AVIATORS.

Taihape Daily Times, 11 June 1918, Page 6

AVIATORS.

SALVATION FROM THE AIR. THE CHARGE OF THE FLIGHT * BRIGADE. There is a town in France where a band plays .of an afternoon and women clad in furs land velvets stroll around listening to its strains and sunning themselves. A town, small as towns go, whose outskirts are in ruins daily becoming more ruinous. Atattached thereto is a giant aerodrome. An aeroplane flying low, as if to listen to the music, appears for a minute over the -square, disappears, and glides down to earth in front of the hangars a mile beyond. Two men clad in ochre-leather jerkins jump out and" Tun across the turf to a table covered irith maps, at which sits an officer sharpening his pencil, waiting for them to arrive. The distant tunes are in his head, and he finds himself muttering the words, although his mind is really centred on the incoming news. "You received my messages, sir?" "Yes, Anything ""fresh?'' ■* "They're massed here," pointing his Pencil to on© spot on the map, "and here, too, They're sure to attack again to-nigfit or to-morrow — (. may be before. I've never seen such lumps of Boehe in my life before. The 'tillery fire's fearful. Our people are falling back.'' .•" "Rightoh!" comes from the seated one as he takes up a telephone and speaks. Half an hour later some twenty miles away duo east tho self-same aeroplane is droning away, a mere speck Sn the sky amid a cluster of other specks, framed around with tufts of ■wool, which are black for one second as they burst, change t<? white, and then melt in the sea of blue. Below them, overwhelmed by sheer weight of human bodies, th(? army is retiring, fighting for its life—a gap has occurred. The enemy are alive to the fact.

Above, with the suddenness of an inspiration, one speck falls, followed ly the others—falls like a stone, •checks its fight, and then empties its load into the masses below, flies lower Still, skimming- the tops of trees which line a road packed to overflowing with German reinforcements. Each atom of air is charged with the whirr of propellers, the throb of Toaring engines drowning the monotonous chant of the machine guns as men flee to right and left, fighting with each other for places beside the tree trunks, rushing in groups and singly away from that trap of death—the road. Aeroplanes rushing down from heaven, seemingly in hundreds, follow them ixp, and then depart as suddenly. The Toad is a mass of struggling humans, and horseflesh, dead, dying, and wounded, without semblance or order. The planes soar upwards with sheer light-heartedness, to swoop down again ■where the air is full of flying steel, whistling shrapnel, and the white-hot flashes of howitzer and gun, which cease their noise as the planes begin their stittering fire. "Half an hour later, some twenty miles away due west, as the sun is setting in a sea of rising mist, plane follows plane home to roost. The table is still set out with maps, and by it sits that quiet officer, who smiles with satisfaction as he joins up with ink a certain crooked line on his map which was broken in its middle. Trom the windows of a house close by the potted music of the Alhambra, Leicester Square, ,W., pours forth, its volume increased by the clear voices of many youths who helped to mend that break, that gap, in the line barely an hour ago.