…... which meant patrolling in a triangle, the points of which were Arras – Lens - Douai.
We were, of course, muffled up to the eyes and wore fleece-lined thigh boots drawn up over a fleece or fur-lined Sidcot suit, a fur-lined helmet complete with chin guard and goggles with a strip of fur all round them. Any parts of bare skin left open to the air were well coated with whale oil
to prevent frost bite. For our hands we found that an 
ordinary pair of thin silk gloves, if put on warm and then covered with the ordinary leather gauntlet gloves, retained enough heat for the whole patrol, It was essential that a start should be made with plenty of warmth inside the clothing, for such heat could be retained; but if one started cold it was impossible ever to generate sufficient heat from the body, and I remember once having to come down from 3,000 feet only, so frozen that I had only just power to land the machine. I was incapable of pressing the triggers of the guns and had to be helped out of the machine and carried away.
Emerging from the mess we got into our machines, tested the engines, waved away the chocks (wooden blocks put in front of the wheels to prevent the machine running away while being tested) and opened our engines out into the darkness. While gaining height we saw away on our starboard beam a dark mass, which we knew to be the town of Arras, while the silvery twisting thread straggling eastward showed us the River Scarpe. An occasional bursting shell and some Verey Lights betrayed the whereabouts of the lines, while a star shell threw into clear relief the chalky contour of the Hindenburg line. Rudely we disturbed that quiet hour before the dawn, seeming the only living things in a sleeping world, and that curious light which precedes the dawn showed us the earth below softly stippled as though an artist had worked through the night on the whole vast canvas of the earth, softening the sharp outline of cities and reducing railways, roads and fields to a blur.
A rosy glow to eastward heralded the approaching dawn and we were getting into a good position to fly back towards our own lines with the sun behind us and so surprise any unwary early birds of the enemy. But before going on to describe the rest of this patrol I want to make an attempt to convey a picture of a sunrise from the air, I have once or twice seen the sun rise twice on the same morning, once from 18,000 feet up and again after I had landed. To the fighting pilot the sun was a wonderful friend when it was in the right position, for when he could attack with it behind his back there was little likelihood of the enemy seeing his approach.
