rmen, who see that the wounded observer receives proper
attention. At the risk of incensing some of your eat-'em-alive civilian
friends, I may say we have plenty of evidence that the German Flying
Corps includes many gentlemen.

Later my friends are questioned, searched again from head to toe, and
packed off to Germany. Just now they are affected with deadly
heart-sickness, due to the wearisome inaction of confinement in a
hostile land, while we, their friends and brothers, continue to play our
tiny parts in Armageddon.

I enclose their names, and that of the prison camp where they are
lodged. Perhaps you will find time to send them some of your
fast-dwindling luxuries, as you flit from town to country, country to
town, and so to bed.

FRANCE, _July, 1916_

III.

A BOMB RAID.

... What are your feelings, dear lady, as you watch the airships that
pass in the night and hear the explosion of their bombs? At such a time
the sensations of most people, I imagine, are a mixture of deep
interest, deep anger, excitement, nervousness, and desire for revenge.
Certainly they do not include speculation about the men who man the
raiders.

And for their part, the men who man the raiders certainly do not
speculate about you and your state of mind. When back home, some of them
may wonder what feelings they have inspired in the people below, but at
the time the job's the thing and nothing else matters.

Out here we bomb only places of military value, and do it mostly in the
daytime, but I should think our experiences must have much in common
with those of Zeppelin crews. I can assure you they are far more
strenuous than yours on the ground.

Our bombing machines in France visit all sorts of places--forts,
garrison towns, railway junctions and railheads, bivouac grounds, staff
headquarters, factories, ammunition depots, aerodromes, Zeppelin sheds,
and naval harbours. Some objectives are just behind the lines, some are
100 miles away. There are also free-lance exploits, as when a pilot with
some eggs to spare dives down to a low altitude and drops them on a
train or a column of troops.

A daylight bomb raid is seldom a complete failure, but the results are
sometimes hard to record. If an ammunition store blows up, or a railway
station bursts into flames, or a train is swept off the rails and the
lines cut, an airman can see enough to know he has succeeded. But if the
bombs fall on something that does not explode or