. Boom! boom! rat-ta-tat-boom-rat-ta-tat
is the music that greets our ears and every hill is a tremble under the
shock of thousands of rounds of fire.

In such an emergency our orders are clear. We must remain perfectly
motionless: we will not be seen unless we move about. We must not fire
at him; he must know neither our location nor what arms we have.

The tons of steel being hurled into the air must meanwhile fall in
splinters to the earth. Here is where our steel helmets prove so
serviceable, protecting the head not only from falling splinters, but
from bullets of the machine gun the Foker flyer is now vigorously firing
earthward.

Now a new and welcome sound greets our eyes. Coming on the wings of the
wind out of the south is the strong deep bass of Liberty Motor
music--the all-American made--which, though arriving in quantity late in
the war, proved at once its superiority to all others. Our ground guns
have driven the Foker high into the air; which, evidently noting that
the on-coming ships are merely observing and not fighting planes, comes
steadily on!

How vividly I recall that stirring afternoon! We were on a hillside,
just above Thiacourt, directing the work of a burial detail. As the
Foker reached a point directly over us he dove full in our direction.
There was nothing for us to do, no shelter to take refuge in, just an
unprotected slope of the hill.

Whether it was the fact that we were a burial party and he wished to
spare us--and this explanation I like to believe--or whether, by firing
on us, he might betray his presence, and thus defeat his main purpose,
which was to destroy the balloon anchored in the neighboring valley, I
will never know; but _this_ I _do_ know--at a point directly above us,
and where he could most easily have killed us with machine gun fire, he
suddenly changed his course.

Gliding down the valley, he raced full upon the observing balloon and
hurled incendiary shells into it, setting it on fire; then, coming
about, he dashed away to the north, escaping over his own lines amid a
shower of leaden hail! "Ill blows the wind that profits no one"--the
position of undertaker, we at first hesitated in accepting, had saved
our life; burial boys were, after this, more reconciled than ever to
their work!

Air craft battles, although of frequent occurrence along our front, were
always watched with keen delight. Our fliers were chiefly of the 108th
Squadron from the fields of Toul and