Old Bob ceased from his carolling, and the mess president, a little sandy Scotchman, spoke up:
“It may be that the boche is coming to call on us—the men douse the lights if we get a warning; or it may be that the battery has failed. At any rate I vote' we have in some candles and carry on. This is too fine an evening to be spoiled before it's half over, eh?”
A failed battery it must have been, for no boche bombers came. So upon the candles being fetched in, Old Bob resumed at the point where he had left off. He sang straight through to midnight, nearly, never minding the story telling and the limerick matching and the laughter and the horse play going on below him, and rarely repeating a song except by request of the audience. If his accompanist at the piano knew the air, all very well and good; if not, 'Old Bob sang it without the music.
They didn't in the least want us to leave when the time came for us to leave, vowing that the fun was only just starting and that it would be getting better toward daylight. But ahead of us we had a long ride, without lights, over pitchy-dark roads, so we got into our car and departed. First, though, we must promise to come back again very soon, and must join them in a nightcap glass, they toasting us with their airmen's toast, which seemed so well to match in with their buoyant spirits.
When next I passed by that road the hangars were empty of life and the barracks had been tom down. The great offensive had started the week before, and on the third day of it, as we learned from other sources, our friends of Night Bombing Squadron Number ——, obeying an order, had climbed by pairs into their big planes and had gone winging away to do their share in the air fighting where the fighting lines were locked fast.
There was need just then for every available British aëroplane—the more need because each day showed a steadily mounting list of lost machines and lost airmen. I doubt whether many of those blithesome lads came out of that hell alive, and doubt very much, too, whether I shall ever see any of them again.
So always I shall think of them as I saw them last—their number being sixty or so and the average age twenty-two and a half—grouped at the doorway of their quarters, with the candlelight and the firelight shining behind them, and their glasses raised, wishing to us “Happy landings!”