Possibly the sun hid us to much advantage, or they were not thoroughly awake at that early hour, for they seemed to have no idea of our proximity. Their machines were painted the most vivid colours - bright red with black lines down the fuselage, green with blue markings, while some were a blotch of colour on the camouflage principle. The moment arrived and, each choosing a machine to dive at, away we went, glueing our eyes to the Aldis sights and keeping our fingers on the triggers. My adversary
seemed to rush towards me and rapidly his head became larger in the centre ring of my sight - I was tempted to fire, but held on until I thought I should crash into him, then pressing the triggers for a few seconds only I was forced to pull over on to my back to avoid hitting him. Very few rounds of ammunition are necessary when fired at point blank range, for the rate of fire from two synchronised guns firing through our propellers was 2,000 rounds per minute. Once more on an even keel I surveyed what had, a few minutes before, been a peaceful German patrol and I saw one going down in flames while another was spinning down, apparently out of control, for the pilot did not right the machine, even when he disappeared against the earth’s surface, thousands of feet below us. The remaining six machines had dived away and were making for home as hard as they could, My own pilots had taken up their position (with the exception of one) and almost as I had finished counting them I saw in the distance a triplane flying east and a good deal lower than we were. I learned afterwards that the compass of this pilot, who was at that time a new arrival in the Squadron, was frozen up and he had not the slightest idea where he was, We put our noses down, did the equivalent of what the Americans call “stepping on the gas,” and flying round in front of the pilot collected him into the formation, much to his joy. Forced as I was to fetch this man, I had lost height and had gone further over the lines than I intended at this point of the patrol; however, I had to make the best of it and altered course for home, as our petrol was getting low. Fortunately, our efforts had cleared the sector and we were unlikely to run into any enemy aircraft at a greater altitude than that at which we were flying. For a short time all went well, when suddenly the “wuff-wuff" of anti-aircraft shells bursting in front of us disturbed our peace of mind, for we were now at a height of only nine thousand feet and a good target. As the bursts were in front of us we altered course to starboard and increased speed at the same time. The next bursts were on our port beam and not far away, so we altered course slightly to port and again increased our speed. The following bursts were well behind and to our right, so we were through with that battery.
By this time we were near the trenches and as we approached - still of course, with the sun behind our backs - I saw an enemy scout machine diving into our trenches and firing at the troops. It was easy to take him in our stride
