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Show First Writer to Ffy Over liar Zone Describes Trip Witnesses Aerial Warfare , and Yankee Gun-. Gun-. ners Battling the Huns. By HENRY G. WALES, Staff Correspondent, International News Service. WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY T.V FRANCE, March 3 2 (delayed). (de-layed). I have been two miles inside the German lines today at a height of 6500 feet. I flow over the American lines on the Toul front, crossed to No Man's Land and penetrated as far as the enemy's second -line defenses. I saw some destruction Inflicted by bursts of gun fire by the American batteries during the last forty-eight hours and even while over the German Ger-man positions I saw American shells drop there silently, then explode dustily, sending up an upheaval of brown dirt mixed with siiufee. I made the flight which is the first made by civilians newspaper correspondents corre-spondents or others over the actual fighting lines, since the outbreak of the war. in one of the English two-seater two-seater observation biplanes used by American ohservera regulating the American artillery fire. Piloted by French Lieutenant. The machine was piloted by a French sublieutenant who usually takes up American observers. The only difference was that the twin machine guns were not emplaced for my trip as they are when a combination combina-tion of observers and machine gun-. gun-. ners goes up. It was Just after 4 o'clock, sun time, and the weather was excellent and clear for observation purposes. The mechanician strapped me to the bucket seat deep down in the fuselage, fuse-lage, so that just my head showed, and I looked squarely at the pilot's cranium just showing m front of me. Makes Trip at 6000 Feet. We raced down the field and picked up a mtle-a-minute gait, then rose softly. The first I knew was that the hangars and buildings were dropping below-. We circled over the field awhile, banking steeply on turns so as to make height, as the field is very near the front and an airplane must he high to cross the lines, otherwise it is dangerous business. Mounting to 6000 feet, we started toward the front, traversing roads and villages I knew well from passing through them daily in the correspondents' correspond-ents' automobile. As we gained height and gathered speed, the latter now being two miles a minute, the t wind pressure became greater and it seemed as though we were standing stock still. Gazes Through a Glass Floor. Gazing through the glass floor plates at the objecls on the earth, it seemed as if we were barely creeping along, just making headway against a raging gale. In reality there was scarcely any breeze. But gradually we passed landmark after landmark I knew, and I realized we were really moving fast. Then far to the right I saw another French airplane at about the same level, also apparently stationary, although al-though In reality moving as fast as we were. We were- .so far above the earth's surface one lost all sense of movement except that the air was rushing past, filling the lungs with great gasps of oxygen. Passes Over the American Zone. Scrutinizing the landscape below I passed the foremost American army zone, which is out of danger except from long-range guns. Then gradually gradu-ally the war zon3 crept in, almost imperceptibly. im-perceptibly. The first thing I noticed were the telltale shadows invariably cast even (Continued on Page Eight.) iWRITER IN AIRPLANE FLIES OVER WAR ZONE (Continued from Page One.) by the most skillfully arranged camouflage. Then I noticed how mere man-made man-made camouflage cannot copy nature exactly, no matter how hard the effort. ef-fort. All through this zone were defensive de-fensive positions yuch as existed along the entire front on both sides of the line. Soon, however, I saw the commencement of the communication communi-cation trendies. Then, instead of villages. 1 saw merely clumps of ruined shell-torn stone' houses, the result of forly-two forly-two months of intermittent artillery fire. Always, however, the wonderful French highway stretched clear and lean out, ribbonlike,- under the eye, so 1 could tell exactly where I was by t hoir configuration from the pilot's map 1 carried. And it was the I roads that showed first when we ap-j ap-j proached the actual fighting zone. ' There the roads widened and lost I their perceptibility, vanished' like ribbons rib-bons fraying tiny strands at the end. Studies Effects of the ShellRre. Thoroughfares gradually lost themselves them-selves in a wide bare strip of yellowish yellow-ish brown, marking No Man's land between the opposing trenches. Through powerful binoculars, I looked down upon a maze of American Ameri-can trenches, interwinding and Interlocking, Inter-locking, seated a considerable depth In the earth, behind a tiny hairlike hair-like line that marked the advanced fire trendies. t Then Y could dimly make out through the lenses little, even rows, marking the posts supporting the barbed -wire entanglements. This was so "shell -pit ted that it resembled the footprints of a thousand dogs in the sand on some seaside. No Man's land, as far as one could see. was barren, empty, up torn, yet with certain landmarks still left, such 1 as a shell -tattered stone farmhouse and an old cow stable, whose walls were still standing at a feeble height. These places are favorite rendezvous ren-dezvous for night patrols. Then I passed over the advanced German line. It looked exactly like the Amer ican line, with the same endless scroll of trenches. We steered lo the left and then, saw the spot where the American bombardment prepared the way for yesterday morning's raids. The effects of the latest rain . of shells alo were plainly visible, some craters showing up bolder and deeper than others which had been created in former days. Passing over the first network of German trenches, 1 noticed communicating communi-cating positions leading back toward the second organized positions. There, too, I saw clumsily camouflaged camou-flaged gun pits, and, looking at my map, found them accurately noted there for our gunners' information. The villages behind the enemy's lines were crumbling and shot-torn, shot-torn, the same as those behind our own lines, and the roads began again from nothing, assuming shape and form and developing into fine highways high-ways a little way farther in. Not One Human Being Seen. Puffs of white smoke showed that our machine was being fired at by-high by-high angle anti-aircraft guns, but we were not hit. We did not go straight ahead, but obliquely, so we could veer and double back the moment hostile fighting planes appeared. We saw a couple of German two-seated two-seated observing machines regulating German artillery. They were about on our level, but they minded their own business and we paid no attention atten-tion to them. Gazing eastward, I saw shells coughed up from the throats of American Amer-ican guns far behind, saw them plump into the enemy's positions, burst and throw up clouds of black ami brown dirt and and smoke. , Once, when we were farthest inside in-side the enemy line, I looked back toward to-ward the German front line and saw several flashes, which I afterwards learned were from trench mortars throwing over "flying pigs" toward the American lines. ( In all that journey I had not seen a single moving human being, even through my glasses, despite the fact that the subterranean positions be- neath teemed with armies of fighting f men. j And in a!I advanced pr.siTinns on botii sides I did not see a sir:;ie mov-I mov-I ing vehicle. lt!iuus;!i far off ba'-k of j tiir 'ler.'nan lines I did see dust clouds ! thion up by convoys; on ihe move. Sees French Flyer Dodge Death. ' We turned slightly, tilting steeply i on one wing and soared homeward. I The pilot signaled to me to look df'wn. Stat ing through the floor J glass, I saw another French machine, , much lower than we were. ! Almost at the same time a dull t hud penetrated the terrific mise of tiie whirling motor and the pilot motioned mo-tioned me again. 1 saw a fluffy white cloud iet of anti-aircraft shrapnel ! enemy gunners were trying to lay the range on our comrade beneath. ' There were almost a dozen audible thuds, and I saw a string of these fluffy shrapnel cloudlets hanging in the air along the pathway of the ! French machine below had been taking. tak-ing. But he was far away he 'wing-slipped," 'wing-slipped," turned and escaped entirely en-tirely Although we were less than 20OO feet up in this region, the enemy anti-aircraft gunners did not choose tis for a target, and we recrossed No Man's land. Again passing over the American battery positions, 1 saw ominous flashes from the gun breeches, but I did not hear a shot fired and didn't hear a shell whistling through the air. We retraced our way, apparently not moving, and fighting in the teeth of a howling wind while the terrain below slipped by imperceptibly. W e passed over an American observation balloon and finally reached the aviation avia-tion field, alighting at eighty miles an hour. 1 looked at my watch; we had been, gone thirty-five minutes, but it seemed ages, because iof the persistent per-sistent idea that we had been battling bat-tling against a head-on gale continually. contin-ually. "Did you see that German single-seater single-seater above us just before we turned back?" asked the sub-lieutenant pilot, hopping from his seat. "I think he saw we didn't have a machine gun and thought us easy preV, as he was on his way home, and then turned and chased us a little lit-tle way. Otherwise, I would have taken you over to another sector and shown you the German positions there with the big guns mounted." |