It
must have been somewhere near by, but we saw no signs of it. Nor did
our guides for the day offer to show us its whereabouts. However,
knowing what I do of the German system of doing things, I will venture
the assertion that it was snugly hidden and stoutly protected.
These details I had time to take in, when there came across the field to
join us a tall young officer with a three weeks' growth of stubby black
beard on his face. A genial and captivating gentleman was Lieutenant
Brinkner und Meiningen, and I enjoyed my meeting with him; and often
since that day in my thoughts I have wished him well. However, I doubt
whether he will be living by the time these lines see publication.
It is an exciting life a balloon operator in the German Army lives, but
it is not, as a rule, a long one. Lieutenant Meiningen was successor to
a man who was burned to death in mid-air a week before; and on the day
before a French airman had dropped a bomb from the clouds that missed
this same balloon by a margin of less than a hundred yards--close
marksmanship, considering that the airman in question was seven or eight
thousand feet aloft, and moving at the rate of a mile or so a minute
when he made his cast.
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