“Mais oui, mon vieux! Mais Oui!”
XI
THE CAMOUFLAGED COWS
Nancy, a moonlight night, and “les sales Boches encore.” I have been out on the balcony of this old hotel, a famous tourist resort before the war, watching the bombardment and listening to the deep throb of the motors of German Gothas. They have dropped their bombs without doing any serious damage. Therefore, I may return in peace to my huge bare room, to write, while it is still fresh in mind, “The Adventure of the Camouflaged Cows.”
For the past ten days I have been attached—it is only a temporary transfer—to a French escadrille of which Manning, an American, is a member. The escadrille had just been sent to a quiet part of the front for two weeks' repos, but the day after my arrival orders came to fly to Belfort, for special duty.
Belfort! On the other side of the Vosges Mountains, with the Rhine Valley, the Alps, within view, within easy flying distance! And for special duty. It is a vague order which may mean anything. We discussed its probable meaning for us, while we were pricking out our course on our maps.
“Protection of bombardment avions” was André's guess. “Night combat” was Raynaud's. Every one laughed at this last hazard. “You see?” he said, appealing to me, the newcomer. “They think I am big fool. But wait.” Then, breaking into French, in order to express himself more fluently: “It is coming soon, chasse de nuit. It is not at all impossible. One can see at night, a moonlight night, very clearly from the air. They are black shadows, the other avions which you pass, but often, when the moonlight strikes their wings, they flash like silver. We must have searchlights, of course; then, when one sees those shadows, those great black Gothas, vite! la lumière! Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! C'est fini!”
The discussion of the possibility or impossibility of night combat continued warmly. The majority of opinion was unfavorable to it: a useless waste of gasoline; the results would not pay for the wear and tear upon valuable fighting planes. Raynaud was not to be persuaded. “Wait and see,” he said. There was a reminiscent thrill in his voice, for he is an old night bombarding pilot. He remembered with longing, I think, his romantic night voyages, the moonlight falling softly on the roofs of towns, the rivers like ribbons of silver, the forests patches of black shadow. “Really, it is an adventure, a night bombardment.”
“But how about your objectives?” I asked. “At night you can never be sure of hitting them, and, well, you know what happens in French towns.”
“It is why I asked for my transfer to chasse,” he told me afterward. “But the Germans, the blond beasts! Do they care? Nancy, Belfort, Châlons, Epernay, Rheims, Soissons, Paris,—all our beautiful towns! I am a fool! We must pay them back, the Huns! Let the innocent suffer with the guilty!”