In winter it is often
necessary to help them out of the machine and attend to the chilled
parts of the body to avoid frost-bite. Their faces are drawn with the
continual strain. They are deaf from the roar of the engine. Their eyes
are bloodshot, and their whole bodies are racked with every imaginable
ache. For the next few hours they are good for nothing but rest, though
sleep is generally hard to get. But before turning in the observer must
make his report and hand it in to the proper quarter."
So much for the nights which are rather for observation than fighting,
though fighting constantly attends them. But the set battles in the air,
squadron with squadron, man with man, the bombers in the centre, the
fighting machines surrounding and protecting them, are becoming more
wonderful, more daring, more complicated every month. "You'll see"--I
recall once more the words of our Flight-Commander, spoken amid the
noise and movement of a score of practising machines, five weeks before
the battle of Arras--"when the great move begins _we shall get the
mastery again, as we did on the Somme.
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