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There is no greater adept at the gentle art of "putting the wind up" people. Few airmen get hardened to the villainous noise of a loud wouff! wouff! at 12,000 feet, especially when it is near enough to be followed by the shriek of shell-fragments.
I looked overboard to make certain of the map square, withdrew back into the office, pulled the shutter-string, and loaded the next plate for exposure. "Wouff! Ouff! Ouff!" barked Archie, many times and loud. An instinct to swerve assaulted the pilot, but after a slight deviation he controlled his impulse and held the bus above the roadside. He had a difficult task to maintain a level course.
Or we would steal to the Somme, float down-stream, and somehow or other pass the entanglements placed across the river by the enemy. Wouff! wouff! Archie was complicating the odds. Further broodings were checked by the sudden appearance of a German scout. Taking advantage of our plight, its pilot dived steeply from a point slightly behind us.
The single wouff of the first shot has become a jerky chorus that swells or dwindles according to the number of shells and their nearness. I signal to the flight-commander that I have finished with Toutprès, whereupon we climb into the clouds and comparative safety. We rise above the white intangibility and steer north-east, in the direction of Passementerie.
I could hear her shrill little voice asking Miss Sharp to be so good as to give her an envelope She must write an address! I watched her Miss Sharp handed her one, and went on with her work. Suzette returned, closing the door, without temper, behind her. "Wouff!" she announced to me "No anxiety there an Anglaise not appetizing not a fausse maigre like us, as thin as a hairpin!
I lean over to count the stationary trucks in the sidings. "Wouff, wouff, wouff," interrupts Archie from a spot deafeningly near; and I withdraw into "the office," otherwise the observer's cockpit. Follows a short lull, during which I make another attempt to count the abnormal amount of rolling stock. "Wouff Hs sss!" shrieks another shell, as it throws a large H.E. splinter past our tail.
Whereas we wanted to make east-north-east, the wind was due east, so that it cut across and drifted us in a transverse direction. To keep straight it was necessary to steer crooked that is to say, head three-quarters into the wind to counteract the drift, the line of flight thus forming an angle of about 12° with the longitudinal axis of the aeroplane. "Wouff! ouff!"
I heard the customary wouff! wouff! wouff! followed in one case by the hs-s-s-s-s of passing fragments. We swerved and dodged to disconcert the gunners. After five minutes of hide-and-seek, we shook off this group of Archie batteries. The flight-commander headed for Mossy-Face Wood, scene of many air battles and bomb raids.
He is not far wrong either, as witness the ugly black bursts slightly ahead, creeping nearer and nearer. Now there are two bursts uncomfortably close to the leader's machine, and its pilot and observer hear that ominous wouff! The pilot dips and swerves. Another wouff! and he is watching a burst that might have got him, had he kept a straight course. Again the Archies try for the leader.
We were expecting to see the Huns flatten out, when "Wouff! wouff! wouff! wouff! wouff!" said Archie. The German birds were not hawks at all; they were merely tame decoys used to entice us to a pre-arranged spot, at a height well favoured by A.-A. gunners.
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