BURNING BALLOON DREAM 1916

At the beginning of September 1916, the LZ98 joined twelve other army and navy airships in a united action against London.  Over the metropolis I made the unpleasant discovery that the English had still further improved their defense system and now sent veritable hornet-swarms of single-seater combat planes against us.  Amid heavy losses of men and material, their fliers had learned to attack at night also, and their machine guns showered us with incendiary bullets.  As long as an airship flew in the dark, it was almost invisible to the enemy; but once in the clutches of a searchlight, it could be seen for miles.  In the protection of the night, the little combat planes stole unnoticed upon the enormous targets, which were at least one hundred times as large as they, and they were often within shooting distance before the German machine-gunners could open fire. A single hit in one of the gas chambers sufficed to destroy the airship and its crew.

Pretty Things: Balloon Burning (Link)

Pretty Things: Dream/Joey (Link)

From:  Zeppelin, The Story of Lighter-than-air Craft by the late Captain Ernest Lehmann, Commander of the Hindenburg, 1937.

QUIET OF THE MORNING

When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of Grosvenor Place, the gates of the park were opening and the bedraggled company of night-walkers were being at last admitted into that paradise of lawns.  Challoner and his companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile in silence in that tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary with the night’s patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the benches or wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the park had soon utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders; and the pair proceeded on their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.

Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on a mound of turf.  The young lady looked about her with relief.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘here at last we are secure from listeners.  Here, then, you shall learn and judge my history.  I could not bear that we should part, and that you should still suppose your kindness squandered upon one who was unworthy.’

Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to take a place immediately beside her, began in the following words, and with the greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life.

Excerpt From Robert Louis Stevenson (Written in collaboration with Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson), “The Squire of Dames,” from “The Dynamiter,” 1885.

Velvet Underground: Sunday Morning (wr. Reed-Cale) (Link)