Free Casca 21: The Trench Soldier by Barry Sadler Page A

gondola where the propellers were jammed in the treetops. Casca could see men leaping from the front of the gondola to the ground, but this part of the ship was still at least a hundred feet high, and none of the men moved after they hit the ground.
    The flames spread as dead trees were set afire, and there were still more explosions as successive compartments of hydrogen ignited.
    Slowly the nose of the ship came down, the gondola flattening its length among the dead trees. Now scores of men were leaping to the ground and running from the ship. The great rigid gas bag was collapsing over the wreck of the gondola.
    Suddenly the whole ship disappeared in a great white flash. The running men burst into flames and fell writhing to the ground, and all around dead trees burst into flame.
    Casca stood staring in the direction of the flames, reflecting that just yesterday he had been flying in a similar, though very much smaller balloon. And as he watched the Germans frying in their tracks, he thought grimly that, no doubt, he would soon be flying in one again.

CHAPTER NINE
    Although the British Army had been using hydrogen and hot air balloons for observation purposes since 1884, when they had been introduced into the African campaigns, there was no organized system for utilization of the information that was gathered. Balloon observers identified objectives and passed the relevant map coordinates to gunners by carrier pigeon. The observers also spotted where artillery shells were falling and corrected the gunners' aim with pigeon-carried messages. Artillery officers, however, had little faith in such information and tended to vary it according to information from other sources or through their own intuition.
    The difficulties of aerial navigation were considerable, particularly in terrain such as the rolling river valleys of this part of France. There were no dramatically significant landmarks. Farms, roads, rivers, villages, churches were all of similar size, and when viewed from a height were virtually identical.
    The speed of a balloon in flight was almost impossible to calculate, so that, once out of sight of their own lines, balloon observers were forced to operate almost entirely by guesswork, although they called it dead reckoning.
    Because of these problems, headquarters staff generally discounted or ignored strategic information supplied by the aeronauts on the basis that it could be dangerous to act on information that was of dubious accuracy. But Major Cartwright was convinced of the value of the aerial information and had come up with the idea that it could best be validated by the same observer walking over the ground and confirming or modifying the data.
    So shortly after dark Casca found himself in company with six other men crossing no-man's-land, heading for the German lines which were now about five miles distant. Sergeant George was in charge of the party and, for once, was not wearing a kilt but a conventional uniform like the others. All of them were smeared from head to foot in black mud, their faces and hands blackened with soot. Cockney Dave and Hugh Edwards had volunteered to come along, and two more Welsh miners and a Highlander made up the team. For his new responsibilities and in recognition of his service, Casca was promoted to corporal.
    There was a fine September moon and their progress was easy enough for the first mile or so. They made their way across the pockmarked landscape skirting shell craters and wading across numerous small streams. They came to the Vesle River at a point where it was crossed by a broad road running east to the city of Rheims. They were still more than a mile from the Aisne River and the troops that Casca had spotted from the air, but there was a large force of Germans on the bridge and, Casca guessed, other detachments patrolling the adjacent area.
    Casca had easily persuaded Major Cartwright to open up the armory, and each man was well provided with ammunition and