Affairs were looking bad for them, even when "Pan" ran out and west
with no enemy ahead but with four of them clinging to her flanks and
tail and pumping quick bursts at her; but just here came in those two
Flights of our fighting scout Squadrons--quite accidentally so far as
they knew, actually of set design and as part of the ordered scheme.
Six streaking shapes came flashing down into the fight with their
machine-guns pouring long bursts of fire ahead of them, and the four
close-pursuing Huns left the "Pan" and turned to join up with their
scattered companions. Washie left them to fight it out, and turned
directly, and very thankfully, for his 'drome.
This ends the tale of "Pan," but not by any means of the result of her
work. That work, in the shape of jerky but significant reports, was
being dissected in the map-hung Nissen hut even before Pip had reached
the Casualty Clearing Station; and "Pan's" work (confirming those
suspicious photographs) again bred other work, more urgent telephone
talks, and Immediate orders. The stir spread, circle by circle, during
the night, and before daybreak the orders had borne their fruit, and
Flights--Artillery-Observing, reconnoitring and fighting-scout--were
lined up on their grounds waiting the moment to go; the Night Bombers
were circling in from their second and third trips of destruction on
lines of communication, railways and roads, junctions and bridges,
enemy troops and transport in rest or on the march, ammunition dumps
and stores; in the front lines the infantry were "standing to" with
everything ready and prepared to meet an attack; the support lines were
filling with reinforcements, which again were being strengthened by
battalions tramping up the roads from the rear; in the gun lines the
lean hungry muzzles of the long-range guns were poking and peering up
and out from pit and emplacement, and the squat howitzers were lifting
or lowering to carefully worked out angles.
Before daybreak was more than a mere doubtful smudge of lighter colour
in the east, the waiting Flights were up and away to their appointed
beats, and the first guns began to drop their shells, shooting "by the
map" (maps made or corrected from air photographs), or on previously
"registered" lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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