Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVIII TWO MIRACLES It is not every man who can say that, in one day, he was the victim of one miracle, and had his life saved by another. I can, truthfully; but the combination put a sudden end to my flying -- temporarily, at least. This happened on the twenty-first day of March, just about four months after I had started my real work. The day dawned gloriously, giving no premonition that it had anything out of the ordinary in store for me, and I completed an uneventful morning patrol and was up in the air again about four in the afternoon. Over the American trenches and No-Man's-Land I flew with no particular object in view, other than to keep a sharp lookout for Boche machines. None were in sight, which was not at all unusual, for at this time we had a fair control of the air in our sector and they seldom bothered us, unless there was some special reason for so doing. In fact everything was quiet, above and below, and the earth seemed wrapped in Springtime somnambulance. Back and forth I flew at an altitude of fifty-three hundred meters, guiding my plane by instinct as you might a bicycle, and thinking of almost everything but war, and personal danger. There was no enemy in the air to attract my attention, and I had long since ceased to worry about the "Archies." These anti-aircraft guns were a standing joke with us, as I have said. As a method of keeping airplanes at a respectable distance from earth by means of a barrage of bursting shrapnel they are of some value; but an actual hit by them is nothing short of a miracle, which is hardly strange when one considers the diminutive size and the tremendous speed of the airy target at which they have to fire. Then, with the utmost unexpectedness, occurred the first miracle. Out of...
