For four nights in succession Boche planes had been trying to drop bombs on the rail-head where troop trains were being loaded near our Headquarters. On the fourth night, when returning from a front line hut with Secretary Johnson, who in America was a professor in Vassar College, we stopped on a high ridge overlooking the battle line. This was a favorite rendezvous on my return from night deliveries, as it gave a wonderful panoramic view of the whole front line for miles in either direction. The flashes of the guns, the dazzling brilliancy of the star shells, the long lines of varicolored signals as they went up from many camps and out-posts, and the flares dropped from scores of planes, passing and repassing in the darkness overhead, can never be forgotten. It was a nightly and wonderful Fourth of July celebration, enhanced by the weirdness and danger of actual warfare. As we stood this night, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, wearing our "tin" hats and with gas masks at "alert," suddenly out of the night loomed a German plane, flying low, the Boche engine distinguished by its own peculiar throb. As it passed over our heads it dropped a red flare and proceeded toward Baccarat. Evidently, it had discovered our signals for that night and was using them. As soon as its deception was discovered our gunners opened fire, but not until it had dropped four bombs on the town and gotten away in safety toward the German lines. The explosions from the bombs were terrific and the flashes lit up the whole sky. We took refuge behind trees as shrapnel from our anti-aircraft guns rattled down in the roadway and the "ping" of machine-gun bullets startled our ears. When we returned to town we found everything in confusion. One bomb had exploded in the treetops a half block from our billet and had wrecked the beautiful mansion of the French mayor of the town. It also wounded some American soldiers in a nearby barracks. Another bomb landed between two buildings at Hexo Barracks, killing three of our boys and one French poilu, besides wounding many and shattering the buildings. Four horses were killed by pieces of shrapnel, and when looking over the scene of destruction the next morning I noticed a hole, clean cut, through a half-inch steel tire on a nearby cart. It had been cut by a piece of shrapnel about an inch long which had also gone through spokes and hub and buried itself in the ground. [Illustration: GERMAN AERIAL BOMB (Small)]