A thing happened yesterday which I must tell you. At two o’clock in the afternoon an enemy anti-aircraft shell hit one of our fighting machines at a height of 7,000 feet. It blew the left leg of the pilot to bits but he landed his machine safely, close to our front trenches, where the enemy shelled it furiously. A medical officer who saw the hit in the air was waiting for them, and was the first man to reach them. The observer in the plane was unhurt, and he and the doctor lifted the wounded young pilot out of his seat, and the doctor cut off the shattered leg then and there. Then the observer seized one of the precious machine guns, and the boy with his leg off seized the other, and supported by the doctor he hopped twenty yards with it to the nearest trench. There they dressed his wound and then carried him to a field ambulance. He arrived at my Officers’ Hospital at five o’clock, three hours after he was hit, as cheery as ever.