"SEEN TO COLLIDE."

Hokitika Guardian, 19 November 1918, Page 1

"SEEN TO COLLIDE."

(By John Steel.) With his right hand the adjutant drove a weary pen. With his lett he oceasioually flicked away the top sheet from a pile of scribbled reports. He was summarising the pilots’ notes or ilioir lost patrol. Suddenly he siiltened a little in his chair and stopped over the flimsy he had just exposed. . . . “'2/lit. Brown was seen to collide 'with an Albatross over Douai. Both

machines broke up iu tlio nil. A cold shiver rippled down the adjutant’s spine. He sighed. “Good chap, Brown,’'' lie soliloquised; “don’t suppose he lelt anything, either.” . Brown’s machine had brougut up the rear of the formation on that last patrol. A trying station. The last man’s position varies each time any of the “upmteen” planes in front drop a 5 aid or gain H yard on the leader, then, too, it is his special job to guard the tail oi the light; to seeHhat no Huns steal up unseen from behind. That was why Brown spotted what the men in front had missed—a half-crippled British plane, plodding home alone 4,000 ft. below—and, behind it, a roving Ilun head hunter, streaking across unperceived, hungering to destroy. So Broun bloke formation and dived to the rescue. Thought rippled through the grey matter of the Hun’s brain like electricity down a wire. The Hun was out for scalps. He had no mind to tackle a whole flight single-handed. But—‘‘the others can’t get down here for a minute or two. The Englanders often put the greenhorns at the tail of a flight, can’t afford proper battle. But if this boy’s a greenhorn perhaps there’ll just

he time. . . ... So the Hun flew straight on as it lie had not" seen Brown coming. As Brown neared the level of the Albatross the wilv Hun swerved off. Brown flattened out, pulled up again, and hanked round, expecting to find the Hun makig tracks for home, and wondering where his comrade had got to. But as lie came round he saw the Hun whizzing straight at him like a bullet, and onlv 000 yards away. , Said the Hun to himsglt: _“l'ort.y accursed Englanders have 1 crashed. My nerve is as iron. I hold straight on. He flinches at the last minute. As lie swerves, 1 shoot. He is my meat today.” Said 2nd Lieut. Brown to himself: “Hullo! Showing light to-day, eh? I’H ram him and nab him when lie funks at the last minute.” The air was shuddering with noise. Below the serried guns thudded and rumbled. All around the great manmade birds pecked at each other, swirled apart, and rose to peck again. Their machine gunsl stuttered viciously. Their quivering engines spat great gulps of reverberating flame to the four winds. Their tight-strung wires samr a higher penetrating note. Just for one single second the sky was hushed. For miles around there was never a man but heard the sharp “clap ’ .of a collision, which sent two brave men to the place whence dead warriors watch the war.