Last September we of the fighting and reconnaissance squadrons began to hear interesting yarns from the corps squadrons that specialised in contact patrols. An observer saved two battalions from extinction by calling up reinforcements in the nick of time. When two tanks slithered around the ruins of Courcelette two hours before the razed village was stormed, the men in the trenches would have known nothing of this unexpected advance-guard but for a contact machine. The pilot and observer of another bus saw two tanks converging eastward at either end of a troublesome Boche trench. A German officer, peering round a corner, drew back quickly when he found one of the new steel beasts advancing. He hurried to an observation post round a bend in the lines. Arrived there, he got the shock of his life when he found a second metal monster waddling towards him. Alarmed and unnerved, he probably ordered a retirement, for the trench was evacuated immediately. The observer in a watching aeroplane then delivered a much-condensed synopsis of the comedy to battalion headquarters, and the trench was peacefully occupied. Inevitably the nearness of the enemy to machines hovering over a given area bred in the airmen concerned a desire to swoop down and panic the Boche. Movement in a hostile trench was irresistible, and many a pilot shot off his engine, glided across the lines, and let his observer spray with bullets the home of the Hun. The introduction of such tactics was not planned beforehand and carried out to order. It was the outcome of a new set of circumstances and almost unconscious enterprise. More than any other aspect of war flying, it is, I believe, this imminence of the unusual that makes the average war pilot swear greatly by his job, while other soldiers temper their good work with grousing. His actions are influenced by the knowledge that somewhere, behind a ridge of clouds, in the nothingness of space, on the patchwork ground, the True Romance has hidden a new experience, which can only be found by the venturer with alert vision, a quick brain, and a fine instinct for opportunity. The free-lance ground stunt, then, had its origin in the initiative of a few pilots who recognised a chance, took it, and thus opened yet another branch in the huge departmental store of aerial tactics. The exploits of these pioneers were sealed with the stamp of official approval, and airmen on contact patrol have since been encouraged to relieve boredom by joyous pounces on Brother Boche.