"Green Balls" : The Adventures of a Night-BomberBewsher, Paul
History
"Green Balls" : The Adventures of a Night-Bomber
Bewsher, Paul
World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations
Suddenly the scene becomes even more fantastic, for in one place on the
clouds appears a spot of vivid green. The spot of light spreads and
spreads until it is a circle of emerald light, a mile or more in
diameter, and from the extreme centre appears a ball of brilliantly
green fire which pops out of it quickly, to be followed by another and
another, until the whole chain of beads have freed themselves from the
entanglements of the vapour and rush gaily upwards high over our heads,
to end their brief career in a lovely splendour above the milk-white
billows of the cloudy sea.
Another point of cloud glows green, there is another swiftly expanding
circle of colour, and another string of these quaint gems float upwards
in a swaying curve. The sight is one of such exquisite loveliness that
it is difficult to describe it. It is all so beautiful--the
star-scattered vault of night, gold flowers in a robe of deepest blue:
the soft white wonder of the rolling clouds, mile upon mile, as far as
you can see, moonlit and magic, a playground for the gambolling figures
of light which, like a host of Tinker Bells, rush deliriously from side
to side, climb up hills and slide down valleys, and jump excitedly from
peak to peak: the expanding flowers of emerald light from whose heart
rise the bizarre bubbles of scintillating brilliance, to live through a
few glorious seconds of ecstatic motion before they die in the immensity
of the night.
It is a scene of a strange and ever-altering beauty, and one that very
few eyes have seen. It is a world beyond the borders of the unreal.
Forgotten is the material country of fields and forests far below--as
forgotten as it is unseen. To a paradise of vague moon-kissed cloud we
have drifted, and float, dreaming, between the stars of heaven and the
purgatory beneath.
Then for a moment a great rift in the barrier appears beneath us. Across
the dark space with its edges of ragged white lie two hard beams of
light. Then we see, far below, a chain of green balls rush up from the
darkness, and as they appear they light up a great circle of the earth,
and slowly there appears nearly the whole of Ostend lit up by a ghostly
greenish light. I see the shining sea, the line of the shore broken by
the groins, and the huddled roofs of the houses. For a moment the scene
is clear and distinct, then with the upward course of the balls of light
it dies away, and the two searchlights throw blinding bands across a
pool of obscurity.
What we have seen, however, is a sufficient guide. We know we are above
the coast. The machine swings to the left, and above the rippling
spots of light we roar on westwards. Soon we leave this fantastic
dancing floor behind us, and, seeing through the misty curtains a watery
glow of white light blossom out into a hazy gleam and fade away, we know
that we are somewhere near the lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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