The opening days of the following month were unfavourable to aerial activity. On the tenth, however, our aeroplanes showed activity and destroyed, by bombing, two enemy battery positions, and damaged many others. They penetrated well behind the enemy front and bombed railway stations, trains, and billets with good effect. There was now much fighting in the air, and in one case two of our machines engaged seven hostile aeroplanes and drove down or dispersed them all. One of these hostile aeroplanes was seen to be destroyed and two others severely damaged. The clear weather of the middle of October, 1916, gave scope for great aerial activity. On the seventeenth our machines made a large number of reconnaissances and bombed enemy railway lines, stations, billets, factories, and depots. There were numerous fights in the air, three enemy machines being destroyed, another driven to earth, and many dispersed. Two more enemy kite balloons were attacked and forced down, one being afterwards seen in flames. Later in the same month, in spite of adverse weather conditions, our aeroplanes co-operated successfully with our artillery. This indeed has been one of the chief parts played by our heroic airmen. They have acted as ‘the eyes of our artillery,’ observing, directing, and reporting as only efficient aviators can. CHAPTER XXX RUSSIAN PRAISE AND RUSSIAN ACHIEVEMENTS The Russians have been most generous in their praise of the work done by the Allied aviators in France. A correspondent of the _Bourse Gazette_, writing in the _Daily Chronicle_, has said: ‘One need only stay at the British front one single day to be convinced that the verdict is right. The Allied aviators dominate the air. This is a phrase no longer. It is as much a reality as the British Battle Fleet or the Allied artillery. The Allied aeroplanes are everywhere. They guide and direct the artillery fire, make bold reconnaissances, photograph the enemy positions before and after the bombardments, fill the enemy trenches with grenades, and combine with the infantry to attack the German fortifications. During the first two months of the Somme offensive the British aviators covered more than 100,000 miles in the air, and that in spite of the fact that for a whole fortnight there was no flying at all because of the heavy mist and rain. According to careful military statistics, the British airmen covered not less than 1,000,000 miles over the German lines in the first two years of war.’