bout to start were always
aggressive, and though the number of their victims may seem small
compared with aerial victories on the Western Front they were
substantial and important. In the month of January 1917 the flying men
accounted for eleven aeroplanes, five of these falling victims to
one pilot. The last of these victories I myself witnessed. In a
single-seater the pilot engaged two two-seater aeroplanes of a late
type, driving down one machine within our line, the pilot killed by
eleven bullets and the observer wounded. He then chased the other
plane, whose pilot soon lost his taste for fighting, dropped into a
heavy cloud bank, and got away. No odds were too great for our airmen.
I have seen one aeroplane swoop down out of the blue to attack a
formation of six enemy machines, sending one crashing to earth and
dispersing the remainder. In one brief fight another pilot drove down
three German planes. The airman does not talk of his work, and we knew
that what we saw and heard of were but fragments in the silent records
of great things done. Much that was accomplished was far behind our
visual range, high up over the bleak hills of Judea, above even the
rain clouds driven across the heights by the fury of a winter gale, or
skimming over the dull surface of the Dead Sea, flying some hundreds
of feet below sea level to interrupt the passage of foodstuffs of
which the Turk stood in need.

All through the Army's rapid march northwards from the crushed
Gaza-Beersheba line the airmen's untiring work was of infinite value.
When the Turkish retreat began the enemy was bombed and machine-gunned
for a full week, the railway, aerodromes, troops on the march,
artillery, and transport being hit time and again, and five smashed
aeroplanes and a large quantity of aircraft stores of every
description were found at Menshiye alone. The raid on that aerodrome
was so successful that at night the Germans burnt the whole of the
equipment not destroyed by bombs. Three machines were also destroyed
by us at Et Tineh, five at Ramleh and one at Ludd, and the country
was covered with the debris of a well-bombed and beaten army. After
Jerusalem came under the safe protection of our arms airmen harassed
the retiring enemy with bombs and machine guns. The wind was strong,
but defying treacherous eddies, the pilots came through the valleys
between steep-sloped hills and caught the Turks on the Nablus road,
emptying their bomb racks at a height of