Shortly after this, when back in reserve, we watched another fight directly over our heads. This was a pitiful tragedy. One of England's best and most famous flyers, Captain Saunders, had been over the German lines and had engaged and brought down an enemy and then, having exhausted his ammunition, started back "home" for more, but encountered a fast-flying boche who immediately attacked him. Being unable to return the fire, he tried every trick known to the birdman to escape but without avail. He came lower and lower in his evolutions and finally settled into a wide and sweeping spiral. The boche did not come very low as several machine guns and "Archies" opened on him. The other plane came slowly down in its perfect spiral course and, noticing that the engine was not running, we thought the aviator was intending to make a landing in a large open field toward which he was descending, but when the spiral continued until the tip of one wing touched the ground and crumpled up we knew there was something wrong and ran to the spot, not more than one hundred yards from where we were standing. We got the Captain out and found that he had been shot in the head but was still conscious. He died within a short time.
Other of our aviators who had witnessed his first fight furnished the beginning of the story and we could see that in the second engagement he never fired a shot, and every one of his magazines was empty. I examined them myself.
The large, sausage-shaped observation balloons sometimes afford a little diversion. When we were at Dranoutre one of them used to hang over our billeting place. One day an enterprising Hun came flying across and endeavored to attack it but was driven off by two of our planes.
Again, one of our balloons broke away in a strong wind and started toward Germany. Both the occupants of the basket made safe parachute descents with all their instruments and papers, but the balloon sailed swiftly away. Then the Germans opened on it with every gun in that sector. I feel sure that they fired at least two thousand shots at it. The air around was so filled with the smoke of shell-bursts that it was sometimes difficult to discern the balloon itself. It was late in the evening and the last we saw of the "sausage" it was still traveling eastward, apparently unhit. The joke of the whole thing is that the balloon was never hit and, the wind veering during the night, it returned and came down inside our lines within a few miles of its starting place.
On two occasions Zeppelins came over our lines, evidently returning from raids across the Channel. One time it was night and we could only hear, but not see the air-ship. The other time, during the St. Eloi fight, I saw one, just at daybreak. It was in plain sight but well over the German lines and headed east. No attempt was made to do any bombing of our positions by the Zeppelins although we occasionally received visits from bombing airplanes. The night before I left France, the last time, they dropped several bombs on the village of Ecoviers where I was staying. The only result was the killing of two civilians, the wounding of several others and the wrecking of one of the few whole houses in the town which had often been a victim of shells. Not a soldier was injured.
You have, no doubt, read of cases where bombs have been dropped on or near hospitals, ambulances and so on, and possibly you think that this was intentional on the part of the boche. If so you flatter him. This bomb dropping is, at best, very uncertain business and it would be well-nigh impossible for the most expert flyer to aim at and hit any single building. The fact is that, in nearly every town and city behind the lines, hospitals, ammunition stores and billets are located in close proximity to one another, with probably a railway running near by, so that any attempt to bomb the really important "military" points will necessarily jeopardize the homes of non-combatants--including hospitals. Even the Zeppelins, which are much more stable than an airplane, have never been able to place their bombs with any degree of accuracy.
CHAPTER XIII
The Battle of St. Eloi
No one realizes better than I the utter futility of attempting to describe a modern battle so that the reader can really understand or visualize it. There are no words in any vocabulary that convey the emotions and thoughts of persons during the long days and nights of horror--of the continual crash of the shells, the melting away or total annihilation of parapets and dug-outs; being buried and spattered with mud and blood; with dead and wounded everywhere and, worst of all, the pitiful ravings of those whose nerves have suddenly given way from shell shock. No imagination can grasp it; no picture can more than suggest a small part of it. None who has not had the actual experience can ever understand it. The hospital and ambulance people back at the rear see some of the results, but even they can have no conception of what it is like to be actually in the torment and hell-fire at the front.
I could not, if I so desired, give an accurate description of the operations in general. I have not the necessary data as to the various troops engaged or local results accomplished. Historians will record all that. My field of description is limited to my field of personal observation, which was not very extensive. I suppose, however, that I saw as much as it was possible for any one person to see, so I shall try to describe that part of the battle of St. Eloi in which it was my fortune to participate.