Produced by Anna Hall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) "GREEN BALLS" "GREEN BALLS" The Adventures of a Night-Bomber BY PAUL BEWSHER William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1919 _TO MY FAITHFUL FRIEND, WHO DURING THE WAR PROTECTED ME FROM THE ENEMY AND A THOUSAND TIMES SAVED MY LIFE, THE NIGHT SKY._ PREFACE. Lest it should appear that in this book I have worked the personal pronoun to death, I wish to explain my reasons for describing always my own feelings, my own experiences, my own thoughts. I feel that the lay public who did not fly in the war, and knew little of its excitements and monotonies, would rather hear of the experiences of one person, related by himself, than merely a journalistic record of events which had come to his notice. Therefore I have tried faithfully to describe the sensations, the strange inexplicable fears, the equally inexplicable fearlessness, of a desk-bound London youth, pitchforked in a moment into the turmoil of war, and into a hitherto unknown, untried occupation--bombing at night from the air. Those who read this book will never see me--I will be to them but a name--so I feel that my egotism is only an apparent one, and that I am justified in slightly transgressing the service tradition of personal silence in order to give as vivid a portrayal as possible of a branch of war which, in England at any rate, influenced the general public more than any other. The fragments of verse quoted at the beginning of each chapter are taken from the author's poems, 'The Bombing of Bruges,' published by Messrs Hodder & Stoughton, and 'The Dawn Patrol,' published by Messrs Erskine Macdonald. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. THE DAWN PATROL 1 II. TO FRANCE 23 III. THE FIRST RAID 48 IV. UP THE COAST 91 V. COASTWISE LIGHTS 109 VI. BRUGES 148 VII. DAWN TO DAWN 187 VIII. THE LONG TRAIL 236 IX. TRAGEDY 260 X. WITH A KITE BALLOON AT THE DARDANELLES 288 "GREEN BALLS." I. THE DAWN PATROL. "Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea, Where, underneath, the restless waters flow, Silver and cold and slow...." --_The Dawn Patrol._ Somebody shakes me by my shoulder, and I wake to the consciousness of a dark room and a determined steward. "Four o'clock, sir!"