. Darley's head was under one of the engines, which pressed it more and more into the ground. He was pretty lucky not to be killed! The Wing Commander's head was under the other engine. It took twenty men to lift it off, and he was afraid we would lift it before we had enough men. He did not want it dropped back again! He had petrol pouring over his face, and was quite drunk when we found him. He was singing! Lucky the machine didn't catch fire. If it had ... well!"

"The man in the back wasn't hurt.... Yes! They got lost in the mist and flew right into the ground—nearly a mile away! It was on the other side of the canal. Two mechanics swam across—one stark naked, in spite of the cold—plucky devils!" A great reaction follows the strain. Every one is gay and chatters excitedly, until we remark that there is still a machine missing.

"Who is it? Booth? His second trip, isn't it? Hope he is all right. Is he overdue? Been gone three hours. Yes, he was to go to Ghent! I expect he will be all right!" goes the low murmur of conversation.

Half an hour passes and the anxiety increases. There are more people standing on the aerodrome looking towards the east in silence. Watches are consulted rather furtively. Nobody wants to voice his doubt. Forced laughter sounds here and there. To add to the uneasiness a white mist begins to creep over the aerodrome. The searchlight is turned on, and its thin white beam, slanting upward, only penetrates a little way into the whirling vapour.

"White rocket!" cries the raid officer.

With a rush of noise the rocket passes upward and bursts into a cluster of liquid-white stars. The searchlight splutters and hisses. The mist lies cold and white and damp around us. Again and again the rocket rushes upward with a dying noise, until its very sound makes us surly and irritable.

Another half-hour passes, and then another. Still the raid officer stands silent and waiting on his platform, the moisture of the mist shining in little white drops on his heavy blanket coat. Still the searchlight hisses. Still the rockets rush and burst. Every heart is heavy. Every voice is silent. One by one the watchers move wearily to bed.

Hope of return is now long past. The white beam of the searchlight is cut off. The rockets no longer drop their white and lovely stars of useless welcome through the night. I walk tired and miserable across the aerodrome as in the east slowly spreads the first rosy flush of dawn, and across my dragging boots the wet blades of grass throw their sympathetic tears of dew.

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