On the morning of October 2, 1916, locals descended upon a field in Potters Bar, each paying the farm\u2019s owner a shilling to see the wreckage of a German zeppelin that had been brought down there during the night. Germany\u2019s Super Zeppelin L31<\/em>, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Heinrich Mathy, had crossed the North Sea on a mission to bomb London, a city that had been under attack from the air since early 1915.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite their relatively low casualty rates, zeppelin air raids were a terrifying aspect of the new warfare confronting Britain. Of an air raid in late 1915, D.H. Lawrence famously wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I cannot get over it, that the moon is not Queen of the sky by night, and the stars the lesser lights. It seems the Zeppelin is in the zenith of the night, golden like a moon, having taken control of the sky; and the bursting shells are the lesser lights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it seems our cosmos is burst, burst at last, the stars and moon blown away, the envelope of the sky burst out, and a new cosmos appeared, with a long-ovate, gleaming central luminary, calm and drifting in a glow of light, like a new moon, with its light bursting in flashes on the earth, to burst away the earth also. So it is the end\u2014our world is gone, and we are like dust in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A new natural order, unnaturally wrought, had overturned the world, and Londoners lived each night knowing that they may be blasted out of existence from on high without warning. Even so, many on the ground\u2014including Lawrence\u2014could not resist witnessing the massive zeppelins as they floated through the night sky. These spectators stood in the streets, unprotected, knowing the power of the bombs that might be dropped at any moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n