The escadrille was to make its first sortie as a unit in the morning. Captain Thenault had much to say to his men, and after dinner the conversation continued along the same general lines. There seemed to be so much detail to attend to and signals to arrange that I was almost tempted to ask them how escadrilles ever managed to co-operate so well in the presence of the enemy air squadrons. [Illustration: A bi-motor Caudron. A captured Fokker.] When I awoke next morning it was raining. The clouds hung low, too low for flying over the lines, so the Americans remained in their beds. Our escadrille, however, was obliged to move on, as the station to which it had been assigned was directly behind the lines. The planes had to proceed "par la voie de l’air," but the ground was so soft and muddy that it was difficult to get the machines to leave the earth. The pilots all seemed nervous, yet all rose in good form except one, who was a little late in getting off. He did not know the way, and was afraid of losing his companions in the mist. In his haste he took too short a run, so that when he came to the end of the field he was not high enough to clear the line of hangars in his path. To make matters worse the unlucky man lost his head. He tried to make a sharp turn, but it was too late. The tip of his wing caught the canvas of the tent, and the machine fell with a crash to the ground, killing the pilot and pinning his mechanic beneath the wreckage. We felt much depressed by this accident. Our departure for the new camp seemed to emphasize our sadness, for, as we moved off in our long line of motors our procession had an appearance almost funereal. First came the automobiles; then, following them, the twelve tractors and trailers—twenty-seven vehicles in all—moving slowly toward the front. As we turned into the main road to Verdun the traffic was so heavy that we had to move at a snail’s pace. Ahead of us rumbled a steady stream of "camions" with ammunition and supplies. Alongside of the road were the columns of troops going to the trenches. Their heavy coats were already soaked, and the probability was that they would remain so for a week, but nothing daunted them. They just plodded along gayly, singing their marching songs, utterly unmindful of the rain-drops that were hourly weighting down their equipment more and more. From the opposite direction came the empty supply-trains. Sandwiched in with these were ambulances and motor-buses, bearing the men returning from their "stage" in the trenches. The poor fellows looked hardly human, for they were brown with mud from head to foot. Their faces were caked with dirt, and a week’s growth of beard gave them a still more uninviting appearance. They seemed to gaze at us with a far-away, half-conscious expression, so utterly stupefied were they by the terrible bombardment to which they had been subjected.