Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany

ined military undercoat in the Hotel d'Europe. About to go up in one of Germany's war planes, I was determined to be comfortable, if not mentally, physically. Ober-Lieutenant He

uffeur began to distance everything on the road. It was one of those long, rakish motors, painted field gray green, that the Benz Company manufactures only for the army, cabalistic black letters and numerals marking its hood. As, with the muffler cut out, we roared through the streets of Lille, I saw the civilians pause to watch us pass with sullen eyes. Poor Herrmann had his arm working like a restless semaphore, returning salut

er all, he was only an officer, and they were bringing ammunition for the entrenched battle line. So our soldier-chauffeur swore, but indifferent to his "Donnerwetters," the drivers astride the transport horses stolidly held the

ere entirely right in not turning off the road for an officer'

yself thinking how unjustly those men might be regarded. "What did you do in the war?" ... "I drove a supply cart." ... How unheroic it sounds

ly drop shells upon it. They knew, of course, that our infantry, by making a detour through the fields, could avoid this death zone, but they shel

her on we passed another patrol. A corral of the familiar gray-topped wagons beside red brick farm buildings showed the location of a base of supplies, and in front o

ned, "the Staff told me that the French generally beg

hen at a muddy crossroad, patrolled by a Uhlan, as motionless as Remington might have painted him, we made a quick turn and plowed away. Apparently we were bound for a weather-beaten house and barn, half hidden by a leafless

door slid back a trifle, a youngish man, wearing the black leather helmet and coat of the aviation corps, appearing in the aperture. Excusing himself, Herrmann drew him aside and now and then I heard their voices raised in assent; they were evidently discussing my proposed flight

sued from the gloom within, four soldiers. I watched them roll back the creaking door and then, as though it were a fragile thing, they began slowly to push out the a

el place I observed, packed hard with shale and dirt, made into a landing place for the planes. I caught a glimpse, at the extreme end of the field near the house, of two soldiers, fitting two wooden objects, painted the drab green of the field, into two pairs of prepared holes, one thirty feet behind

he lights were lit, and if from above the aviator saw two fiery circles co

hat nothing will prevent u

ld prevent us, deciding finally that it was only the usual jocular way of the av

wings on my left. The brown propeller began to spin, lazily at first, then faster, while the engine that I could have reached forward and touched, began its roaring. A quick comparison between the observer's compartment of this machine, and the one in which I had sat at the Doeberitz Flugplatz near Berlin came to me-that one had the tiny, brass, bomb-dropping levers, two on each side of the rail; these were all in one line and on the left; that one had a writing shelf that fell out from the front wall of the tiny tonneau, so had this, and I touched the lever that brought the shelf sloping down towards my knees; the floor of that machine had seemed solid, though perhaps not, for this was cut to admit the insertion of an obse

distance, here little groups of absurdly small brick houses, off to the right a church steeple and beside it the uneven blackened walls of a shell-riddled building. The motor had settled now into an ever-increasing clamor, in which, if you caught one false beat, you would have cause for alarm. No longer visible, the

d wondrous shades of brown, gray, green, ochre, and purple; they separated each into fantastic tintings, as though earth's beauties were not for those who dwelt upon it. The long army transport that we had passed on the road, was just a gray worm, cr

other world beneath us, but which ever grumbled for more. And then suddenly I saw a white cloud appear in the gray sky, and then the white cloud was gone and there came a second, a third, a fourth white cloud, then no more for a minute it seemed, and then four more again. And you knew that over

rd another, nearer it seemed, and the pencil fell from my fingers, rolling down until it stopped by the ledge while I sat staring at it and trying not to think what might have occurred had we been a few seconds faster or the shell a few seconds slower. And then I felt myself slide forward in the seat and I knew that the machine was diving down. There was no danger, I felt; of course the aviator was all right, No shrapnel had burst near us but then, we might have been within rifle range. No! Absurd! Yet I quickly glanced

d slowly I admitted that the danger was over. A stinging pain, moreover, was settling above my eyes, and what I might have put down to the quick breathing of excitement, I realized now to be the gasping of

graying the vision, clouds and a drifting, wet mist that settled in beads on the glass of my goggles so that I was continually rubbing away with my gloved fingers. We were hidden now, from the earth, and the earth from us. Marching gray gloom all around, ghostly wet wisps th

ft I saw a patch of the purplish dream veil, and in a moment we were gliding down through the clo

d there grew before you the black, zigzagging scars of the trenches-although you knew them to be brown with wet clay-and behind them more black lines, only straighter-and you guessed those to be reserve pits-and behind them, approaching at right angles, more black lines, only fewer and further apart-and these you judged the approach trenches. As you stared with the glass your eye never ranged the whole battle line, always the white puffing smoke obscured the view in tiny, white, swift-dispelling clouds, that rose from the area between the zig

I began to see innumerable, tiny, yellow-red tongues that had a way of darting out from the black lines and as suddenly withdrawing, and I began to think I heard a faint sound like the broken rolling of a drum, and somewhere

stinct. It looked like a relief map now, with objects coming out of the purplish gray haze, and you wondered at the geometrical precision of it all. By staring steadily at the black scarred lines you slowly discerned another color and there at intervals, which gave that same impression of mathematical ex

d to stand apart from the others, and which you guessed to be the great house of the village, was blotted out by the spewing gray white smoke of a grenat and when the glass cleared you saw that the yellow box had changed to a jagged shape, red with flames. Fascinated,

but the gray dusk was blackening and the fringe of flame on the trenches becoming redder and more vivid. But this flame, which should have been even more lu

y it became harsher as though the drummer was wielding his stick with sudden fury, an insanely growing fury; and you felt a wind on your face, then it was gone, and you felt it again, for the aeroplane had begun to swing round in a slow circ

wards it-his object the location of one of the enemy's batteries, a new battery, I judged as yet unknown to the Germans, possibly the one that had dropped the shell on the yellow

nd closing. The place must be a brigade headquarters or something equally important. That was it! Soldiers were constantly coming and going. And as regularly appearing, these patches of light grew more lurid, and the guns raged on, I thought with a smile that the firing might well be the slamming of those farmhouse doors, for just then the two had perfectly synchronized-the sudden flari

upon it, the engine was trying to tear itself loose. And then you thought of the need for this speed. Had I been careless with the electric torch? Had we been seen? Might not even now the enemy be after us? Perhaps a telep

ck my cheek. The slow swinging circles began as before. And then, just upon sighting the French battery, Hals suddenly drove the machine forward. Off to the left, what had seemed an unnaturally bright point of light grew incredibly fast into a circle of light and beside it a smaller circle, and their circumferences seemed to be restlessly moving, intersecting here and there with exasperating frequency, although gradually becoming steadier and finally becoming almost concentri

r's power, the propeller blades became as the strings of a monstrous harp through which the rushing wind wailed a weird song; and we bolted down.... If a shell passed I did not hear it. Gaining in violence, the wind shrieked through the slowly spinning blades, shrieked as though the very air had gone mad; and just when you had begun to doubt that it was beyond human skill to bring an aeroplane to earth through the night like th

from the fuselage, I loo

telephone," a

battery,"

Lille, I heard a Ger