opened a fire which scattered the gray-clad soldiers in all
directions. All pilots report that their accurate fire had a most
demoralizing effect upon the hostile troops. Convoys and ammunition and
supply columns were attacked while on the march and the disorganized men
left their teams and automobiles on the roads while they sought shelter
in nearby ditches.

AIRPLANES ATTACK TROOPS.

Airplanes attacked troops in the support trenches and sent them
scurrying to the cover of their dugouts. One pilot made so many of these
attacks that he finally ran out of ammunition, but he delivered his last
stroke by letting go his signal rockets at a platoon of soldiers who,
evidently mistaking this for some particularly horrible new style of war
frightfulness, fled in all directions.

German troops were fired upon in the more distant back areas as they
were entraining for the front. Many of the enemy retreating from the
British attack and hiding in shell holes were seen by the low-flying
airmen and pelted with bullets.

One British pilot patrolled a road for half an hour before he saw
anything to shoot at. Then a German military automobile with three
officers sitting in the back seat came along. The Britisher dived at
them from a height of three hundred feet, firing at them as they came.
He flew so low eventually that the wheels of his under carriage barely
missed the automobile, which swerved into a ditch while going at about
forty miles an hour and crashed into a tree.

This same pilot later came across an active field gun battery and
charged it, scattering the gun crew and hitting a number of them. Still
further along he attacked a column of Germans marching in fours. The
column broke when he opened fire, scattering to both sides of the road.
At no time during his stay inside the German lines was this pilot more
than 500 feet from the ground.

ON CONTACT PATROL WORK.

Large numbers of British machines were on contact patrol work, flying
low over the advancing lines of infantry, constantly watching their
movements, their progress, any temporary reverse, any attempt to form
counter-attacks and all the while sending detailed reports back to corps
and army headquarters.

Of the fourteen planes lost during the day of the battle, a majority
were those contact machines. They had to fly through a frightful storm
of their own as well as the enemy's artillery fire, and they succumbed
to chance blows from these exploding missi