During all this the bullets were coming like hail stones, penetrating 
the cockpit of my machine, but none hitting me. I saw that my only chance for escape with engine gone was to spin. I spun down 2,000 feet, came out, and my machine was hit again. I hear the ping ping as the bullets pass over my head. I immediately put my machine into another spin, coming out after another 3,000 ft to find one of the enemy machines still following me. They were making certain, whether lame duck or not, I was not going to have a chance of escaping them. I could see the double tail-plane of my pursuer (since then I heard these machines were called Hanovarian. I must say they were quite fast for a two-seater).
By this tim
e my one pursuer opened up on me again. It was Providence alone that saved my life, for never before had I realised what a rain of bullets was. I was dizzy from spinning and sick with fumes of petrol, but once again I put my machine into a spin, coming out only in time to land. Strange to say with the exception of making a mess of some German wireless wires and telegraph wires I made one of the best landings since I began flying. I had barely reached the ground when my machine was surrounded by soldiers, the majority had their rifles and I expected them at any moment to open fire. They closed in on me before I could alight from my machine, so my chance of burning it was nil: besides, in my spin I had lost my lighter in the bottom of the cockpit. It takes some time to describe all this, but it all happened in a twinkling of the eye. Even when I climbed out of my machine I was still soaking in petrol. It was fortunate for me the machine did not light or I would have been burned in a second.
An under-officer and two soldiers marched me away from my machine and over into a little stone house used as an orderly room. I found out that I came down by a little village called Estevelles, about six miles East of Lens. If the enemy had not given chase to me after doing in my engine, I could, with luck, have got back over the lines. I have often thought of that and regretted it could not have been so. I was kept in this little orderly room from about noon until 3:30 pm. I was driven in some kind of a shaky cart a distance of about three or four miles. On the way there I passed within sight of my machine in the exact place I had landed. It made me sad to see it and to know that never again during the war could I realise the excitement I daily had in it.
From the second place I was taken by a sentry with revolver a distance of about five miles, which I had to walk in my flying boots. The latter were very comfortable for their specified work, but walking along uneven roads they were very hard on my feet.
