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"Yes, all right," said the young officer sitting at the desk, "but we are making no crossings this morning. There is a storm over the channel." Weather forecasts, which had long ago disappeared from the English newspapers lest they give information to Zeppelins, had become the privilege of those who travel by air or repulsed aerial raids. "It may clear up this afternoon," he added.
That the precautions taken against Zeppelins were by no means overdone was proved by the total failure of the second aerial raid on Antwerp, in the latter part of September, when a dirigible again sailed over the city under cover of darkness.
On two occasions Zeppelins came over our lines, evidently returning from raids across the Channel. One time it was night and we could only hear, but not see the air-ship. The other time, during the St. Eloi fight, I saw one, just at daybreak. It was in plain sight but well over the German lines and headed east.
Everybody there knew what the weather was, and nobody could tell what it was to be. If reports were printed, they would fool only the German Zeppelins; but cable reports might be quite another thing. So you can't cable your family: "Weather fine, come over." Of course Germany should not be allowed to know the English forces, their exact number and distribution.
The British defense squadrons showed somewhat better generalship and it was not until the tenth of the month that Zeppelins obtained any appreciable advantage in that quarter. But two of the raiders evaded the patrols on the night of May 10, 1915, and dropped bombs upon Westcliff-on-Sea, near Southend, at the mouth of the Thames, a bare twenty-five miles from London.
The first destruction of Zeppelins that by Lieutenant Warneford, and the bringing down of LZ77 at Revigny, did not produce much disappointment. The war was going well in other directions.
This was the beginning of a series of fierce aerial battles between the German forces and the Allied airmen, though for a long dine no more Zeppelins were seen. Sometimes fortune favored the side on which Tom and Jack fought, and again they were forced to retire, leaving some of their friends in the hands of the enemy.
Those of us who have had our folk murdered by Zeppelins or tortured in German prisons have probably got it already. We passed in a little procession among the French soldiers, and viewed their multifarious arrangements. For them we were a little break in a monotonous life, and they formed up in lines as we passed.
The Slav one expected to fail in getting his German lesson, for obvious reasons, especially because of his reactionary and corrupt bureaucracy. But not the Anglo-Saxon! As a clever French staff officer remarked, "The two disappointments of the war have been the Zeppelins and the English." Without making a post mortem on the English case, the Latin superiority is a phenomenon worth pondering.
During February, 1915, the hand of tragedy fell upon the German air service. Two Zeppelins and another large aircraft were wrecked within a couple of days. In a storm over the North Sea on February 16, 1915, a Zeppelin fought heroically. Contrary air currents compelled the Zeppelin commander to maneuver over a wide zone in an effort to reach land.
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