[Illustration:  One night I had the privilege of seeing a plane caught by the search-light.]

But perhaps the most thrilling sight of all is that dark night when one sees for the first time the star-shells along the horizon.  At first you may see them ten miles away making luminous the earth.  Then as you drive nearer and nearer, that far-off heat-lightning effect disappears and you can actually see the curve of the star-shells as they mount toward the skies over No Man’s Land and fall again as gracefully as a fountain of water.  Sometimes you will see them for miles along the front, making night day and lighting up the fields and surrounding hills as though for a great celebration.

BURSTING BOMBS

The light of bursting shells as they fall, or of bursting bombs from an aeroplane, is a short, sharp, quick light like an electric flash when a wire falls or a flash of sharp lightning, but the light of the great guns along the line as they thunder their missiles of death can be seen for miles when a bombardment is on.  One forgets the thunder of these belching monsters, and one forgets the death they carry, in the glory of the flame of noonday light that they make in the night.

Then there are the range-finders.  These suddenly shoot up in the night, steady and clear, and remain for several minutes burning brightly before they go out.  I used to see these frequently driving home from the front.  They were sent up from the hangars to guide the French and American planes to a safe landing by night.

Then there is the moonlight.  Moonlight nights in towns along the war front are dreaded, for it invariably means a Boche raid.  Clear moonlight nights with a full moon are fine for lovers in a country that is at peace, but it may mean death for lovers in a country that is at war.  But moonlight nights are beautiful even in war countries, with dim old cathedrals looming in the background, and the white villages of France, a huge chateau here and there against the hillside or crowning its summit; and the white roads and white fields of France swinging by.  One forgets there is war then, until he hears the unmistakable beat of the Hun plane overhead and sees the flash of one, two, three, four, five, six, ten, twelve, fifteen bombs break in a single field a few hundred yards away, and the driver remarks:  “I knew we’d have a raid tonight.  It’s a great night for the Boche!”

STARLIGHT AT FRONT

Then there is the starlight on No Man’s Land, for the starlight is a part of the lights o’ war just as are the moonlight and the star-shells and the little flash-lights and the range-finders and the bursting shells and bombs.  But there are other more significant lights o’ war.