It is always with a sinking feeling that you watch one of your own machines brought down. You can't be entirely without pity even for the enemy under the same conditions. For when a man dies in a charge, or even when he is mortally hit by a sniper's bullet or by a shell, he is either killed instantly, or he is brought back on a stretcher with hopes of recovery. But when an aviator is ten thousand feet in the air, carrying on a duel with a foe, it is often only his machine that is disabled, and while it noses down the long ten thousand feet, though it is only a matter of moments, he has time to realize that death is about to conquer him, and not in a pleasant manner. Just before our unfortunate machine in this fight crashed into the earth one of the occupants fell or jumped from it. The other remained in his seat, facing his quickly-coming death with the same courage that made him take the chance. The tail of the machine, being the lighter, came down more slowly and struck the earth not far behind the body to which it had been attached. In the meantime the German soared triumphantly above, but now he circled down, sailing close to the earth over his fallen opponents, apparently to see the result of his work. Then he soared aloft again, as all about him are fleecy white clouds or puffs of smoke from the explosions of shells from our anti-aircraft guns in the neighborhood. They burst everywhere except in his quickly-changing path, and he sailed back over his own lines in safety. Stretcher bearers hurried forward from a nearby field ambulance dressing station to find that the man who had fallen from the machine was still alive, though probably fatally injured. He was hurried off to receive attention. The other was beneath the machine and beyond human aid. As the smashed machine was in plain view of the Germans it might at any moment become the target of their artillery, and the stretcher bearers here, as in all their work, showed an absolute disregard of personal danger. All honor to them! One-half hour later, being nearby with my corporal, we crossed over to the ruined aeroplane. Already the Royal Flying Corps had a guard on it to save it from souvenir hunters, and we were warned away, but were later allowed to go around it, and had a good view at close hand of its tangled mass of wires, machinery, and armament. There, with his youthful face looking up toward his Maker, lay the other occupant of the plane. Shortly his loved ones at home would receive the sad intelligence of the untimely, but honorable and courageous, death of this boy who gave up the life he was to live, the sons he was to father--"his immortality," to use the words of Rupert Brook--in order to do his share in holding aloft the lamp of liberty and freedom.