Free Casca 21: The Trench Soldier by Barry Sadler

They looked so pathetic, their activity so pointless and random. Killing one of them would be like crushing an ant.
    "No," he replied, "it's a waste of ammo, and one of them might get lucky and hit us."
    The captain nodded and jerked at the line that ran through loops along the tether line, and a moment later Casca felt the balloon start to move back toward the British lines as the Tommies at the aeronaut station hauled them in.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The commanders on both sides remained cautious, the two forces sitting just out of sight of each other, separated by the gently rolling river plains of French farmland.
    Casca's company was at breakfast when alarms sounded, and they raced for the trenches. But there were no troops rushing across the enlarged no-man's-land. The threat was in the air.
    An enormous dirigible was maneuvering a few hundred yards toward the British lines and perhaps two hundred feet above the ground.
    Officers were shouting orders. Men were trying to tilt the machine guns in its direction. Casca and most of the infantrymen were firing their rifles at the gleaming ship. Although it was moving at about the speed of a motor car, perhaps fifty miles an hour, Casca considered that the huge ship made an easy target as it traveled in a straight line and stayed at the same height.
    The Zeppelin made a number of passes back and forth and then dropped lower and cruised along directly above the trenches. Explosions erupted beneath it, and fires broke out in the trenches. As it approached Casca could see half a dozen bombs the size of pineapples falling toward his trench, and then he saw a much bigger bomb, the size of a large oil drum.
    Every gun was now aimed at the giant airship, and thousands of rounds were being fired at it, the tracer rounds from the machine guns gleaming white in the sunlight. Either they were deflected from the huge metal frame, or they passed harmlessly through the hydrogen bags, but they seemed to have no effect.
    The bombs crashed into the trench around the dog-leg where Casca crouched. There was a deafening roar and a great eruption of orange flame. The blast of hot air almost knocked Casca off his feet. Then one of the smaller bombs landed a few yards away, filling the trench with fire. Several men burst into flames where they stood and ran about the trench like screaming torches until they died on their feet. A second large bomb exploded on the ground beyond the trench.
    As the ship passed overhead Casca could easily read the name in huge letters on its side: Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin-L.3.
    Casca estimated that the flying ship was at least five hundred feet long. German sailors were firing rifles from the gondola that hung below the balloon and at the rear Casca could see the three huge propellers that pushed the mighty ship through the air.
    Somewhere some bullets took effect, probably the heat of a tracer ignited the hydrogen. There was a bright flash. The Germans in the gondola stopped shooting and started to run about in a panic. One of the great propellers stopped turning. The big ship turned sideways in the air and began to slip toward the ground.
    It dropped closer and closer to the ground. The nose rose skyward as if it were trying to gain height, but the rear sagged more toward the ground as it passed away from the British trenches and back toward the ridge that concealed the German lines.
    But it failed to clear the ridge. The propellers at the sagging rear fouled in the treetops, and the big ship came to a stop. There was a flash of bright flame, followed by a dull crash and then an explosion. Flames darted upward from the propeller area and played around the rigid casing of the balloon.
    A great white flash tore the shell apart and a moment later the sound of an enormous explosion came to the watching Tommies. More flashes were followed by more explosions as one after another the hydrogen-filled compartments exploded.
    The fire seemed to have started toward the rear of the