The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-08-28
ROMANCE Of
THE WAR BELONGS
TO THE AIRCRAFT
The Thrills and the Danger Of
Scouting All Theirs, Says
Frederick Palmer.
ARCHIBALD is ON THE JOB
Exciting Work of the British Antialr-
craft Gun Described-Sight of Aer.
oplane Unoer Shell Fire Never
Loses Its Thrill.
BY PALMER.

BY FREDERICK PALMER.
International News Service Correspondent.
British Headquarters, France.-A
crack and a whish through the air!
No sound is more familiar at the front
where the artillery is never silent
the sound of a shell breaking from a
gun muzzle and its shrill flight toward
the enemy's line to pay the Germans
back for some shell they have sent.
Only this one did not pass out over
the landscape in a long parabola or
toward the German lines. 1t went
right up into the heavens at about
the angle of a skyrocket-for it was
Archibald who was on the job.
Six or seven thousand feet over the
British trenches there was something
as big as your hand against the light
blue of the summer sky. This was
the target, a German %aeroplane. By
the cut of his wings you knew it was
a Taube, just as you know a meadow
lark from a swallow.
So high vas 1t that it seemed al
most stationary. But it was going
somewhere between fifty and ninety
miles an hour. 1t seemed to have
all the heavens to itself; and to the
British it was a sinister, prying eye.
1t wanted to see If they we're building
any new trenches, If they were NOV.
ing bodies of troops or of transport in
some new direction, and where their
batteries were in hiding. That avi.
ator, three miles above the earth, had
many waiting guns at his command.
A few signals from his wireless and
they would let loose on the target he
indicated.
Never Loses Its Thrill.
Other features of life at the front
may grow commonplace, but never
the work of the planes-these wings
OF the army's intelligence. In the
hide-and-seek digging and lodging ant
countering of siege warfare the sigh
of a plane under shell fire never loses
its thrill.
A couple of seconds after that cracl
6 tiny puff of smoke breaks about {
hundred yards behind the Taube. 4
soft thistle blow against the blue, 4
seems at that altitude; but it wouldn'
If it were about your ears. Then /
would sound like a bit of dynamite OF
an anvil struck by a hammer, and 20
would hear the whizz of scores of bul
lets and fragments about your ears.
The smoking brass shell case is GU
of Archibald's steel throat, and an
other shell case with it's charge
slipped in its place and started on its
way before the first puff breaks. The
aviator knows what is coming. He
knows that one means many, once he
is in range.
Archibald rushed the fighting; it is
the business of the Taube to side
step. The aviator cannot hit bach
except through its allies, the German
batteries, on the earth. They would
take care of Archibald If they knew
where he was. But all that the avi
ator can see is notified landscape
From his side Archibald flies no goa
flags. He is one of ten thousand tiny
objects under the ayiator's eye.
All the Romance Theirs.
Why he was named Archibald no
body knows. AS his full name is
Archibald the archer, possibly II
comes from some association with
the idea of archery. If there were
ten thousand antiaircraft guns In the
British army, every one would be
known as Archibald. When the Brit.
ish expeditionary force vent to
France it had none. All the British
could do was to bang away at Taubes
with thousands of rounds of rife bull
let's, which might fall in their own
lines, and with the field guns.
1t was pie In those days for the
Taubes. 1t was easy to keep out OF
range of both rifles and guns and OBJ
serve well. If the Germans did not
know the progress of the British re-
treat from on high, it was their own
fault. Now the business Of firing at
Taubes is left entirely to Archibald.
When you see how hard it is for Arch.
ibald, after all his practice, to get a
Taube, you understand how foolish 1t
was for the field guns to try to get
one.
Archibald, who is quite the SWEETEST
thing in the army, has his own pri-
vate a built especially for him.
While the cavalry horses back of the
lines grow sleek from inaction. the
aeroplanes have taken their places.
All the romance and risk of scouting
are theirs. They get most of the fun
there is in this kind of warfare. II
a British aviator gets a days leave.
he does not take a train or steamer.
He rises from the aviation grounds
about half-past four and is at home in
England for dinner and returns after
lunch the next day. All the action the
cavalry e is when they go into the
trenches as infantry.
important Work Is A~rchibald's.
Such of the calvary's former part
aa flo AloA.o 10 .oA H. A--LN-NI