I
A FLIGHT TO THE FIRING LINE
Paris, August 13th (Friday).
I have just returned from a unique visit to the front. This afternoon I flew in an army aeroplane from Paris to the fighting lines, skirted these lines for a few kilometres, and flew back to Paris.
We made the round trip without a break.
I am indebted to the quite exceptional kindness of the French Foreign Office and of the French War Office for this flight. No other civilian has been allowed to ascend in a French army aeroplane at all, and as for visiting the front in one, it has apparently been undreamed of. Poor Needham went up in a British military aeroplane, but what he saw and felt were buried with him.
I received definite word yesterday evening that at four-thirty this afternoon I would find a military motor at the door of my hotel; that it would take me to the great aviation station in the suburbs of Paris, and that at five-thirty o'clock a double-cylindered battle-plane would set flight with me.
Everything ran like clockwork. At five o'clock I was shaking hands with the Captain of this most important aviation station, and he was explaining to me just how, day and night, his aeroplanes guarded Paris from German air attacks.
At five-thirty o'clock I was struggling into a heavy leather suit which I put on over my regular clothes and a heavy padded helmet which was carefully fastened under my chin by a buttoned flap and also an elastic band.
A few minutes later I was climbing sinuously into my seat in the front of the aeroplane while my pilot wormed his way into his seat a few feet behind me. A few seconds later the two great propellers (or rather tractors) began to flash around. With a snap and a roar the battle-plane started slowly forward, gained in speed till we were running along the big field like a racing automobile, then suddenly the people standing around dropped away from us as if on a gigantic express elevator leaving one standing on the upper floor of a skyscraper, and in a moment more the earth had become a strange and placid panorama with which we had no connection or concern.
On and up, on and up, we flew, headed straight as an arrow for the closest portion of the battle-front, ninety kilometres (about fifty-four miles) away.