Unfortunately during the retreat combat reports were not made out, so that there is no account in the war diaries of the actual fighting. Some of the fights are mentioned. On the 25th of August three machines of No. 2 Squadron chased an enemy monoplane. It was forced to land; Lieutenant H. D. Harvey-Kelly and Lieutenant W. H. C. Mansfield landed near it and continued the chase on foot, but the Germans escaped into a wood. When some trophies had been taken from the machine it was burnt. Another German machine was forced to descend on the same day near Le Quesnoy, where it was captured. Aeroplanes at this time had no special armament; officers carried revolvers and sometimes a carbine; but the confidence and determination with which they attacked did the work of a machine-gun, and brought the enemy down. In one instance, a little later on, a British pilot and observer, who were destitute of ammunition, succeeded by manoeuvring boldly above a German machine in bringing it to the ground and taking it captive. On the afternoon of the 5th of September neither the German Supreme Command (which had its headquarters at Luxembourg) nor the staff of the German First Army had any idea that an offensive of the whole French army was imminent. The Supreme Command was expecting a decisive victory in the east against the Verdun-Nancy-St.-Die defences. They believed that the German First and Second Armies could easily hold the weak French forces around Paris until this decision should be achieved, and they did not know how great a part of the French strength had been transferred from the east to the west. From the 5th to the 9th of September they issued no orders to their First and Second Armies, who were left to fight out the decisive battle of the war, without their help and almost without their knowledge, against superior forces.