The raid on Courtrai unfortunately cost the nation a very gallant life, but it will live as one of the most heroic episodes of the war.  The airman started on the enterprise alone in a biplane.  On arrival at Courtrai he glided down to a height of 300 feet and dropped a large bomb on the railway junction.  While he did this he was the target of hundreds of rifles, of machine guns, and of anti-aircraft armament, and was severely wounded in the thigh.  Though he might have saved his life by at once coming down in the enemy’s lines, he decided to save his machine at all costs, and made for the British lines.  Descending to a height of only 100 feet in order to increase his speed, he continued to fly and was again wounded, this time mortally.  He still flew on, however, and without coming down at the nearest of our aerodromes went all the way back to his own base, where he executed a perfect landing and made his report.  He died in hospital not long afterward.[A]

[Footnote A:  The obituary columns of The Times of April 30 contained the following notice under “Died of Wounds”: 

RHODES-MOORHOUSE.—­On Tuesday, the 27th April, of wounds received while dropping bombs on Courtrai the day before, WILLIAM BARNARD RHODES RHODES-MOORHOUSE, Second Lieutenant, Royal Flying Corps, aged 27, dear elder son of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Moorhouse of Parnham House, Dorset, and most loved husband of Linda Rhodes-Moorhouse.]

The outstanding feature of the action of the past week has been the steadiness of our troops on the extreme left; but of the deeds of individual gallantry and devotion which have been performed it would be impossible to narrate one-hundredth part.  At one place in this quarter a machine gun was stationed in the angle of a trench when the German rush took place.  One man after another of the detachment was shot, but the gun still continued in action, though five bodies lay around it.  When the sixth man took the place of his fallen comrades, of whom one was his brother, the Germans were still pressing on.  He waited until they were only a few yards away, and then poured a stream of bullets on to the advancing ranks, which broke and fell back, leaving rows of dead.  He was then wounded himself.

Under the hot fire to which our batteries were subjected in the early part of the engagement telephone wires were repeatedly cut.  The wire connecting one battery with its observing officer was severed on nine separate occasions, and on each occasion repaired by a Sergeant, who did the work out in the open under a perfect hail of shells.

On May 5 the following account of the British Official Eyewitness, continuing the report of April 30, was published:

About 5 P.M. a dense cloud of suffocating vapors was launched from their trenches along the whole front held by the French right and by our left from the Ypres-Langemarck road to a considerable distance east of St. Julien.  The fumes did not carry much beyond our front trenches.  But these were to a great extent rendered untenable, and a retirement from them was ordered.