... Yesterday at five o'clock I
darted around above the house at 1700 or 2000 meters. Did you see me? I
forced my motor for five minutes in hopes that you would hear me." He
had recently parted from his family, and a happy chance had brought him
to fight over the very lines that protected his own home. The front of
the Sixth Army to which he was attached, extending from Ribecourt beyond
the forest of Laigue, passed in front of Railly and Tracy-le-Val,
hollowed itself before the enemy salient of Moulin-sous-Touvent,
straightened itself again near Autreches and Nouvron-Vingre, covered
Soissons, whose very outskirts were menaced, was obliged to turn back on
the left bank of the Aisne where the enemy took, in January, 1915, the
bridge-head at Conde, and Vailly and Chavonne, and crossed the river
again at Soupir which belonged to us. Laon, La Fere, Coucy-le-Chateau,
Chauny, Noyon, Ham, and Peronne were the objects of his reconnoitering
flights.
War acts more poignantly, more directly upon a soldier whose own home is
immediately behind him. If the front were pierced in the sector which
had been intrusted to him, his own people would be exposed.
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