Perhaps
the most interesting thing I saw in connection with the air work was
the hospital for damaged machines and the dump to which those hopelessly
injured are taken, in order that they may be disarticulated and all that
is sound in them used for reconstruction. How excellently this work
is being done may be judged from the fact that our offensive in July
started with a certain number of aeroplanes, a number that would
have seemed fantastic in a story a year before the war began. These
aeroplanes were in constant action; they fought, they were shot down,
they had their share of accidents. Not only did the repair department
make good every loss, but after three weeks of the offensive the army
was fighting with fifty more machines than at the outset. One goes
through a vast Rembrandtesque shed opening upon a great sunny field, in
whose cool shadows rest a number of interesting patients; captured and
slightly damaged German machines, machines of our own with scars of
battle upon them, one or two cases of bad landing. The star case came
over from Peronne. It had come in two days ago.
I examined this machine and I will tell the state it was in, but I
perceive that what I have to tell will read not like a sober statement
of truth but like strained and silly lying. The machine had had a direct
hit from an Archibald shell.
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