It was not a good day.  In fact, too dud for good observation.  But the relief map must be ready quickly.

Imagine us, please, robed in leather coats and leather helmets and gauntlets, and with goggles, waiting at the entrance of a hangar while the mechanics bring out the gadfly.  They have already looked the creature over with great care.  The pale yellow wings glitter against the violet horizon.  The sun is shining, but it’s freezing hard.  Eric climbs in, and then I do.  I sit behind with the machine gun.

I clasp a sketchbook, to sketch the lie of the land.  O my aunt in Jericho! isn’t it Arctic!  Fingers that feel like ammoniated quinine.  You know, a faint unpleasant tingle.

They are starting the engines.  Difficult this cold weather.  The following strange colloquy ensues: 

Mechanic: “Contact.” Pilot: “Contact.” M. “Switch off.” P. “Switch off.” M. “Contact.” P. “Contact.” M. “Switch off.” P. “Suck in.” M. “Contact.” P. “Contact.”

And with a terrific whir the propeller flashes round.  The sound increases, and then decreases slightly, and increases again.  The gadfly moves.  Moves more rapidly.  Skims along the ground.  Rises, rises, rises.  Ah, the beautiful river!  Every time I have flown the beauty of that river catches me in the throat.  But this featureless waste.  Bereft of everything but earth, and a few low shelters and gun-pits, and seamed with trenches.  Hideously lonely.

Well, anyhow, here we are sailing high above it all, the wind occasionally lifting one of the wings, and then the other, like a sea-gull’s.  There is a haze, and it’s not easy to see.  You peer over the edge, and behold at last the desired wood.

[Sidenote:  A SCRAP IN THE AIR]

A wood?  That?  Good heavens!  That poor miserable mess of splinters and gashed soil?  Each time I see one of the woods destroyed by this war I thank God that our glorious Cotswold woods are still untouched.  Primroses, wood-anemones, squirrels.  To think of squirrels!...  Not another aeroplane in sight.  Neither our own nor Hun machines.  Eric circles smoothly round above the wood, and then crosses back over no-man’s-land to fly low, so that I can see the wood obliquely.  Archie quite wide of his mark.  This doubling and circling perplexes him.  The sketch progresses.  I look round from time to time to see that there are still no Huns about.  Eric also looks about.  No:  nothing in sight.  The guns are pooping off, but the noise of the engines makes the guns sound like tiny little “pops.”  There, now I’ve nearly done.  Lucky I came, because the wood isn’t quite what we thought.  Yes, that’ll do....  We are up at a considerable height....

Suddenly Rat-tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat! above our heads.  Three Hun aeroplanes right on top of us; Eric drives headlong in a spiral curve at full speed, smoke trailing out behind.  The gun!  I fumble.  Can’t get round to it.  Damn!