At last the German airmen determined to have a raid of their own. A nice quiet little trip this was to be, out of the way of nasty, unpleasant guns and Maxims. And so we had the "great Zeppelin raid" on Yarmouth and on a few quiet out-of-the-way villages in Norfolk, and the slaughter of men, women, and children. The German aviators, however, did more respectable work when considerable squadrons of aeroplanes twice attacked Dunkirk in January, 1915. The first attempt would appear to have been originally directed against Dover or some other place on this side the Channel, as sixteen German aeroplanes were sighted hovering over the Channel. But either by reason of the good look-out kept by our own airmen and gunners, or on account of unfavourable weather conditions, the "Boches" changed the direction of their flight and a dozen of them attacked Dunkirk and dropped about thirty bombs. As usual, most of the victims were civilians, but Dunkirk was a fortified town and an important position of the allied armies, so that, but for the fact that on one occasion the market-place seemed to be selected for an especial target, we may consider these raids as legitimate military operations. But the Germans were not able to carry them out at their leisure. Belgian, French, and British airmen rushed their machines aloft and engaged and drove off the raiders with the loss of one of their machines, while a couple of our naval officers flew off and countered at Zeebrugge, dropping twenty-seven bombs on a couple of submarines and on the guns mounted on the mole. One of them, Squadron-Commander Davies, R.N., was attacked during his approach by no less than seven hostile aeroplanes, but got away from them with a slight wound and delivered his bombs at their destination. The following letter, written shortly before, and referring to the first German raid on Dunkirk, is interesting as showing the consciousness of superiority in the minds of our airmen:-- "I must tell you something about the beano we had yesterday. It _was_ a day! Engaged with three Taubes in the morning and in the afternoon--and I went and dropped 18 bombs and 6 grenades on various works and the railway at Ostend, with incidentally another scrap with a German machine. Hope we tickled them up and gave them ---- at Ostend. We've got 'em scared stiff--absolutely. It's a great game entirely. I hope we get to hear about what damage we did at Ostend, though I'm afraid it's impossible. I know I got the railway with one bomb--a clinking shot right in the middle. I tell you they let us have it. The machine was hit in nine places."[104] The writer was evidently "keen as mustard", and against such airmen the German air service could make no headway.