The smoking brass shell-case is out of Archibald’s steel throat, and another shell-case with its charge slipped into place and started on its way before the first puff breaks.  The aviator knows what is coming.  He knows that one means many, once he is in range.

Archibald rushes the fighting; it is the business of the Taube to side-step.  The aviator cannot hit back except through his allies, the German batteries, on the earth.  They would take care of Archibald if they knew where he was.  But all that the aviator can see is mottled landscape.  From his side Archibald flies no goal flags.  He is one of ten thousand tiny objects under the aviator’s eye.

Archibald’s propensities are entirely peripatetic.  He is the vagabond of the army lines.  Locate him and he is gone.  His home is where night finds him and the day’s duties take him.  He is the only gun that keeps regular hours like a Christian gentleman.  All the others, great and small, raucous-voiced and shrill-voiced, fire at any hour, night or day.  Aeroplanes rarely go up at night; and when no aeroplanes are up, Archibald has no interest in the war.  But he is alert at the first flush of dawn, on the look-out for game with the avidity of a pointer dog; for aviators are also up early.

Why he was named Archibald nobody knows.  As his full name is Archibald the Archer, possibly it comes from some association with the idea of archery.  If there were ten thousand anti-aircraft guns in the British army, every one would be known as Archibald.

When the British Expeditionary Force went to France it had none.  All the British could do was to bang away at Taubes with thousands of rounds of rifle-bullets, which might fall in their own lines, and with the field guns.

It was pie in those days for the Taubes!  Easy to keep out of the range of both rifles and guns and observe well!  If the Germans did not know the progress of the British retreat from on high it was their own fault.  Now, the business of firing at Taubes is left entirely to Archibald.  When you see how hard it is for Archibald, after all his practice, to get a Taube, you understand how foolish it was for the field guns to try to get one.

Archibald, who is quite the “swaggerist” of the gun tribe, has his own private car built especially for him.  Such of the cavalry’s former part as the planes do not play he plays.  He keeps off the enemy’s scouts.  Do you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in this theatre of France, where all the old glamour of war is supposed to be lacking?  You will find it in the attendants of Archibald.  They have pride, elan, alertness, pepper, and all the other appetizers and condiments.  They are as neat as a private yacht’s crew, and as lively as an infield of a major league team.  The Archibaldians are naturally bound to think rather well of themselves.

Watch them there, every man knowing his part, as they send their shells after the Taube!  There is not enough waste motion among the lot to tip over the range-finder, or the telescopes, or the score board, or any of the other paraphernalia assisting the man who is looking through the sight in knowing where to aim next, as a screw answers softly to his touch.