AN ADVENTURE IN THE AIR.

Bush Advocate, Volume XVII, Issue 67, 20 March 1905, Page 6

AN ADVENTURE IN THE AIR.

« . (By Antoine Francois.) lam not a German. Because I speak German, that does not make German my heart. It is all French. We Alsatians are more French than the French themselves, because from France we long had brotherhood, equality, and freedom. In the great war I was in the French Army. . Did I t " fight many battles? No, I did not fight at all. But for all that I ■was in six battles under fire, and sometimes in worse danger than the men who fought. You think that was strange? You think we could reconnoitre in those ships of the air without danger? But if you saw how fast the Germans shelled us when we stopped in the air ! Stopped! How? Why, stopped at the end of the rope. You don't suppose war balloons go free, do you ? If you could see how the Germans fired at them, and how they brought long-range guns to bear on the ground where the end of the balloon rope was, then you should know whether

there was danger for us. Ido not speak of the officers that went up in our ballooiiß to view the enemy's Hues. Anyone can understand the risks they ran, when, tho rifle-balls and shells were screaming to pierce the balloon and bring its car tumbling down. No, I speak more of the risks we privates had from the German fire on our standing ground. Could they see us? No, but they could sec the balloon. They're not fools, the Germans. When they could see the balloon, they could quickly calculate about - where its rope touched the ground. Oh, that terrible German artillery. Skrei-i-i-i ! I think I hear the shells shrieking again. Often we had to stay in one place an hour, two, three hours, losing more by death and wounds than the same number of soldiers on outpost duty. Btit the most terrible of all was what happened to me in the end. It was in the latter part of August, ten days after Marshal Bazaine had cooped us up in the fortifications of Metz. The order came from my squad to go out far, far towards the German lines, send up our balloon, and get a look at what the enemy were doing.

.Our army still held plenty of land — oh, a groat wide country beyond the inner forts. In the field where we stopped there had been heavy fighting that morning. First our soldiers had been driven in a mile; then they had come back and recovered the ground. Recovered — yes and covered it, I might well say. The field was thickly dotted with their corpses. It was strewn with dead and wounded horseß, rifles, knapsacks, broken gun-carriagee — all the ruin of war. I could hear a dropping fire of musketry between the outposts, perhaps half a mile away in front of us. Still, th.4 field where we inflated our balloon was not much disturbed, except by live men burying dead ones, by wounded horses shrieking, and tometimes by the march of our infantry into a narrow belt of woods that hid us and -our balloon from the enemy. There was a steady breeze blowing from us to the front. The sun was hot and the sky blue. : I remember well how clear the sound of bells chiming in Metz behind us came across the acres and acres all strewn with the wounded and dead. . For ten minutes after we had sent up the balloon there was no firing at it. There it floated, a thousand feet high. It was pressed towards the German lines by the breeze,- which seemed stronger above. The balloon, was not straight over our heads, you understand; the breeze took it, maybe, a hundred and fifty feet nearer the German lines than where we stood. , I stood near the cylinder, or drum, from which we had let out nearly all the rope that held the balloon from rising and blowing away. This rope slanted towards the Germans as it • went up. I heftl the end- of it, Jay hands above my head grasping it, wten suddenly the German artillery opened fire. They had not calculated the balloon's position perfectly, but they got ours well. First five shells flew at the balloon. These were timed to burst, as they did, almost together. But none of their fragments hit the balloon; they had burst below it. > "While I was watching these explosions, a far bigger shell came curving over the wood, as if from a mortar. It struck the windlass drum on. which the rope was wound, burst at the same moment, and seemed to kill or wound every member of the squad except me. Though I was not hit,* I : was halfistunned by the concussion, and I should l&ve been thrown down if I hadn't-held on by the rope. I didn't know \ I .was holding it. I was too dazed to know what had happened or what I was doing. I knew I was alive, and that was about all. And I clung to the rope as if it was to save me from drowning. When my full senses came back, I felt: that my feet were off the ground. I glanced down. The earth was la fiunHred feet below me. Next moment it seemed nearer, and I saw why. The balloon, carried swiftly by the wind, had already lifted me over the wood. It was drifting rapidly towards the German camp. I thought of dropping down among the tree-tops, but while I was trying to make up my mind the balloon was rising. I was two hundred feet from tL« ground. This all happened in no time, I might say. Lifting my eyes to the balloon, I caught a glimpse of it still as far in advance of me as it had been when I stood near the tvi»dl«ss. • You might think my body would swing forward to a place straight under the balloon. No; the balloon was travelling ahead and drawing me up and along at exactly its rate of speed. "Perhaps you don't .know how easily a balloon goes up and on. No jerks; a j steady, quiet flight. No resistance of the air to your movement forward, for, as you see, the air goes with you ; it pushes you at exactly the speed it keeps. I remember wondering at the ease of the motion that bore me so swiftly away, and carried me higher and higher. My arms were not jerked; it was as easy to hang on to the rope as if it had been in a barn.