The infantry who watched from their trenches one afternoon a Flight of our machines droning over high above their heads had no inkling of the effect that Flight was going to have on their, the infantry's, well-being. If they had known that the work of this Flight, the successful carrying out of its mission, was going to make all the difference of life and death to them they might have been more interested in it. But they did not know then, and do not know now, and what is perhaps more surprising, the Flight itself never fully learned the result of their patrol, because air work, so divided up and apparently disconnected, is really a systematic whole, and only those whose work it is to collect the threads and twist them together know properly how much one means to the other.

This Flight was out on a photographic patrol. They had been ordered to proceed to a certain spot over Hunland and take a series of pictures there, and they did so and returned in due course with nothing more unusual about the performance than rather a high average of attentions paid to them by the Hun Archies. The photos were developed and printed as usual within a few minutes of the machines touching the ground, and were rushed off to their normal destinations. The photographers went to their afternoon tea and forgot the matter.

But in a Nissen hut some miles from the photographers' 'drome afternoon tea was held up, while several people pored over the photos with magnifying glasses, consulted the many maps which hung round the walls and covered the tables, spoke earnestly into telephones, and dictated urgent notes. One result of all this activity was that Captain Washburn, or "Washie," and his Observer Lieutenant "Pip" Smith, to their no slight annoyance, were dragged from their tea and pushed off on an urgent reconnaissance, and two Flights of two fighting scout Squadrons received orders to make their patrol half an hour before the time ordered. Washie and his Observer were both rather specialists in reconnaissance work, and they received sufficient of a hint from their Squadron Commander of the urgency of their job to wipe out their regrets of a lost tea and set them bustling aboard their 'bus "Pan" and up into the air.

It may be mentioned briefly here that three other machines went out on the same reconnaissance. One was shot down before she was well over the lines; another struggled home with serious engine trouble; the third was so harried and harassed by enemy scouts that she was lucky to be able to fight them off and get home, with many bullet holes—and no information. Washie and Pip did better, although they too had a lively trip. To make sure of their information they had to fly rather low, and as soon as they began to near the ground which they wanted to examine the Hun Archies became most unpleasantly active. A shell fragment came up through the fuselage with an ugly rip, and another smacked bursting through both right planes. Later, in a swift dive down to about a thousand feet, "Pan" collected another assortment of souvenirs from machine-guns and rifles, but Washie climbed her steeply out of range, while Pip busied himself jotting down some notes of the exceedingly useful information the low dive had brought them.

Then six Hun fighting scouts arrived at speed, and set about the "Pan" in an earnest endeavour to crash her and her information together. Pilot and Observer had a moment's doubt whether to fight or run. They had already seen enough to make it urgent that they should get their information back, and yet they were both sure there was more to see and that they ought to see it. Their doubts were settled by the Huns diving on them one after another, with machine-guns going their hardest. The first went down past them spattering a few bullets through "Pan's" tail planes as he passed. The second Pip caught fairly with a short burst as he came past, and the Hun continued his dive, fell off in a spin, and ended in a violent crash below. The third and fourth dived on "Pan" from the right side and the fifth and sixth on her left. Pip managed to wing one on the right, and sent him fluttering down out of the fight more or less under control, and Washie stalled the "Pan" violently, wrenched her round in an Immelman turn, and plunged straight at another Hun, pumping a stream of bullets into him from his bow gun. The Hun went down with a torrent of black smoke gushing from his fuselage. Washie brought "Pan" hard round on her heel again, opened his engine full out and ran for it, with the scattered Huns circling and following in hard pursuit. Now "Pan" could travel to some tune when she was really asked—and Washie was asking her now. She was a good machine with a good engine; her pilot knew every stitch and stay, every rod, bolt, and bearing in her (and his rigger and fitter knew that he knew and treated him and her accordingly), every little whim in her that it paid him to humour, every little trick that would get an extra inch of speed out of her. A first-class pilot on a first-class scout ought to overhaul a first-class pilot and two-seater; but either the "Pan" or her pilot was a shade more first-class than the pursuers, and Washie managed to keep far enough ahead to be out of accurate shooting range and allow Pip to scrutinise the ground carefully as they flew. For Washie was running it is true, but was running east and further out over Hunland and the area he wanted to reconnoitre, and Pip was still picking up the very information they had been sent to find.

When they swung north the three pursuing scouts by cutting the corner came up on them again, and Pip left his notes to stand by his gun. There was some brisk shooting in the next minute, but "Pan" broke clear with another series of holes spattered through her planes and fuselage, and Pip with the calf of his leg badly holed by an explosive bullet, but with his gun still rapping out short bursts over the tail. They were heading for home now, and Washie signalled Pip to speak to him. The "Pan" is one of those comfortably designed machines with pilot's and observer's cockpits so close together that the two men can shout in each other's ear. Pip leaned over and Washie yelled at him. "Seen enough? Got all you want?" "Yes." Pip nodded and tapped his note-block. "All I want," he yelled, "and then some——" and he wiped his hand across his wound, showed Washie the red blood, and shouted "Leg hit."

That settled it. Washie lifted the "Pan" and drove her, all out, for home, taking the risk of some bullet-holed portion of her frame failing to stand the strain of excessive speed rather than the risk of going easy and letting the pursuers close for another fight with a wounded observer to protect his tail.

"They've dropped off," shouted Pip a few minutes later. Washie swung and began to lift the "Pan" in climbing turn on turn. "Look out," he shouted back, "look out," and stabbed a finger out to point a group of Huns ahead of them and cutting them off from the lines. Next minute Pip in his turn pointed to another group coming up from the south well above them and heading to cut them off. Washie swept round, dipped his nose slightly, and drove at the first group. The next few minutes were unpleasantly hot. The Huns strove to turn them, to hold them from breaking through or past, or drive them lower and lower, while Washie twisted and dived and zoomed and tried to dodge through or under them, with his gun spitting short bursts every time he caught a target in his sights; and Pip, weakening and faint from pain and loss of blood, seconded him as best he could with rather erratic shooting.

Affairs were looking bad for them, even when "Pan" ran out and west with no enemy ahead but with four of them clinging to her flanks and tail and pumping quick bursts at her; but just here came in those two Flights of our fighting scout Squadrons—quite accidentally so far as they knew, actually of set design and as part of the ordered scheme. Six streaking shapes came flashing down into the fight with their machine-guns pouring long bursts of fire ahead of them, and the four close-pursuing Huns left the "Pan" and turned to join up with their scattered companions. Washie left them to fight it out, and turned directly, and very thankfully, for his 'drome.

This ends the tale of "Pan," but not by any means of the result of her work. That work, in the shape of jerky but significant reports, was being dissected in the map-hung Nissen hut even before Pip had reached the Casualty Clearing Station; and "Pan's" work (confirming those suspicious photographs) again bred other work, more urgent telephone talks, and Immediate orders. The stir spread, circle by circle, during the night, and before daybreak the orders had borne their fruit, and Flights—Artillery-Observing, reconnoitring and fighting-scout—were lined up on their grounds waiting the moment to go; the Night Bombers were circling in from their second and third trips of destruction on lines of communication, railways and roads, junctions and bridges, enemy troops and transport in rest or on the march, ammunition dumps and stores; in the front lines the infantry were "standing to" with everything ready and prepared to meet an attack; the support lines were filling with reinforcements, which again were being strengthened by battalions tramping up the roads from the rear; in the gun lines the lean hungry muzzles of the long-range guns were poking and peering up and out from pit and emplacement, and the squat howitzers were lifting or lowering to carefully worked out angles.

Before daybreak was more than a mere doubtful smudge of lighter colour in the east, the waiting Flights were up and away to their appointed beats, and the first guns began to drop their shells, shooting "by the map" (maps made or corrected from air photographs), or on previously "registered" lines.

The infantry up in front heard the machines hum and drone overhead, heard the rush and howl of the passing shells, the thud of the guns' reports, the thump of the high-explosive's burst. That, for a time, was all. For a good half-hour there was nothing more, no sign of the heavy attack they had been warned was coming. Then the gunfire began to grow heavier, and as the light strengthened, little dots could be seen circling and wheeling against the sky and now and again a faint and far-off tat-tat-tat-tat came from the upper air. For if it was quiet and inactive on the ground, it was very much the other way in the air. Our reconnoitring and gun-spotting machines were quartering the ground in search of targets, the scout machines sweeping to and fro above them ready to drop on any hostiles which tried to interrupt them in their work. The hostiles tried quickly enough. They were out in strength, and they did their best to drive off or sink our machines, prevent them spying out the land, or directing our guns on the massing battalions. But they were given little chance to interrupt. Let any of their formations dive on our gun-spotters, and before they had well come into action down plunged our scouts after them, engaged them fiercely, drove them off, or drew them away in desperate defensive fighting. Gradually the light grew until the reconnoitring machines could see and mark the points of concentration, the masses moving into position, the filled and filling trenches; until the gun-spotters could mark down the same targets and the observers place their positions on the map. Then their wireless began to whisper back their messages from the air to the little huts and shanties back at Headquarters and the battery positions; and then....

It was the turn of the guns to speak. Up in the trenches the infantry heard the separate thuds and thumps quicken and close and run into one long tremendous roar, heard the shells whistle and shriek and howl and moan over their heads, saw the ground far out in front of them veil in twisting smoke wreaths, spout and leap in volcanoes of smoke, earth, and fire. Battery by battery, gun by gun, the artillery picked up and swelled the chorus. The enemy machines did little gun-spotting over our positions. If one or two sneaked over high above the line, it needed no more than the first few puffs about them from our watching Archies to bring some of our scouts plunging on them, turning them and driving after them in headlong pursuit. On the ground men knew little or nothing of all this, of the moves and counter-moves, the dodging and fighting high over their heads. Their attention was taken up by the ferocious fire of our artillery, and in waiting, waiting, for the attack which never came.

Small wonder it never came. The guns caught it fairly, as it was developing and shaping and settling into position for the assault. The attack was a little late, as we heard after from prisoners—perhaps the Night Bombers, and their upsetting of road and rail transport timetables with high-explosive bombs and showering machine-guns, had some word in that lateness—and our fire caught it in the act of deploying. And when such a weight of guns as was massed on that front catches solid battalions on the roads, or troops close-packed in trenches, the Lord ha' mercy on the men they catch. The shells rained, deluged down on every trench, every road and communication way within range, searched every thicket and patch of cover, blasted the dead woods to splintered wreckage, smashed in dug-out and emplacement, broke down the trenches to tumbled smoking gutters, gashed and seamed and pitted the bare earth into a honeycombed belt of death and destruction. The high-explosive broke in, tore open, wrenched apart and destroyed the covering trenches and dug-outs; the shrapnel raked and rent the tattered fragments of battalions that scattered and sought shelter in the shell-holes and craters. The masses that were moving up to push home the intended attack escaped if they were checked and stayed in time; those that had arrived and passed into the furnace were simply and utterly destroyed.

For a good three hours the roaring whirlwind of gunfire never ceased, or even slacked; for three hours the ground for a full mile back from the Hun front line rolled billowing clouds of smoke, quivered and shook to the crash of the explosions, spurted and boiled and eddied under the shells "like a bubbling porridge pot," as one gun-spotter put it, was scorched with fire, flayed with lead and steel, drenched and drowned with gas from the poison shells.

For three hours the circling planes above watched for sign of movement below, and seeing any such sign talked back by wireless to the guns, waited and watched the wrath descend and blot out the movement in fresh whirlwinds of concentrated fire; while further back a full five to ten miles other spotters quartered to and fro working steadily, sending back call after call to our Heavies, and silencing, one by one, battery after battery which was pounding our trenches with long-range fire. And for three hours the infantry crouched half deafened in their trenches, listening to the bellowing uproar, watching the writhing smoke-fog which veiled but could not conceal the tearing destruction that raged up and down, to and fro, across and across the swept ground.

Three hours, three long hours—and one can only guess how long they were to the maimed and wounded, cowering and squeezing flat to earth in the reeking shell-holes, gasping for choked breath through their gas-masks, quivering under the fear of further wounds or sudden and violent death; how bitterly long they were to the German commanders and generals watching their plans destroyed, their attack wiped out, their regiments and battalions burnt away in our consuming fire.

Our despatches, after their common use and wont, put the matter coldly, dispassionately, and with under-rather than over-statement of facts—"The attack was broken by our artillery fire."

Broken! Smashed rather; attack and attackers blotted out, annihilated, utterly and entirely.

"By our artillery fire." The truth no doubt, but hardly the complete truth, since it said no word of the part the Air Service had played. So few knew what had been brought about by the work of a photographic patrol, the following reconnaissance, the resulting air work.

The infantry never knew how it was that the attack never reached them, why they did not have to beat it off with bullet and bayonet—or be beaten in by it—except that the guns perhaps had stopped it. The public did not know because the press did not say—perhaps because the press itself didn't know. And what the Air Service knew, as usual it didn't tell.

But Somebody evidently knew, because Washie and Pip found themselves shortly afterwards in Orders for a Decoration; and apparently the Squadron knew, because next morning when he went out to his 'bus Washie found that "Pan" had a neat little splash of paint on what you might call her left breast, an oblong little patch showing the colours of the ribbon of the Military Cross.