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Lonely and restless, he had re-entered the Air Service, and had remained in it ever since. "And though the war's long over, I get homesick for the lark's land with the German planes playing tunes on their machine guns and their Archies tickling the soles of my feet," he sighed.
The result was, that, at a very nominal cost to the canteen funds, the individual shooting of the battalion considerably improved. Aerial activity was interesting. We soon became accustomed to the distinctive hum of the Hun machines flying high above us, followed by the barking of our "Archies."
Lewis guns, machine-guns, Archies were now all firing full blast, but the pilot continued on his course. Tracer bullets shot up like lines of light, but so far he had come through untouched. From the balloons the observers dived out until at one moment there were ten in the air. And each balloon in turn followed its owners, a flaming, smoking remnant . . .
This so angered them that they dragged out two Archies and peppered you good. You fell into our trench, and and with the knowledge you gave us we directed our heavy artillery right on that bluff. Here Blaine grinned complacently while patting Orry's head again, very gently though, on account of the bandages. "Yes, mon comrade," supplemented Cheval.
We had crossed the lines, flying very high, and received the usual salute of Hun Archies. After a mile or two the ground seemed to climb up to us, though we hadn't descended, and presently we were in the heart of a cold, clinging mist. We dived for several thousand feet, but the confounded thing grew thicker and no sort of landmark could be found anywhere.
The gunner cannot point his weapon some distance in advance as he would were he a sportsman intent on cutting off a flight of wild geese. The aviator makes quick turns zigzags employs every artifice to defeat the aim of his enemy below. Small wonder that in the majority of cases they have been successful. The attitude of the airmen toward the "Archies" is one of calm contempt.
Ensconced in one of the offshoots of the Wadi Ghuzzeh well behind the front line, we enjoyed safety from shelling. We were, however, sufficiently in the picture to have guns constantly firing around us and aeroplanes flying overhead, and could watch our friends being shelled in the front line and the daily anti-aeroplane shoots, both by our own and by the enemy's "Archies."
This was strange for so formidable a squadron of fighting, one-man planes that usually soar up to lofty heights, far from the direct range Fritzy's Archies. But their instructions were clear, and each trained pilot knew just what he had to do. Swiftly and still more swiftly they flew. The night mists, growing yet more opaque, promised, favorably.
Another evening, about ten o'clock, a whole squadron of Austrian planes came over, flying in regular formation and signalling to one another with Morse lamps. They were going, it appeared, to bomb Gradisca. They were heavily shelled by the "archies" as they came over us, and several fragments of shell fell on our terrace.
They could still have conversed, by direct sound or by helmet-radio, but the devil-killer seemed to subdue the impulse, and for a while caused a dreaminess that shortened the long wait... "Okay time to move!" Heavy with their Archies, they filed out into desert sun-glare that their darkened helmets made feeble.
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