ate
theatre being in contemplation.' Air reports for the following day
proved that much movement eastwards had already taken place.

Throughout the battle tactical reconnaissances had been maintained to a
depth of from fifteen to twenty miles behind the German lines. There
were some few fights in the air, and a little bombing, but observation
was still the principal duty of the Royal Flying Corps. They were
greatly privileged; at a time when our people at home knew nothing of
what the army was doing, they, and they alone, witnessed the battle of
Ypres.

They would gladly have done more. Many of them had been infantry
officers, and were eager to lend a hand to the infantry in that heroic
struggle, but they lacked the means. Not until the summer of 1916 were
they able, by organized attacks from the air, to help to determine the
fortunes of a battle.

With the close of the battle there came a lull in the fighting. This
lull continued throughout the dark and damp of the first winter, and the
interest of the war in the air shifts to the preparations which were
being pressed forward at home for renewing the war during 1915 on a
larger scale and with better material.

One incident which occurred just after the battle of Ypres shall here be
narrated; it serves to illustrate how the air work of the Germans may
sometimes have been impeded by a certain defect of sympathy in the
German officer class. German two-seater machines were commonly piloted
by non-commissioned officers, who took their orders from the officer in
the observer's seat. On the 22nd of November Lieutenants L. A. Strange
and F. G. Small, of No. 5 Squadron, were returning from a
reconnaissance, flying at a height of about seven thousand feet. Their
machine, an Avro, with an 80 horse-power Gnome engine, carried a Lewis
gun, which had been mounted by them, against orders, on rope tackle of
their own devising, just above the observer's seat. In the air they met
a new German Albatross with a 100 horse-power Mercedes engine. They
showed fight at once. Diving from a height of five hundred feet above
the German machine, and at right angles to its line of flight, they
turned underneath it and flew along with it, a little in front and less
than a hundred feet below. From this position, which they maintained
while both machines made two complete turns in the air, they were able
to empty two drums of ammunition into the German machine. After the
second drum the German pi