Zeppelins have not maintained their reputation in this war.  One sailed over Sir John French’s headquarters and indicated the position to the enemy, but they are no match for the swift and agile aeroplanes.  A wounded dispatch carrier saw one English and two French machines attack a Zeppelin and bring it down instantly.  A half hour’s fight with another is recorded; among the captured passengers in this, according to a soldier’s letter, was a boy of nine.  Private Drury, Coldstream Guards, saw one huge German aeroplane brought to earth, three of its officers being killed by rifle fire and one badly injured.

There is something strange, mysterious, and insubstantial about the war in the air that the soldiers do not yet feel or comprehend.  Often the feverish activity of aircraft at a high altitude is known only to a very few practised observers.  A gentle purring in the air and the scarcely audible ping-pong of distant revolver shots may represent a fierce duel in the clouds, and often the soldiers are unaware of the presence of a hostile airman until the projectiles aimed at them burst in the trenches.  One evening, a graphic official message states, the atmosphere was so still and clear that only those specially on the lookout detected the enemy’s aeroplanes, and when the bombs burst “the puffs of smoke from the detonating shell hung in the air for minutes on end like balls of fleecy cottonwool before they slowly expanded and were dissipated.”

Of course, the tactics adopted for dealing with hostile aircraft are to attack them instantly with one or more British machines, and as in this respect the British Flying Corps has established an individual ascendency, Sir John French proudly declares that “something in the direction of the mastery of the air has already been gained.”

XIII

TOMMY AND HIS RATIONS

A medical officer at the front declares that the British Expeditionary Force is, without doubt, the “best fed Army that has ever taken the field.”  That is a sweeping statement, but it is true.  It is confirmed over and over again in the letters of Tommy Atkins.  It is acknowledged by the French.  Even the most sullen German prisoners agree with it.  There has been universal praise for the quality and abundance of the food, and the general arrangements for the comfort of the British soldier.

One French description of the feeding says that the English troops “live like fighting cocks,” another marvels at “the stupendous pieces of meat, and bread heavy with butter and jam,” a third speaks of the “amazing Tommees” who “carry everything in their pockets and forget nothing at all.”  And so on.