,
against the real day of trial, by the handful of officers who foresaw
that that day would soon come, and who strove unceasingly to be prepared
for it. About two hundred members of Parliament came down to Salisbury
Plain on the 8th of August to witness the competition of the aeroplanes
in the Military Trials. The wind was judged to be too tempestuous for
flying, and the flights were limited to a few short circuits round the
aerodrome in the afternoon. On the morning of that same day a brigade of
territorials, training at Wareham, asked for a couple of military
machines to co-operate with them. Major Brooke-Popham and Lieutenant G.
T. Porter started off in an Avro, and, a little later, Captain Hamilton
followed in his Deperdussin. The wind was so strong that Captain
Hamilton could make no headway, and was obliged to turn back. Major
Brooke-Popham and Lieutenant Porter battled their way to Wareham, but
could not get farther to co-operate with the troops, and flew back to
the plain in the afternoon. On their arrival there they found that the
wind had abated a little, and that flying had just begun in the trials.
The next day the newspapers published long accounts of the exhibition
flying over the aerodrome, with a single line at the end recording that
'military airmen also flew'.

In the early days of September No. 3 Squadron co-operated in the cavalry
divisional training, but without much success. The weather was bad, and
the cavalry, being preoccupied with their own work, had not much
attention to spare for the aeroplanes. In France, a year earlier,
aeroplanes had been systematically practised with cavalry, sometimes to
direct a forced march, sometimes to detect dummy field works, prepared
to deceive the cavalry and to lead them into a trap.

But if their co-operation with the cavalry was imperfect and
disappointing, the work done by aeroplanes a few days later, during the
army manoeuvres, was a complete vindication of the Flying Corps. There
were two divisions on each side; the attacking force, under Sir Douglas
Haig, advanced from the east; the defending force was commanded by
General Grierson. The services rendered to the defence by the airship
_Gamma_ have already been described. The fatal accidents of the summer
and the consequent prohibition of monoplanes diminished the available
force of aeroplanes, but a squadron of seven was allotted to each side.
Major Burke's squadron, with its headquarters at Thetford, oper