Item 04: G. O. Hawkins letters to his family, 2 January 1915-November 1917 - Page 249
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[Page 249]
20
you will see a cluster of these white flakes apparently surrounding an aeroplane as a constellation of stars lined with a night hawks flight.
It may be that you see them as we do now, in a cluster far below the swallow-like planed of the enemy; with the latest newly created flake spot singly placed much higher, followed by another, and another, yet higher and higher like a chain of starry pointers.
Suddenly a lack spot startles into existence amongst the white as a black sheep thrown into a pure fold. Then another, in the chain above; and yet one more, with the highest reach of all
The stinging guns are spitting a different form of shell, but their range is all too short for theoccassion.
As minutes pass the earliest formed spots widen and thin out and fluff at the edges, but still maintain their original positions, (unless there is a breeze) whilst they contract with the later creations as [indecipherable] with snow flakes.
Our highest plane reaches far up in the its spiral flight but as yet not to the altitude of the enemy
Then we hear the tap-tap-tap-tap-tap---tap-tap---tap-tap-tap---tap-tap of her gabbling machine gun, and we know she is shooting with an upward slant at those alluminium swallows