Observing the Retreat of the British
God be thanked! After a veritable Odyssey I am at last joined again this noon to my division. To be sure, my wanderings were not much to be wondered at, for, during my absence, my troop had advanced about sixty-five kilometers in a southwesterly direction. All the more joyfully, however, was I greeted on all sides, for I had already been given up after an absence of more than four days; and, indeed, I myself wondered, as I made my report to my commander, that Jack Death had so allowed me to slip through his fingers.
On the morning of the 6th of September, I had ascended from D—— with the commission to report the positions of the enemy at S—— and F—— and to make charts of the opposing forces which I observed. First Lieut. K—— went with me as a guest on the flight, and my brave biplane soon bore us at an altitude of about 800 meters above the hostile positions, which were repeatedly sketched and photographed from aloft. As we had expected, we were soon the objective of a lively bombardment, and several times I felt a trembling of the machine, already well known to me, a sign that a shot had struck one of the wings. After a three hours’ flight we were able to give our report at the office of the General Staff of the —— army at M——, and earned for it the warmest praise and half of a broiled chicken and an excellent Havana.
As I was making my “Kiste” ready for flight again in the afternoon, with the help of several drivers of the General Staff auto—that is to say, refilling the benzine tank and carefully patching with linen the places where shots had pierced—I counted four of them, one in the body and three in the wings—a Bavarian officer of the General Staff informed me that he would be glad to observe the retreat of the English along the great military road toward M——. I prepared the machine at once, and ascended at about four o’clock in the afternoon with Major G——, the aforementioned General Staff officer.
Following the road, it was at once obvious that the retreat of the English was a disorderly one, absolutely without plan, that it had apparently occurred to the troops to reach the fortified positions at Paris as soon as possible, and there to make their stand.
At Paris! My flying companion shouted something into my face. Although the noise of the motor drowned it out, I believed that I nevertheless understood what he meant. I glanced at the benzine indicator. I had sufficient fuel. Then I held a direct course to the south, and after a period of about half an hour we saw ahead of us in the gray distance, far, far below, the gray, immeasurable sea of stone that was the chief city of France. At a speed of a hundred kilometers an hour we rushed toward it. It became clearer and plainer. The chain of forts, St. Denis, Montmartre, stood out; from the haze there raised itself the filigree framework of the Eiffel tower. And now—now we hover over the mellow panorama of Paris.