Winged warfare : hunting the Huns in the air . filthy litter,was this morning quite clean and white. Suddenly over the top of our parapets athin line of infantry crawled up and com-menced to stroll casually toward the me it seemed that they must soon wakeup and run ; that they were altogether tooslow ; that they could not realize the greatdanger they were in. Here and there a shellwould burst as the line advanced or haltedfor a moment. Three or four men near theburst would topple over hke so many tinsoldiers. Two or three other men wouldthen come running up to the spot from therear wi
Winged warfare : hunting the Huns in the air . filthy litter,was this morning quite clean and white. Suddenly over the top of our parapets athin line of infantry crawled up and com-menced to stroll casually toward the me it seemed that they must soon wakeup and run ; that they were altogether tooslow ; that they could not realize the greatdanger they were in. Here and there a shellwould burst as the line advanced or haltedfor a moment. Three or four men near theburst would topple over hke so many tinsoldiers. Two or three other men wouldthen come running up to the spot from therear with a stretcher, pick up the woundedand the dying, and slowly walk back withthem. I could not get the idea out of myhead that it was just a game they wereplaying at; it all seemed so unreal. Norcould I beheve that the little brown figuresmoving about below me were really men—men going to the glory of victory or theglory of death. I could not make myselfrealize the full truth or meaning of it seemed that I was in an entirely different. WINGED WARFARE 97 world, looking down from another sphere onthis strange, uncanny puppet-show. Suddenly I heard the deadly rattle of anest of machine guns under me, and sawthat the line of our troops at one place wasgrowing very thin, with many figures sprawl-ing on the ground. For three or fourminutes I could not make out the concealedposition of the German gunners. Our menhad halted, and were lying on the ground,evidently as much puzzled as I was. Thenin a corner of a German trench I saw agroup of about five men operating twomachine-guns. They were slightly to theflank of our line, and evidently had beendoing a great amount of damage. Thesight of these men thoroughly woke me upto the reality of the whole scene beneath dived vertically at them with a burst ofrapid fire. The smoking bullets from mygun flashed into the ground, and it was aneasy matter to get an accurate aim on theGerman automatics, one of which turned itsmuzzle toward
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookpublisherlondon, booksubjectworldwar1914191
