ack wireless reports
of the engagement. Only through them can communication be
maintained when, under the barrier fire, wires from the front
lines are cut. Sometimes it falls to our lot to guard these
machines from Germans eager to swoop down on their backs. Sailing
about high above a busy flock of them makes one feel like an old
mother hen protecting her chicks.

The pilot of an _avion de chasse_ must not concern himself with
the ground, which to him is useful only for learning his
whereabouts. The earth is all-important to the men in the
observation, artillery-regulating, and bombardment machines, but
the fighting aviator has an entirely different sphere. His domain
is the blue heavens, the glistening rolls of clouds below the
fleecy banks towering above the vague aerial horizon, and he must
watch it as carefully as a navigator watches the storm-tossed
sea.

On days when the clouds form almost a solid flooring, one feels
very much at sea, and wonders if one is in the navy instead of
aviation. The diminutive Nieuports skirt the white expanse like
torpedo boats in an arctic sea, and sometimes, far across the
cloud-waves, one sights an enemy escadrille, moving as a fleet.

Principally our work consists of keeping German airmen away from
our lines, and in attacking them when opportunity offers. We
traverse the brown band and enter enemy territory to the
accompaniment of an anti-aircraft cannonade. Most of the shots
are wild, however, and we pay little attention to them. When the
shrapnel comes uncomfortably close, one shifts position slightly
to evade the range. One glances up to see if there is another
machine higher than one's own. Low, and far within the German
lines, are several enemy planes, a dull white in appearance,
resembling sandflies against the mottled earth. High above them
one glimpses the mosquito-like forms of two Fokkers. Away off to
one side white shrapnel puffs are vaguely visible, perhaps
directed against a German crossing the lines. We approach the
enemy machines ahead, only to find them slanting at a rapid rate
into their own country. High above them lurks a protection plane.
The man doing the "ceiling work," as it is called, will look
after him for us.

Getting started is the hardest part of an attack. Once