The Glory of The Coming

tter fitted for automobiling in closed cars than for bombings we headed away from our billets, travelling in what I shal

ted the hammering staccato of a machine gun tacking down the loose edges of a fight that will nev

re line of one of the small brawling French rivers. The tall poplars in pairs, always in pairs, which edged it were like lean old gossips bending in toward the centre the better to exchange whispered scandal about the neighbours. Mainly the road pierced through fields, with infrequent villages to be passed an

tiny farms, square sometimes, but more often oblong in shape, each plastered against the steep conformation and each so nearly perpendicular that we wondered how anybody

as concerned the place in point more nearly than anything else I call to mind resembled the interior of a Greek-letter society's chapter house set amid somewhat primitive surroundings. In the centre of the low wide common r

, and a piano, which by authority was mute until after dinner; there were sundry guitars and mandolins disposed in corners; there were sofa pillows upon the settees, plainly the handiwork of some fellow's best girl; there were clumsy, schoolboy decorative touches all about; there were glasses and bottles on tables; there were English non-coms, who in their gravity and promptness might have been club servants, bringing in more bottles and fresh glasses; a

and for hosts there were sixty or seventy

ere were present Englishmen, Cornishmen, Welshmen, Scots and Irishmen; also Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, an Afrikander or two, and a dark youngs

ake of a famous Home Ruler, and this one spoke with the soft-cultured brogue of the Dublin collegian. We were introduced to a flyer bred and reared in Japan, who had hurried to the mother isle as soon as he reached the volunteering age-a sh

wenty-three or so will tell you that when a fellow reaches twenty-five he's getting rather a bit too old for the game-good enough for instructing green hands and all that sort of thing, perhaps, but generally past the age when he may be counted upon

he table. But before we had dinner a thing befell which to me was as simply dramatic as anything possibly could be. What was more, it came at a moment made and

ames in the brazier, its tints bringing out here a ruddy young face and there a buckle of brass or a button of bronze but leaving all the rest of the picture in flickering shadows; right on top. of this a servant entered, saluted a

s afternoon. The operation was successfully carried out."

led here and friends to some of them, had gone down in the wreckage of their aircraft, probabl

fer to it. But the glasses came up with a jerk, and at that, as though on a signal from a st

y lan

those six blithe boys-riders in the three machines that failed to return-and to a happy

red without number. And if a story was new we all laughed at it, and if it was old we laughed just the same. Presently a protesting lad was dragooned for service at the piano. The official troubadour, a youth who seemed to be all legs and elbows, likewise detached

going up through him and it makes him sing. He'll stay up there singing like a bloomin' bullfinch till some

untry maiden, and her smyle it was sublyme, but she met among others the village squire, and the rest of it may not be printed in a volume having a family circulation; but anywa

who it seemed was the Young-un more by reason of his size and boyish complexion than by reason of his age, since he was senior to half his outfit-to draw him out with par

u know, and drop our pills and come back. Occasionally a chap doesn't get back. And that's about all there is to tell about it.... Rummiest thing that has happened since I came into the squadron happened the other night. The boche came over to raid us, and when the alarm was given every one popped out of his bed and made for the dugout. All but Big Bill over yonder. Big Bill tumbled out half dressed and more than half asleep. It was a fine moonlight night and the boche was sailing about overhead bombing us like a good one, and Big Bill, who's a size to make a good target, couldn't find the entrance to either of the d

ed at h

in a very good place. We took it over from the French and it stands out in the open instead of being

d perhaps five minutes later when for the second

ng, and the mess president, a l

arning; or it may be that the battery has failed. At any rate I vote' we have in some ca

raight through to midnight, nearly, never minding the story telling and the limerick matching and the laughter and the horse play going on below him, and rarely re

daylight. But ahead of us we had a long ride, without lights, over pitchy-dark roads, so we got into our car and departed. First, though, we must promise to come ba

fore, and on the third day of it, as we learned from other sources, our friends of Night Bombing Squadron Number --, obeying an order, had cli

a steadily mounting list of lost machines and lost airmen. I doubt whether many of those blithesome l

age age twenty-two and a half-grouped at the doorway of their quarters, with the candlelight a