…... be man or woman, that he will be able to see things in the air, for I have known many men with first class sight who, when they commenced aerial work, appeared to be quite blind at times; this was chiefly due to the fact that an inexperienced pilot had to give most of his attention to the leader, watching closely for signals; he therefore could not be expected to see as much as one whose eyes were attuned to distance and whose whole attention could be given to finding the enemy, I remember one of my
pilots, seeing me fire at something (he did not see it was an enemy aeroplane, although we were very close to it), fired his guns - presumably in sympathy - hitting the middle plane of my Triplane about twelve inches from my right shoulder. The following incident also illustrates what I have said about “air sight.” I was asked by one of the pilots in the Squadron if I would lead him to a position where he could see a real live enemy; he had done a number of patrols, but had not been in close contact with the enemy, We set out together and after gaining a good height (17,000 feet) I was fortunate enough to see an enemy two-seater coming from our own side of the lines. I say fortunate, because these aircraft were very difficult to engage, being capable of attaining great height and they were fast; in fact, in some instances I have known such machines to have been faster and better climbers than our own Fighting scouts of the time. Experience told me that this machine had been over our lines for the purpose of taking photographs of our supply dumps, ammunition dumps, camps and aerodromes, etc., and it was therefore of paramount importance that the photos should not be developed and their information used against us by the enemy.
Although the enemy machine was about 1,000 feet above us when I first saw it, we managed by a series of dives and climbs, to arrive in a suitable position underneath and, pulling up vertically, I put up a stream of bullets through which the pilot had to fly. Having lost all my speed in the vertical climb I fell over on my back, but while falling I saw the enemy machine make a flat turn (without banking) and nearly hit my pilot. Steeper and steeper dived the stricken enemy, until his port wings came off and he crashed near Loos, where we collected the wreckage later. On arrival at our aerodrome the pilot told me that he saw nothing at all except the machine which nearly hit him; he neither saw it come nor did he know to what end it had dived past him. Incidentally, neither the pilot nor the observer of the German machine could have known what was happening, for the pilot was shot in the head and the observer in the heart.
Now I should like to narrate as clearly as possible the atmosphere in which we worked and I think a description of a dawn patrol would achieve this. On the occasion I am going to describe the job was in the Arras - Lens sector
