Two Zouaves man an anti-aircraft gun, scanning the sky, in a 1915 advertising card for the aperitif Dubonnet. Title, Pigeon Shoot.
Tir au pigeonAdvertising sign:DubonnetVin Tonique au Quin[quina]Pigeon ShootTonic Wine with QuinineReverse:DubonnetVin Tonique au QuinquinaDubonnetTonic Wine with Quinine
". . . far overhead a double-decker English aeroplane suddenly sailed over us. It seemed to be about six thousand feet above us, so high that the sound of its motors was lost, and its speed seemed but a lazy, level drifting across the blue. . . . we watched with peculiar interest the movements of this tiny hawk.. . . A little ball of black smoke suddenly puffed out behind that sailing bird, and presently a sharp crack of bursting shrapnel shell came down to our ears. Another puff of smoke, closer, one in front, above, below. They chased round him like swallows. In all the drab hideousness of modern warfare there is nothing so airy, so piquant, so pretty as this."
Excerpt from 'In the German Trenches at La Bassée' in Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, a journalist from the neutral United States. In March, 1915 he traveled from Cologne, Germany to the front lines, arriving a few miles north of Neuve Chapelle, France, where the Battle of Neuve Chapelle had ended on March 12.
Antwerp to Gallipoli by Arthur Ruhl, pp. 132, 133, copyright © 1916 by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1916
1915-03-24, 1915, March, Anti-aircraft, anti-aircraft
