They are the lights, the lights of war. Sometimes they are just the
stars shining out that makes the wounded soldier out in No Man's Land
look up, in spite of shell-fire and thunder, in spite of wounds and
death, in spite of loneliness and heartache, in spite of mud and rain,
to exclaim, as Donald Hankey tells us in a most wonderful chapter of "A
Student in Arms": "God! God everywhere, and underneath are the
everlasting arms!"
Sometimes the Sky Silhouettes number among their own just a moonlight
night with a crescent moon sailing quietly and serenely over the
horizon in the east, while great guns belch fire in the west, a fire
that seems to shame the timid moon itself.
Sometimes they are search-lights cleaving the sky over a great city
like Paris, or along the front lines, or gleaming from an air-ship.
Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing out of the darkness from a
patrolling plane overhead, or a blazing trail of fire as a patrol falls
to its death in a battle by night.
Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing from an observation balloon
anchored in the darkness over the trenches to guard the troops from
dangers in the air.
Sometimes they are the flashes, the fleet, swallow-like flashes, of an
enemy plane caught in the burning, blazing path of a search-light, and
then hounded by it to its death.
Sometimes they are signals flashed from the top of a cruiser on the
high seas across the storm-tossed waters to a little destroyer, which
flashes back its answer, and then in turn flashes a message of light to
one of the convoying planes overhead in the dim dusk of early evening.
Sometimes these Sky Silhouettes are the range-finders that poise in the
air for a few seconds, guiding the air patrols home, and sometimes they
are just the varied, interesting, gleaming, flashing "Lights of War."