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Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury), 1876-1944

"Paths of Glory Impressions of War Written at and Near the Front"

I
liked to entertain that idea, because it gave me a feeling of having
shared to some degree in a big adventure.
As for the captain and the lieutenant, they advanced no theories
whatever. The thing was all in the day's work to them. It had happened
before. I have no doubt it has happened many times since.


Chapter 10
In the Trenches Before Rheims

After my balloon-riding experience what followed was in the nature of an
anticlimax--was bound to be anti-climactic. Yet the remainder of the
afternoon was not without action. Not an hour later, as we stood in a
battery of small field guns--guns I had watched in operation from my
lofty gallery seat--another flyer, or possibly the same one we had
already seen, appeared in the sky, coming now in a long swinging sweep
from the southwest, and making apparently for the very spot where our
party had stationed itself to watch the trim little battery perform.
It had already dropped some form of deadly souvenir we judged, for we
saw a jet of black smoke go geysering up from a woodland where a German
corps commander had his field headquarters, just after the airship
passed over that particular patch of timber.


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