Page:Air Service Boys over the Rhine.djvu/182

172 could be poured on it, as well as bombs be dropped from some machines especially fitted for that work.

Camp Lincoln, where the picked squadron was situated, was in the neighborhood of Soissons, France, in a sector held by the French troops. The lines of German and French trenches, with No Man's Land in between, was about ten miles to the east of this point. This section had changed hands twice, once being occupied by the Germans, and then abandoned by them when they made the great withdrawal.

Now, perhaps ten miles back of the German trenches, the great gun was hidden, making its total distance from Paris about eighty miles, but its distance from Camp Lincoln something less than twenty miles.

Modern guns easily shoot that distance, but the commander of the forces in this section was going to shorten that. Soissons was the nearest large city to the camp. As a matter of fact the air squadron was some distance east of that place, and nearer the battleline. So that it was comparatively easy, once the location of the big gun was known, to bring up heavy artillery behind the French lines to batter away at its emplacement.

After a night of arduous labor, during which there was anxiety lest the Germans find out