With a rush of noise the rocket passes upward and bursts into a cluster of liquid-white stars. The searchlight splutters and hisses. The mist lies cold and white and damp around us. Again and again the rocket rushes upward with a dying noise, until its very sound makes us surly and irritable.
Another half-hour passes, and then another. Still the raid officer stands silent and waiting on his platform, the moisture of the mist shining in little white drops on his heavy blanket coat. Still the searchlight hisses. Still the rockets rush and burst. Every heart is heavy. Every voice is silent. One by one the watchers move wearily to bed.
Hope of return is now long past. The white beam of the searchlight is cut off. The rockets no longer drop their white and lovely stars of useless welcome through the night. I walk tired and miserable across the aerodrome as in the east slowly spreads the first rosy flush of dawn, and across my dragging boots the wet blades of grass throw their sympathetic tears of dew.
VIII.
THE LONG TRAIL.
"Above the hostile lands I fly,
And know, O Lord, that Thou art nigh,
And with Thy ever-loving care
Dost bear me safely through the air.
Thou madest the twinkling Polar Star,
Which guides me homewards from afar;
And Thou hast made my greatest boon,
The radiant visage of the moon."
—A Night Hymn. Written sixty miles
beyond the German lines.
Early in the war it became necessary to destroy a railway bridge some way behind the German lines. This structure was an important link in the enemy's lines of communication, and its destruction was of vital importance. The work was given to one of the very early squadrons to accomplish, and it was carried out in rather an unusual way.