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It becomes a matter of discounting the aviator's speed and guessing from experience which way he will turn next. That ought to have got him the burst was right under. No! He rises. Surely that one got him! The puff is right in front, partly hiding the Taube from view. You see the plane tremble as if struck by a violent gust of wind. Close! Within thirty or forty yards, the telescope says.
But it's paradise, after the trenches. For one thing there isn't the constant danger there is up front. The men aren't under steady fire. Of course, there's always the chance of a bomb dropping raid by a Taube or a Fokker. The men get a chance to clean up. They get baths, and their clothes are cleaned and disinfected. They get rid of the cooties you know what they are?" I could guess.
But if they were surprised at seeing seated therein two men in the uniforms of the United States army, their feelings hardly compared with those of Lieutenant Mackinson, Joe, Slim and Frank Hoskins, as they recognized, stepping out of the Taube, Jerry and the observation officer with whom he had occupied the stationary balloon practically all of that day. "Who are you?" "What happened?"
Just above us is hanging a German taube, obviously watching us and the automobile which we had left below in the road, while the British huge anti-aircraft guns near by are feeling for it, shot after shot. We duck into our little Y M C A dugout, just under the crest of the ridge.
The slightest sign of activity in a trench when a "Taube" is overhead suffices to cause the trench to be blown to fragments, and time after time the British soldiers have had to lie prone in their trenches and suffer partial burial as an alternative to being riddled by shrapnel.
The individuality of character revealed in the "Taube" appealed to the German instinct, with the result that the machine achieved a greater reputation than might have been the case had it been pitted against other types of essentially Teutonic origin.
Suddenly we saw people beginning to fly! Soldiers, old men, children in their Sunday clothes, all running to cover. I asked what was up, and heard that a Taube was at that moment flying over our hotel. These are the sort of pleasant things one hears out here! Then Lady Decies came running in to say that two bombs had fallen and twenty people were wounded.
All the early German aeroplanes were designated Taube by the uninitiated, and were formed with swept-back, curved wings very much resembling the wings of a bird. These had obvious disadvantages, but the standardisation of design and mass production of the German factories kept them in the field for a considerable period, and they flew side by side with tractor biplanes of improved design.
The smoking brass shell-case is out of Archibald's steel throat, and another shell-case with its charge slipped into place and started on its way before the first puff breaks. The aviator knows what is coming. He knows that one means many, once he is in range. Archibald rushes the fighting; it is the business of the Taube to side- step.
The German struggled but Blaine had tied him also to the posts supporting the hollow chamber wherein pilot and observer sat, and now springing in himself, he started off. Right then the heads of a column of cavalry debouched in the field. The roar of roar of the Taube filled the air and in an instant they saw what was happening. By this time Orris was well up in the air and still spiraling higher.
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