to glide back into safety, we had to fight our way home slowly
against a head-wind exposed to Archies and Hun planes. Somewhere
east of Bapaume on a return journey Peter fell in with Lensch - at
least the German Press gave Lensch the credit. His petrol tank was
shot to bits and he was forced to descend in a wood near Morchies.
'The celebrated British airman, Pinner,' in the words of the German
communique, was made prisoner.

I had no letter from him till the beginning of the New Year,
when I was preparing to return to France. It was a very contented
letter. He seemed to have been fairly well treated, though he had
always a low standard of what he expected from the world in the
way of comfort. I inferred that his captors had not identified in the
brilliant airman the Dutch miscreant who a year before had broken
out of a German jail. He had discovered the pleasures of reading
and had perfected himself in an art which he had once practised
indifferently. Somehow or other he had got a _Pilgrim's _Progress,
from which he seemed to extract enormous pleasure. And then at
the end, quite casually, he mentioned that he had been badly
wounded and that his left leg would never be much use again.

After that I got frequent letters, and I wrote to him every week
and sent him every kind of parcel I could think of. His letters used
to make me both ashamed and happy. I had always banked on old
Peter, and here he was behaving like an early Christian martyr -
never a word of complaint, and just as cheery as if it were a winter
morning on the high veld and we were off to ride down springbok.
I knew what the loss of a leg must mean to him, for bodily fitness
had always been his pride. The rest of life must have unrolled itself
before him very drab and dusty to the grave. But he wrote as if he