“The life of an airman is one of intense idleness interrupted by moments of violent fear.” This remark, originating as it does from a youthful member of the Senior Service describes, more aptly than any other yet penned, the life of the airman under active service conditions. Sometimes there will come a spell of fine weather, and he is kept going hard at it from sunrise to sunset. At other times when the weather is too bad for flying, he has nought else to do but sit round the mess-fire and tell stories. The memory of those wet days! Men of all sorts and conditions exchanging personal experiences: anecdotes of hair-raising escapes from bursting shrapnel shells, thrilling fights with Air Huns, miraculous evolutions in mid-air, and a thousand and one other subjects dear to the heart of the airman. I will here endeavor to relate several of the best stories that have so far come my way, but it is impossible to tell more than five per cent. of them, for their name is Legion. The first story concerns a well-known aerodrome somewhere in Flanders. The pilots of the station, when the weather was too bad for flying, filled up their spare time by playing football; until one day a wag amongst them suggested that a ball should be blown up as tight as possible; taken up in an aeroplane and dropped on the German lines. This suggestion was duly carried out and the first fine day the ball was put aboard a machine going up the Belgian Coast for a reconnaissance trip. Arrived over the town that had been decided upon, it was dropped overboard, with quite accurate aim into the market square. Seeing this dark awesome object falling through the air and taking it for a bomb the Germans took to their heels. Landing on the cobbled pave, it must have bounced nearly twenty feet into the air, then gradually lower and lower, until at last it rolled into a ditch. Then and only then did the Germans reappear, one fat soldier going over to it and giving it a vicious kick. An instance of air _camaraderie_ was that of the Bosche who brought Pégoud down after a fight in mid-air. Hearing that he had been killed, and where he was to be buried, he came over and dropped a wreath on the scene of his burial ground--a pretty compliment that was greatly appreciated.