I was certainly thankful that I had $10,000 worth of Government life insurance and was wondering how my mother would get along on $57.50 per month for twenty years, and I wished I had taken out $20,000 worth in private life insurance instead of spending two hundred dollars last month in Paris. All these more serious thoughts were going through my mind, having practically no one dependent upon me and with only the expendable rank of First Lieutenant upon my shoulders, and then I thought of poor, old Brereton with a wife and two children, and a Major’s responsibility. Very shortly before this, Major Brown, in command of the 96th Squadron, had gotten lost in Germany and had landed with five other American planes and their crews, and this matter had occasioned unfavorable remarks as to his judgment. None of Brereton’s friends would ever be able to explain why, in his responsible position, he ever even started out on such a hazardous mission as this. Well, I came to the conclusion that one has two brains—one constructive and the other retrospective, for actually while I was thinking all of those things I was at the same time intently watching the ground and carefully noting the location of all my information. That trip, from a standpoint of a war panorama, was a sight-seeing tour of wonder. Imagine the solid and continuous barrage of thousands and thousands of shells bursting in a line for miles and miles, the barking cannons on each side, like so many ferocious dogs spitting fire, roads filled with on-marching troops, coming up in formation from both sides, walking as it were, into that veritable valley of death and destruction; the air filled with hostile planes and our whole safety depending upon the supposition of being alone and so far behind the lines that the Germans would not realize the presence of an enemy plane. We must have seen between a total of seventy-five and one hundred German airplanes during the entire flight, for do not think that we kept our eyes glued to the ground all the time; at least I did not; and in one place we were so near a Boche airdrome that we saw the German planes on the field milling around about ready to buzz up after us. Yet even at such a low altitude we were only fired at once or twice by machine guns from the ground. At the front the machine guns were busy firing forward and in the rear there did not seem to be any available. Our mission had been a long one and one of the few in which the crew can use their own judgment. So, when he circled over La Ferte, the Headquarters of the Corps, and dropped our message, we had not only stated the facts as we had seen them, but also our conclusions, taking the whole aspect as it presented itself.