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In WW1 an attack by either side was usually preceded by a heavy bombardment. This was meant to chew up the enemy's barbed-wire and to put out of action as many of his machine-gun emplacements as possible. When the attacking infantry jumped off from its own front line it had to penetrate first the enemy's wire and front-line trench, then make its way through a maze of supporting trenches and machine-gun nests. An attempt was made to maintain a curtain of bursting shells, a [[underline]] barrage,[[/underline]] a hundred yerds or so in front of the advancing infantry. If the barrage ran too far ahead it was useless. If it fell short you killed your own men. So it was important for the division headquarters to know at each moment, just where their front-line attackers were. The leading wave could not unroll field telephones as they advanced. The wires would have been broken at once by the enemy's shelling. You could not send runners back to report their advance. That took too long even if the runners had managed to get through, which almost certainly they could not do. So the French workedrout a system using observation planes. Before the attack the infantry would be informed that they would have a support plane, identified by a special marking (e. g. a white streamer on the right wing.) From time to time this plane would fly low ahead of the advancing infantry and fire a signal rocket , which also was described in the orders (e.g. a rocket giving off six green balls of fire). At that signal the infantry of the most advanced line, but none further back, were to display small white panels of cloth spread out on the ground. This was not as risky as it sounds, for the infantrymen in position to respond were usually lying down behind whatever [[crossed out]]cov[[/crossed out]] cover they could find, and they could easily unroll a 20-inch square of cloth on the ground behind them. One infantryman in each squad of eight carried such a panel.It was khali on one side, white on the other, and ordinarily was carried rolled with the khaki side out. The observer in the plane would make a little X on his battle map to show the position of each panel in sight. He would then fire another rocket meaning "Understood" and get the hell out of there. He would t take the map back to division headquarters and dro1/2 it, noting the exact time of this reading.

 
Next time maybe I'll tell you about my first experience with that sort of mission. It was rather exciting.