In the midst of these conditions the fighting airman shoots, dodges, pursues, and dives, intent only on one thing, the destruction of his enemy, while the observer photographs, marks his map with every gun-emplacement, railway station, dump of food or ammunition, unconcerned by the flying shells or the strange dives and swoops of the machine.

But apart from active fighting, take such a common experience as what is called “a long reconnaissance.”  Pilot and observer receive their orders to reconnoitre “thoroughly” a certain area.  It may be winter, and the cold at the height of many thousand feet may be formidable indeed.  No matter.  The thing is done, and, after hours in the freezing air, the machine makes for home; through a winter evening, perhaps, as we saw the two splendid biplanes, near the northern section of the line, sailing far above our heads into the sunset, that first day of our journey.  The reconnaissance is over, and here is the first-hand testimony of one who has taken part in many, as to what it means in endurance and fatigue: 

“Both pilot and observer are stiff with the cold.  In winter it is often necessary to help them out of the machine and attend to the chilled parts of the body to avoid frost-bite.  Their faces are drawn with the continual strain.  They are deaf from the roar of the engine.  Their eyes are bloodshot, and their whole bodies are racked with every imaginable ache.  For the next few hours they are good for nothing but rest, though sleep is generally hard to get.  But before turning in the observer must make his report and hand it in to the proper quarter.”

So much for the nights which are rather for observation than fighting, though fighting constantly attends them.  But the set battles in the air, squadron with squadron, man with man, the bombers in the centre, the fighting machines surrounding and protecting them, are becoming more wonderful, more daring, more complicated every month.  “You’ll see”—­I recall once more the words of our Flight-Commander, spoken amid the noise and movement of a score of practising machines, five weeks before the battle of Arras—­“when the great move begins we shall get the mastery again, as we did on the Somme.”

Ask the gunners in the batteries of the April advance, as they work below the signalling planes; ask the infantry whom the gunners so marvellously protect, as to the truth of the prophecy!

“Our casualties are really light,” writes an officer in reference to some of the hot fighting of the past month.  Thanks, apparently, to the ever-growing precision of our artillery methods; which again depend on aeroplane and balloon information.  So it is that the flying forms in the upper air become for the soldier below so many symbols of help and protection.  He is restless when they are not there.  And let us remember that aeroplanes were first used for artillery observation, not three years ago, in the battle of Aisne, after the victory of the Marne.