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I have seen a number of anti-aircraft stations at the front: English ones near the coast and again south of Ypres; guns mounted, as was this French battery, on the plain of a battlefield; isolated cannon in towers and on the tops of buildings and water tanks. I have seen them in action, firing at hostile planes.
It simply indicated that those manning the American and French anti-aircraft guns, and the aviators of those two armies, should get ready to repel an enemy air raid. But the queer thing occurred when every one of the pursuing planes opened up their machine-guns almost simultaneously upon the first.
At half-past two in the morning we were awakened by the roar of the anti-aircraft guns in and around the city. After traveling all night from Germany, one Zeppelin had arrived over London and a whole fleet of them was scattered over the coasts and counties of England.
We had not gone far when every neck was craned up, watching some little black and white dots in the sky. I asked Rust what it was. "Oh, anti-aircraft guns shooting at an aeroplane," said he. We strained our eyes, but it was a long way off and high up, and we couldn't see the aeroplane. Later on we saw what looked like big sausages up in the sky.
The moment that a German flier takes the air, half a dozen Allied airmen rise to meet and engage him, and, in the rare event of his being able to elude them and get over the Allied lines, the "Archies," as the anti-aircraft guns are called on the British front, get into noisy action.
At first sight this seemed an unnecessary precaution; but we remembered the experience of one of our French comrades at B , who started confidently off on his first cross-country flight. He lost his way and did not realize how far astray he had gone until he found himself under fire from German anti-aircraft batteries on the Belgian front.
"They're going to fire at the airships!" cried Joe. "And that means they are not German craft!" added Blake. "Boys, I guess the French and Americans are making an airship raid on Mr. Fritz this morning, and maybe it'll be a good thing for us. Let's hunt cover!" Even as Blake and his chums looked about for some place of refuge, the firing of the German anti-aircraft guns began.
Of France I hope to say more in the future, and so I will pass at a bound to Padua, where it appeared that the Austrian front had politely advanced to meet me, for I was wakened betimes in the morning by the dropping of bombs, the rattle of anti-aircraft guns, and the distant rat-tat-tat of a maxim high up in the air.
The stern test of war has served to reveal conclusively the fact that aerial craft can be put out of action readily and effectively, when once the marksman has picked up the range, whether the gunner be conducting his operations with an anti-aircraft gun stationed upon the ground, or from a hostile machine.
The Boche "Archies" burst shells all about them, but Bob kept the swift machine maneuvering in such manner that to hit it required great good fortune on the part of the German gunners. The pop! pop! pop! of the anti-aircraft shrapnel and the whizz! of the pieces of shell went almost unnoticed by the two boys, so intent were they on their quest.
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