About the day after tomorrow we go _en repos_, and it’s sure going to seem good to eat and sleep, without getting up and sprinting for an _abri_ or throwing one’s self, and incidentally a plate of good food, on the ground. We saw a very interesting thing the other day. We were sitting out in front of our cantonment at the base. About a quarter of a mile from us was one of the big observation balloons or “sausages.” Suddenly, from behind a cloud, just above the balloon a _Boche_ aeroplane darted out. The _Boche_ and the balloonist both fired their machine guns at each other simultaneously. The aeroplane wobbled a little and started to volplane to earth. The balloon burst into flames. The observer dropped about fifty feet, and then his parachute opened and he sailed slowly down. When the _Boche_ landed they found him dead with a bullet in his chest. It was quite an exciting sight. A battle between two planes is quite common, and one can look up at almost any time and see the aircraft bombs bursting around some _Boche_ thousands of feet in the air. At last the “drive” is over, and the letter describes the prisoners, at whose youth he expresses surprise. But they are happy, though nearly starved—happy to be prisoners. The writer says: I have seen hundreds of _Boche_ prisoners, four thousand having been taken in the attack. We see them march past the _poste-de-secours_ about half an hour after they have been captured. I have talked with several of them and received lots of interesting information. They are all very happy, but nearly starved. Two slightly wounded ones were brought into the post the other day. A dirty little crust of bread was lying on the ground. They both made a dive for it. They are all awfully young, mostly between seventeen and twenty-one. One of them told me, among other things, that by next spring Germany would be absolutely finished. A soldier’s fare, he said, was one pound of poor bread and one liter of wine a day, except during a heavy attack, when they are given some thin soup. The civilians, he said, were still worse off, especially in the cities.