As I walked across the aerodrome, the feeble rays of the young moon were dying in the west. It was 4.30 in the morning, with an icy-cold nor’wester shrieking through the tree-tops, and I was very thankful that I had taken the precaution of clothing myself warmly in a wool-lined leather coat and trousers, a pair of long gum boots—invaluable for keeping out wet and cold alike—a woolen balaclava helmet under my leather aviation cap, and two pairs of gloves to keep my hands from freezing.
We had received our instructions the previous night. Ten bomb-dropping aeroplanes were to be convoyed by two battle-planes.
It may be mentioned that a bomb-dropping machine is usually of the fast, scouting variety, with a speed of well over ninety miles per hour, and is a single seater—that is to say, it carries no observer. The reason for this is not very far to seek. With two men and a machine-gun aboard, very little power remains for a supply of bombs; without an observer and a machine-gun, the bomb supply may be doubled. And the more bombs aboard the more damage can be done to the enemy.
The battle-plane is either a “pusher” (with the propeller at the rear) aeroplane, mounting a large gun at the prow, or a Caudron with two engines. Its principal duty is to protect the bomb-dropping machine from attack by enemy aircraft.
The two battle-planes were the first to get away from the ground and the others soon followed. When they had all reached an altitude of 5000 feet, they took up their pre-arranged formation with one of the battle-planes on either wing; then turned their noses eastward towards the sun, and set off in the direction of the enemy lines.
Far away across the sand-dunes there came the first rays of the rising sun, casting a thousand scintillating gleams across the sea. Out in the channel was a fleet of fishing smacks, heedless of the drifting mines, bowling along merrily before the breeze to their accustomed fishing-ground. The dull gray lines and the smoke-belching funnels of a British destroyer, full out at thirty knots showed as she churned the seas into masses of white foam, leaving in her rear a long white wake. Dotted here and there were small tramp-steamers and cargo-boats. By the sand-dunes off the coast was a long dark shape, which might easily have been mistaken for a whale, had it not been for that tell-tale periscope. It was one of our own submarines. Away in the distance was a dark irregular line, which later in the day and in a stronger light, would reveal itself as the shores of old England.
A glance at the altimeter—the instrument for registering the height—revealed the fact that we were now 6000 feet. Still climbing, the course was set further out to sea, to avoid as much as possible the anti-aircraft guns at Westende and Middlekerke.
Things ashore now began to brighten up. Along and behind the firing line there was the occasional flash of a heavy gun, followed almost immediately by dense clouds of white smoke. Along the roads there crawled, ant-like, the long columns of supply and ammunition wagons. Sometimes a big gun appeared, hauled along by a puffing traction-engine; sometimes a battalion or company of infantry or a squadron of cavalry moving up to the front line.
Running south and east were the two dull gray straggling lines of opposing trenches, so close together in places that they appeared to run into one another. We were gradually drawing nearer to those much dreaded lines where our real troubles were to begin. Already far up along the coast, it was possible to distinguish Middlekerke and the Ostend railway station.
The first anti-aircraft shot! A long-drawn-out hiss and a violent explosion in unpleasant proximity—a pretty enough exhibition to watch from the safety of terra firma, but deucedly uncomfortable when one is playing the leading part in the little drama. It is the first shot that is always the most unpleasant and the most terrifying.