"We have a farm here that has been taken and retaken, but we have it again at present. It is lovely at night, with hundreds of shells bursting all around, and if it were not for the death they bring they might be fireworks on a large scale.
"I have lost my servant and all my kit. Please send me out some cigarettes, tobacco and matches."
[THEY TOOK HIS SHOE.]
One of the British flying corps, Lieut. Rainey, crossed the Channel from France in a much damaged machine, thus completing in a fitting manner a series of thrilling adventures which have befallen him since he last left English soil.
Lieut. Rainey had been engaged for three weeks in reconnoitring at the front, and so little leisure had he been able to snatch that, as he told his friends here, in the whole of that time he could not remove his clothes, or even get a wash.
He had two machines disabled by rifle and shell fire, while a third caught fire in midair. On each of these occasions he very narrowly escaped losing his life.
Once when he came down he was so exhausted that he lay with his head on his aeroplane and fell fast asleep. On waking he was astonished to find that the puttee, boot and sock of one leg had been removed by some one who, as the lieutenant himself suggested, took the opportunity of his slumber to get them as mementoes.
Lieut. Rainey brought home with him a German helmet belonging to a man he shot, and he proudly asserted it was the first trophy of the kind taken by a British airman.