The fire of the enemy was incredibly accurate. Their shells struck our trenches with unerring certainty—and where one struck there was nothing left but an ugly crater in the ground. They simply annihilated every object in their track and left a mass of blackened dust and pulp.
Gun after gun of our batteries were silenced.
The vultures were still soaring aloft calling the range of each concealed battery as the fight revealed its place.
The battle had opened at dawn. By ten o’clock fifty pieces of our artillery had been reduced to junk and one-third of our trenches pulverized into shapeless masses of dust, broken stone and gaping caverns.
Apparently our heavy gun fire had made no impression on the enemy. Their long range pieces were hurling death with a steady clock-like regularity that was appalling. Our army was being ground to dust without a chance to strike their hidden foe. We had never possessed an aviation corps of any serviceable strength. The year before the nucleus of one had been authorized by Congress. This little group of efficient men had followed the fleet into the Pacific and the remaining dozen had been left to die in our tragic meeting with the armada.
General Hood possessed but two aeroplanes. It was madness to send them up against two hundred of the enemy. By an accident to his machinery a taube had fallen within our lines. The men had been captured, their uniforms taken, and delivered to General Hood. The machinery of the hostile aeroplane was promptly repaired, our blond sky pilot forced himself into the greenish-gray suit and stood by waiting for the chance to rise in a cloud of smoke and take his chance among the enemy as a spy.
At noon a wave of fog slowly crept in from sea and the guns had died away. As the mist rolled over the battlefield Hood stood beside the courier of the skies.
“Up with you now, boy, in this fog bank. Mix with the enemy and take your chances. Stay until the firing is resumed and give me the position of their guns. I must know whether we have reached them with our shells.”
The birdman saluted and swung the taube into the clouds. He circled toward the sea and disappeared in the mists.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon before he landed far in the rear of our lines and made his way by automobile to headquarters.