_Thursday, April 4._--It has been raining hard these two nights past and
this morning. For the German gunners trying to drag up field artillery
or long-range guns there is now sticky bog and slime to come through. It
is hard work for the German field companies, pressed furiously, to lay
narrow-gauge lines over these deserts. All that spells delay in their
plans and loss of life.
There is terror for the enemy over these fields in daylight and
darkness, for the British flying men have gone out in squadrons to
scatter death and destruction among them. This work has reached
fantastic heights of horror for the German troops under the menace of
it. There have been times when, I believe, the British have had as many
as 300 airplanes up at one time. One squadron alone on one night dropped
six tons of bombs over enemy concentrations, and each man went out six
times. Another squadron went out four times in one night, and was
bombing for eleven hours.
When the enemy was advancing in masses the British flying men flew as
low as 100 feet, dropping bombs among them and firing into them with
machine guns. They attacked German patrols of cavalry and scattered them
and machine-gunned trenches full of men, batteries in action and
transport crowding down narrow roads. They fought German scouts and
crushed them, and there are several cases in which they fought German
airplanes at night, so that it was like a fight between vampire bats up
there where the clouds were touched by moonlight.