hit the leader in & vital spot, for he falls steeply and goes orashing down out of control. The remaining five turn sharply on to our bus, and attack ere I have time

to change my drum. The racket is awful. Eight maohine-guns are pumping lead at us from short range. I can hear the bullets hissing past and spitting about the machine like hailstones.

I opened fire almost as soon as they did, but the first of their bullets got me in the stomach, and doubled me up in the cookpit. I bob up again, feeling a bit muzzy, and carry on firing. I turn quickly to Tommy to get him to swerve a bit to unmask a Hun who has come right up to our tail. But poor old Tommy is sitting back with a face white as death and his eyes closed. I think he has gone West, and so perforce turn to fight it out. The old machine flies straight ahead steadily and evenly, so that I have a steady aim. My left hand is now shot off the gun and begins to spurt blood. It has stopped an explosive bullet. This rather handicaps me in changing drums. In the next burst I am lucky enough to smite another Hun in a nasty spot, for he goes down out of control, and, as was confirmed afterwards, crashes. In the fighting which follows, yet another Hun goes down in a vertical nose-dive; whether he has been badly hit or merely had enough, I do not know, but anyway he is one the less. Another bullet explodes with a crash on my machine-gun, and

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sends its pieces into my chin, which bleeds profusely. I hesitate to put my hand up for fear my chin should come away. The remaining Hun machines are now doing better shooting, and my gun is put out of action with three bullets, one of which smashes the gas cylinder. I turn again to Tommy, but he is still oblivious of his surroundings. am feeling a bit dazed by this time. My hand and face are still bleeding. What happened within the next minute or two I do not quite remember. Either Tommy fell on to the joy-stick or else he went down intentionally. Anyway the next clear vision I have is of some Hun horse lines not a hundred feet below. A Bulgar or Hun soldier near by gets a colossal wind up at sight of us diving on him, and hares down the side of the field in great style. Forgetting that my gun has gone I turn it on to him. Then I realise how hopeless our position is. There seems nothing for it but to bump placidly down among the horses. I picture our announcement in the casualty lists as wounded and missing. I already see ourselves convalescing at Sofia, and hope the Bulgars will let us go about the city on on parole. These confused thoughts rush through my mind as I turn to Tommy, who is dazedly conscious now. I ask him if he is going to land, and I look around for a more or less clear spot. Suddenly, however, the engine takes on a less doleful sound; it has been

spluttering and coughing up to this, and the hope which springs eternal surges through our beings again. Then I witness a wonderful struggle of British grit and courage. With a bullet through his back, paralysed down the left side and barely conscious through loss of blood, Tommy controls that machine through a murderous fire from the ground. In a series of zigzags we struggle towards the lines, nearly fifteen miles away. To my joy I recognised the ruins of M-r in the distance. This town is just behind our lines. On we go. Then with a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips and wild joy in my heart we pass slowly over the enemy trenches. Nothing seems to matter now. Despite

the guns that are trained on to us we go steadily on. As we cross No Man's Land and pass our own trenches I give vent to my joy in a bloodsoaked eheer, at which Tommy smiles broadly. I think he is going to land in the first available field, but he keeps dead ahead and eventually makes a perfect landing on our aerodrome twelve miles farther away.

I scramble out of the machine and fall into the welcome arms of two Italian tommies, one of whom supplies me with a badly squashed cigarette from the depths of his breeches pocket. Tommy is lifted out and we are laid side by side smoking contentedly.

A kindly French M.O. arrived on the scene and gave us a rough dressing. He looked glum at sight of Tommy's wound, and I heard afterwards that they did not expect him to live. Meanwhile the other machines had landed, most of them badly shot about. After what seemed hours an ambulance arrived and took us on to the French C.C. S. at Florina. Never shall I forget the journey over those broken Serbian roads. The heat was now intense, and the flies began to swarm. The pain that Tommy had to bear on his broken back with each jolt of the car, which went at a snail's pace, was awful. A French surgeon met us half-way with morphia

blessed morphia!—and thence the journey was better. We passed little groups of men on the march-Serbs and Italians and columns of transport. Now and again we caught arresting glimpses of wooded mountains and fields of dying poppies.

At Florina we received immediate attention, and got between clean sheets. During the week we had in this olearing station we received many visits and messages of congratulation from our friends. General Sarrail and the French Minister of Health came to see us. The officer commanding the French Flying Corps paid us constant visits and was very kind to us. These visits did much to help

us forget pain. But how we longed for a white-capped nurse! Alas! our orderlies were Annamites from far-off China, and my French often failed miserably when I asked them to get me anything. And then that night orderly! I wish I could say he stuck to his post all night. I am afraid he did not. I suspect strongly that he went back to bed after reporting at night. I could never get hold of him. The day orderly I managed to offend in some way. I asked him to get me some water. He chose to construe my French idea of this sentence into an accusation of theft, and he became threatening and hostile. My explanations made matters worse, and for the rest of our acquaintance I went in fear of him. I used to drop into troubled slumber only to dream that innumerable Huns were diving on me, and as they came nearer they were transformed into grinning faces of Annamites with their cruel slits of eyes. Oh, those nights of olammy heat!

In a bed near mine was a French captain with two bullets in his stomach. I was told he was past hope. He was in a terrible condition, and had been lying there for nearly two months, as he could not be moved. He was riding to a camp when he was attacked by some brigands or comitadjis, whose object was the theft of his horse. Some of them were caught, and a punishment such as they could appreciate was meted out to them. The cheerful patience

with which that captain bore his tortures awaiting the end was wonderful. Some one had presented him with a bottle of champagne. Apparently he was forbidden or unable to drink this, and insisted that Tommy and I should drink his health in it. That afternoon B. and L. came in to see us, and we split the champagne with them. However, my palate was stronger than my stomach. That evening I developed malaria, and Tommy followed suit. The fever dogged our paths for the next two months, and when I think of the heat and the flies and the mosquitoes, my memories of Macedonia are not too pleasant. The morning after we went into hospital the gentle Hun did two bomb raids on Florina. One bomb dropped very near the hospital, and it was with mingled feelings that I saw a great spurt of débris go into the air as I looked through the window. A sudden rattle of machineguns announced the fact that our people were up, and a little later we heard the great news that three of the Hun machines—all two-seaters — had been shot down in our lines, and that three or four of the wounded survivors were on their way to the hospital.

oreepy sort of wail and rushed to and fro under my window most of the day, refusing to be comforted. When the Huns arrived, two of them were placed one on either side of the French captain. The others went to another part of the building. Of these two, the elder, an Oberleutnant, died the next night. The younger one, who was about nineteen, and who told me he had not been flying long, was burnt about the head and knocked about a bit from his crash. He had been shot down by B. When B. came along to see us, he brought an explosive bullet which had been taken from this fellow's machine-gun. Armed with this, I told our Hun friend that I had been wounded by an explosive bullet. He denied that they used them, and when I produced this one from his machine, he became uneasy and explained that his mechanic must have put them there without his knowledge. He was obviously frightened, and I played on his fear by telling him that he was liable to be shot for being found with ammunition forbidden by all laws of civilisation. This bit of information made quite an impression on him. He was moved to the Base next day, and although I assured him before he went that he would be well treated, he was still soared, and I am sure heartily repentant of ever having seen an explosive bullet.

I shall never forget the night before we left. We were both pretty bad, thoroughly exhausted by the flies and the

damp heat. The Macedonian fly in midsummer is at his worst. The whole room was black with them, and they start to buzz around at dawn. They specially choose sick viotims. Their modus operandi is to settle in swarms on every sensitive part of your body. Your job is then to pick them off. It is useless to wave your arms about-nothing short of actually pulling them off with your hands is good enough. When septio wounds are being dressed, Mr Fly, who likes to share a find, brings up whole battalions of his pals from the kitchens. These batten on you

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an aperitif before being served up with your beafsteak later. We got a certain amount of relief from mosquito nets, but these were terribly stuffy to sleep under in the daytime. Somehow a few stray flies get under the net and torture you so to let them out that you suddenly fling off the net in disgust and give yourself over to the whole of them.

Very early the next morning we bade farewell to our hospital friends at Florina. The ambulance journey to the railhead, a distance of some miles, was fraught with pain. This road winds along at the foot of a minor wooded mountain at whose foot also Florina is charmingly situated. As we passed through its cobbled streets, native women dressed in wondrous colours glanced casually into the ambulance. The town itself is a quaint mixture of European and Turkish, an occasional mudhut shouldering up against a

Arrived at the station round about 6 A.M., we were told we could not make Salonika that day, but must journey to another French hospital at a place called Exisoo, only twenty odd miles away. This journey we made on the bottom of a cattletruck, together with some wounded Senegalese. The Serbian driver had a penchant for shunting. He gathered speed down a slope and then suddenly put on all brakes, thereby causing us to play a form of draughts, the stretchers trying to jump one another in all directions. This did not agree with Tommy's fractured back, and the end the end of the journey found him on his last legs. It was midday before we got off that train at Exisoo. Some more of our Chinese friends were acting as orderlies. This hospital was a delightful place, for the marquees were arranged in an ingenious way that stopped any flies from getting in. They also gave us some iced drinks, and we felt we had struck oil. Our stay here was, however, short. The surgeon informed me that an operation at once was imperative, and that Tommy could not think of making the journey to Salonika. He further stated that their operating tents had been burnt down the previous day, and we should have to move on somewhere else immediately. He then bethought him of an English hospital with the Serbian army some distance away, and telephoned them to send an ambulance to fetch us.

To hear the orderlies speaking English when we arrived was a tonio. And then a white-capped sister to tend us through the night. We who had hardly seen an English woman for a whole year! And now here was one who was going to nurse us back to health. It seemed too wonderful. Idropped into peaceful sleep that night with the sister's voice running like cooling water through my fevered brain, and for the first time failed to have nightmares about brother Hun. I was awakened soon after dawn for my journey to the operating theatre, and Tommy followed me for extraction of the bullet from his back. The next six weeks spent in this hospital were awful. Nothing but the untiring and loving attention we received made them possible. For me it was a series of visits to the operating theatre; a nightmare of hot sweltering days and endless nights; torture by flies and fever and pain. Tommy, too, had repeated attacks of fever and some bad kidney trouble.

Yet, looking back on those weeks, one or two things stir me to a smile. The Serbians and English who died in the