eenmantle affair. That was the only kind of reward
he wanted, and, though he was absurdly over age, the authorities
allowed it. They were wise not to stickle about rules, for Peter's
eyesight and nerve were as good as those of any boy of twenty. I knew
he would do well, but I was not prepared for his immediately blazing
success. He got his pilot's certificate in record time and went out to
France; and presently even we foot-sloggers, busy shifting ground
before the Somme, began to hear rumours of his doings. He developed a
perfect genius for air-fighting. There were plenty better trick-flyers,
and plenty who knew more about the science of the game, but there was
no one with quite Peter's genius for an actual scrap. He was as full of
dodges a couple of miles up in the sky as he had been among the rocks
of the Berg. He apparently knew how to hide in the empty air as
cleverly as in the long grass of the Lebombo Flats. Amazing yarns began
to circulate among the infantry about this new airman, who could take
cover below one plane of an enemy squadron while all the rest were
looking for him. I remember talking about him with the South Africans
when we were out resting next door to them after the bloody Delville
Wood business. The day before we had seen a good battle in the clouds
when the Boche plane had crashed, and a Transvaal machine-gun officer
brought the report that the British airman had been Pienaar. 'Well
done, the old _takhaar_!' he cried, and started to yarn about Peter's
methods. It appeared that Peter had a theory that every man has a blind
spot, and that he knew just how to find that blind spot in the world of
air. The best cover, he maintained, was not in cloud or a wisp of fog,
but in the unseeing patch in the eye of your enemy. I recognized that
talk for the real thing. It was on a par with Peter's doctrine of
'atmosphere' and 'the double bluff' and all the other principles that
his queer old mind had cogitated out of his rackety life.

By the end of August that year Peter's was about the best-known figure
in the Flying Corps. If the reports had mentioned names he would have
been a national hero, but he was only 'Lieutenant Blank', and the
newspapers, which expatiated on his deeds, had to praise the Service
and not the man. That was right enough, for half the magic of our
Flying Corps was its freedom from advertisement. But the British Army
knew all about him, and the men in the trenches used to discuss him as