 CHAPTER I THE FRANKO-AMERICAN CORP. It was on a cool, starlit evening early in September 1916 that I first met Drew of Massachusetts and actually began my adventures as a prospective member of the Escadrilla American. We had sailed from New York by the same boat and made our applications for enlistment in the foreign legion on the same day without being aware of each other's existence, and in Paris, while waiting for our papers, we had gone every evening for dinner to the same large and gloomy-looking restaurant in the neighborhood of the Seine. As for the restaurant, we frequented it, not assuredly because of the quality of the food. We might have dined better and more cheaply elsewhere. But there was an air of vanished splendor, of faded magnificent above the place which in the capital of a warring nation appealed to both of us. Every evening the tables were laid with spotless linen and shining silver. The wine-glasses caught the light from the tarnished chandeliers in little points of color. At the dinner hour, a half-dozen ancient serving men silently took their places about the room. There was not a sound to be heard except the occasional far-off honk of a motor or one of the subdued clatter of dishes from the kitchens. The serving men, even the tables and the empty chairs, seemed to be listening, to be waiting for the guests who never came. Rarely were there more than a dozen diners out during the course of an evening. There was something mysterious in those elaborate preparations and something rather fine about them as well. But one thought, not without a touch of sadness, of the old days, when there had been laughter and lights and music, sparkling wines and brilliant talk. And now those merry-makers had gone, many of them, long ago to the wars. As it happened on this evening, Drew and I were sitting at adjoining tables. Our common citizenship was our introduction, and after five minutes of talk we learned of our common purpose in coming to France. I suppose that we must have eaten after making this latter discovery. I vaguely remember seeing our old waiter hobbling down a long vista of empty tables on his way to and from the kitchens. But if we thought of our food at all, it must have been in a purely mechanical way. Drew can talk, banjove how that man can talk. And he has a faculty of throwing the glamour of romance over the most commonplace adventures. Indeed, the difficulty which I am going to have in writing this narrative is largely due to this romantic influence of his. I might have succeeded in writing a plain tale, for I have kept my diary faithfully from day to day and can set down our adventures, such as they are, pretty much as they occurred. But Drew has bewitched me. He does not realize it, but he is a weaver of spells. And I am so amished in his moonshine that I doubt, if I shall be able to write of our experiences as they must appear to those of our comrades in the Franco-American Corps, remember them only through the medium of the revealing light of day. Not one of these men, I am sure. We confess to so strange and immediate cause for joining the aviation service, as that related to me by Drew as we sat over our coffee and cigarettes, on the evening of our first meeting. He had come to France, he said, with the intention of joining Delijon Etrager as an infantryman, but he changed his mind a few days after his arrival in Paris upon meeting Jackson of the American Aviation Squadron, who was on leave after a service of six months at the front. It was all because of the manner in which Jackson looked at a Turkish rug. He told him of his adventures in the most matter-of-fact way. No heroics, nothing of that sort. He had not a glimmer of imagination, he said, but he had a way of looking at the floor, which was irresistible, which fascinated him with the sense of height. He saw towns, villages, networks of trenches, columns of toy troops moving up ribbons of road, all in the patterns of a Turkish rug, and the next day he was at the headquarters of the Franco-American Corps, Champs Elysees, making application for membership. It is strange that we should both have come to France with so little of accurate knowledge of the Corps, of the possibilities for enlistment, and of the nature of the requirements for the service. Our knowledge of it, up to the time of sailing, had been confined to a few brief references in the press. It was perhaps necessary that its existence should not be officially recognized in America, or its furtherance encouraged, but it seemed to us, at the time, that there must have been actual discouragement on the part of the government at Washington. However, that may be. We wondered if others had followed clues so vague or a call so dimly heard. This led to a discussion of our individual aptitudes for the service, and we made many comforting discoveries about each other. It is permissible to reveal them now, for the particular encouragement of others who, like ourselves, at that time may be conscious of deficiencies, and who may think they have none of the qualities essential to this successful aviator. Drew had never been further from the ground than the top of the Woolworth Building. I had once taken a trip in a captive balloon. Drew knew nothing of motors, and had no more knowledge of mechanics than would enable him to blind a watch, without breaking the mainspring. My ignorance in this respect was a fair match for his. We were further handicapped for the French service by our lack of the language. Indeed, this seemed to be the most serious obstacle in the way to success. With a good general knowledge of the language, it seemed probable that we might be able to overcome our other deficiencies. Without it, we could see no way to mastering the mechanical knowledge which we supposed must be required as a foundation for the training of a military pilot. In this connection, it may be well to say that we have both been handicapped from the beginning. We have had to learn from actual experience in the air, and at the risk to life and limb. What many of our comrades, both French and American, knew before they had ever climbed into an aeroplane. But it is equally true that scores of men became very excellent pilots, with little or no knowledge of the mechanics of the business. So far as Drew and I were concerned, these were matters for the future. It was enough for us at the moment that our applications had been approved, our papers signed, and to-morrow we were leaving for a co-de-aviation, military, to begin our training, and so. For a long evening of pleasant talk and pleasanter anticipation of coming events, we left our restaurant and walked together through the silent streets to the palace de la Concorde. That great windy square was almost deserted. The monuments to the lost provinces bulked large in the dim twilight. Two disabled soldiers hobbled across the bridge and disappeared in the deep shade of the avenue. Their service had been rendered, their sacrifices made months ago. They could look about them now with a peculiar sense of isolation, and with perhaps a feeling of the futility of the effort they had made. Our adventures were all before us, our hearts were light and our hopes high. As we stood by the obelisk, talking over plans for the moral, we heard high overhead the faint hum of motors, and saw two lights, one green and one red, moving rapidly across the sky. A moment later the long slender finger of a searchlight probed among little heaps of cloud, then, sweeping in a wide arc, revealed the striking outline, the shape, of a huge pipeline circling over the sleeping city. It was one of the night-guards of Paris. On the following morning we were at the Guerre d'Imbolides, with our luggage, a long half-hour before train time. The luggage was absurdly bulky, Drew had two enormous suitcases in a bag, and a steamer-truck, and a family-size port-a-menteau. We looked so much the typical American tourist that we felt ashamed of ourselves, not because of our nationality, but because we revealed so plainly to all the world military, our non-military antecedents. We bore the hallmark of fifty years of neutral aloofness, of fifty years of indifference to the business of national defense. What makes the situation amusing, as a retrospect, is the fact that we were traveling on third-class military passes, as we fitted our rank as LV pilots, and soldiers of the Duxiem class. For a great discomforture, a couple of pilots volunteered their service in putting our belongings aboard the train. Then we crowded, into a third-class carriage filled with soldiers, for missionaries, blesses, reformers, men from all corners of France and her colonies. Their uniforms were faded and weather-stained with long service. The stocks of the rifles were worn smooth and bright with constant use-seats, and their packs fairly stowed themselves upon their backs. To and I felt uncomfortable in our smart civilian clothing. We looked too soft, too clean, too spick-and-span. We did not feel that we belonged there, but in a whispered conversation we comforted ourselves with the assurance that if ever America took her rifle stand with the Allies in six months after the event, hundreds of thousands of American boys would be lugging packs and rifles with the same familiarity of use as these French pilots. They would become equally good soldiers, and soon would have the same community of experience of dangers and hardships shared in common, which make men comrades and brothers, in fact as well as in theory. By the time we had reached our destination, we had persuaded ourselves into a much more comfortable frame of mind. There we piled into a cab, and soon we were rattling over the cobblestones down along Sunlit Avenue, in the direction of Bingham. It was late of a mild afternoon when we reached the summit of a high plateau, and saw before us the barracks and hangars of the Ecole d'Aviation. There was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was just sinking behind a bank of prism-cloud. The earth was already in shadow. At high overhead the light was caught and reflected from the wings of scores of aviands, which shone like polished bronze and silver. We saw the long lines of belliote monoplanes, like huge dragonflies, and as pretty a sight in the air as heart could wish. Further to the left we recognized farm and biplanes, floating battleships in comparison with the Beeroites, and twin-motor cauldrons, much more graceful and alert of movement. But most wonderful of all to us when we saw a strange new avion, a biplane, small, crim, with a body like a fish. To see it in flight was to be convinced for all time that man has mastered the air, and has outdone the birds in their own element. Never was Swallow more concisely joyous in swift flight. Our eagles so bold to take the heights or so quick to reach them, drew an eye gazed in silent wonder, our bodies jammed tightly into the cab window, and our heads craned upward. We did not come back to earth until our ancient earth-creeping conveyance brought up with a jerk, and we found ourselves in front of a gate marked Ecole d'Aviation Militaire des Bees. After we had paid the cab man, we stood on the road, with our mountain of luggage heaped about us, waiting for something to happen. A moment later a window in the administration building with thrown open, and we were greeted with a loud and not over-musical chorus of, O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, it came from one throat, belonging to a chap in leathers, who came down the drive to give us welcome. Vonage it, too sweet, he said. You can tell Americans at six hundred yards by their hats, those things in the States. Do you think we're coming in? We gave him the latest budget of home-news, whereupon he offered to take us over to the barracks. When he saw our luggage he grinned. Some equipment, believe me. Attendants on Perule, while I commandeer a battalion of animites, to help us carry it, and we'll be on our way. The animites from Indochina, who were quartered at the camp for guard and fatigue duty, came back with him about twenty strong, and we started in a long procession to the barracks. Later we took up vindictive pleasure in witnessing the beleaguered arrival of other Americans, for in nine cases out of ten they came as absurdly over-equipped as did we. Our barracks, one of many built on the same pattern, was a long, low, wooden building. Other stained, without, and whitewashed within. It had accommodation for about forty beds. One end of the room was very manifestly American. There was a phonograph on the table, baseball equipment piled in one corner, and the walls were covered with cartoons and pictures clipped from American periodicals. The other end was as evidently French, in the frugality and the neatness of its furnishings. The American end of the room looked more home-like, but the French end looked more military. Near the center, where the two nations joined, there was a very harmonious blending of these characteristics. Drew and I were delighted with all this. We were glad that we were not to live in an exclusively American barracks, for we wanted to learn French, but more than this, we wanted to live with Frenchmen on terms of barrack-room familiarity. By the time we had given in our papers at the captain's office, and had passed the hasty preliminary examination of the medical officer, it was quite dark. Flying for the day was over, and lights gleamed cheerily from the barrack-room windows. As we came down the principal street of the camp, we heard the strains of, waiting for the Robert E. Lee, to a gramophone accompaniment, issuing from the chamber dead Americans. See them shuffle along, oh, my honey babe, hear that music and song. It gave us the home feeling at once. Frenchmen and Americans were singing together, the Frenchmen in very quaint English, but hitting off the syncopated time as though they had been born and brought up to it, as we Americans have. Over in one corner a very informal class in French-English pronunciation was at work. Apparently this was Tongue Twister's night. It was the challenge from the French side, and the nearest approach to a pronunciation on the part of the Americans. With many more or less remote variations on this theme, an American realizing how difficult it is for a Frenchman to get his tongue between his teeth, counter-challenged with father. You are withered with age. The result, as might have been expected, was a series of hissing sounds of Z, whereupon there was an answering howl of derision from all the Americans. Up and down the length of the room there were little groups of two and three, chatting together in combinations of Franco-American, which must have caused all deceased professors of modern languages to spin like midgets in their grave. And throughout all this before super-marryment, one could catch the feeling of good comradeship, which so far as my experience goes is always prevalent whenever Frenchmen and Americans are gathered together. At the ordinaire, at supper-time, we saw all of the L.A.V. pilots of the school, with the exception of the non-commissioned officers who have their own mess. To drew on me, but newly come from remote America, it was the most interesting gathering. There were about 125 in all, including 18 Americans. The large majority of the Frenchmen had already been at the front in other branches of army service. There were a tilleriman, infantryman, marines, in training for the naval air service, cavalrymen, all wearing the uniforms of the arm to which they originally belonged. No one was dressed in a uniform which distinguished him as an aviator. And upon making inquiry, I found that there is no official dress for this branch of the service. During this period of training and aviation, and even after receiving his military barrette, a pilot continues to wear the dress of his former service, plus the wings on the collar, and the star and wings insignia on his right breast. This custom does not make for the fine uniform appearance of men of the British Royal Flying Corps, but it gives a picturesqueness of effect which is, perhaps, ample recompense. As for the Americans, they follow individual tastes, as we learn later. Some of the men, with an eye to color, salute the sun in the red trousers and black tunic of the artillerymen. Others choose more sober shades, various French blues, with the thin orange aviation stripe running down the seams of the trousers. All this in reference to the dress uniform. At the camp most of the men wear leathers or a combination of leathers and the blue-gray uniform of the French polio, which is issued to all Americans at the time of their enlistment. We had a very excellent supper of soup, followed by a savory roast of meat with mashed potatoes and lentils, afterward cheese and beer. I was slightly discomforted physically on learning that the beef was horse meat, but Drew convinced me that it was absurd, to let old scruples videate against a healthy appetite. In 1870 the citizens of France ate rougot d'chate with relish. Furthermore the roast was of so delicious of flavor and so closely resembled the finest cuts of beef that it was easy to persuade oneself that it was beef, after all. After the meal, to our great surprise, everyone cleaned his dishes with huge pieces of bread. Such waste seemed criminal in a country beligred by submarines. In its third year of war, and largely dependent for its food supply on the farm labor of women and children, we should not have been surprised if it had been only the Americans who were indulged in this wasteful dish-cleaning process. But the Frenchman did it, too. When I remarked upon this to one of my American comrades, a Frenchman sitting opposite said, pardon me, sir, but I must tell you what we Frenchmen are. We are very economical when it is for ourselves. We are our own families and purses that we are saving. But when it is the government which pays the bill, we do not care. We do not have to pay directly, and so we waste, we throw away. We are so careful at home, all of our lives, that this is a little pleasure for us. I have had this same observation made to me by so many Frenchmen since that time, that I believe there must be a good deal of truth in it. All of the Americans adjourned for coffee to Sirrette's, little café in the village which nestles among the hills not far from the camp. The café itself was like any one of thousands of French provincial restaurants. There was a great, dingy common room, with a sanded brick floor, and faded streamers of tricolor paper festooned in curious patterns from the smoky ceiling. The kitchen was clean and filled with the appetizing odour of good cooking. Beyond it was another inner room. Togeours réservé aux messes américans, as Montsour-Garit, the fat, genial patron, continually asserted here we gathered around a large circular table. Pipes and cigarettes were lighted, and while the others talked, Drew and I listened, and gathered impressions. For a time the conversation did not become general, and we gathered up odds and ends of it from all sides. Then it turned to the reasons which had prompted various members of the group to come to France, the topic above all others, which Drew and I most wanted to hear discussed. It seemed to me, as I listened, that we Americans closely resembled the British in our sensitive fear of any display of fine personal feeling. We will never learn to examine our emotions with anything but suspicion. If we are prompted to a course of action by generous impulses, we are anxious that others shall not be let into this secret. And so it was that of all the reasons given for offering their services to France, the first and most important was the last to be acknowledged, and even then it was admitted by some with a reluctance, nearly akin to shame. There was no man there who was not ready and willing to give his life, if necessary for the Allied cause, because he believed in it. But the admission could hardly have been dragged from him by wild horses. But the adventure of the life, the peculiar fascination of it, that was a thing which might be discussed without reserve, and the men talked of it with a willingness which was most gratifying to Drew and me, curious as we were about the life we were entering. They were all in the flesh of their first enthusiasm. They were daily enlarging their conceptions of distance and height and speed. They talked a new language and were developing a new cast of mind. They were like children who had grown up overnight. Whose horizons had been immensely broadened in the twinkling of an eye. They were still keenly conscious of the change which was upon them, for they were but fledgling arrow-vieters. They were just finding their wings. But as I listened I thought of the time which must come soon, when the air, as the sea, will be filled with stateless ships, and how the air service will develop its own peculiar type of men, and build up about them, its own laws, and its own traditions. As we walked back through this staggering village street to the camp, I tried to convey to Drew something of the new vision which had come to me during the evening. I was aglow with enthusiasm and hoped to strike an answering spark from him. But all that I was thinking and feeling then he had thought and felt, long before. I am sure that he had already experienced, in imagination, every thrill, every keen joy, and every sudden sickening fear which the life might have in store for him. For this reason I forgave him for his rather bored manner in advancing to my mood, and the more willingly because he was so full of talk about a strange illusion which he had had at the restaurant. During a moment of silence he had heard a clatter of hoofbeats in the village street. I had heard them too. Someone rode by furiously. Well, Drew said that he almost jumped from his seat, expecting him, Sirith, to throw up on the door and shout, The British are coming! He actually believed, for a second or two, that it was the year 1775, and that he was sitting in one of the old roadside ends of Massachusetts. The illusion was perfect, he said. Now why, et cetera, et cetera? At another time I should have been much interested. But in the presence of new and splendid realities I could not summon any enthusiasm for illusions. Nevertheless I should have had to listen to him indefinitely. Had it not been for an event which cut short all conversation, it ended our first day at the École d'Aviation, in a truly spectacular manner. Suddenly we heard the roar of motors just over the barracks, and at the same time the siren sounded the alarm in a series of prolonged wailing shrieks. Some belated pilot was still in the air. We rushed out to the field just as the flares were being lighted and placed on the ground in the shape of an immense tea, with the crossbar facing in the direction from which the wind was coming. By this time the hum of motors was heard at a great distance. But gradually and increased in volume and soon the light of the flares revealed the machine circling rapid over the piste. I was so much absorbed in watching this maneuver. For a landing that I did not see the crowd scattering to safe distances, I heard many voices shouting frantic warnings, and so ran forth, but in my excitement, directly within the line of the descent of the machine. I heard the wind screaming through the wires, a terrifying sound to the novice, and glassling hurriedly over my shoulders I saw what appeared to be a monster of gigantic proportions almost upon me. It passed within three meters of my head and landed just beyond. When at last I got to sleep after a day filled with interesting incidents, Paul Revere pursued me relentlessly through the mazes of a weird and horrible dream. I was on foot and shod with lead-sold boots. He was in a huge twin motor calderon and flying at a terrific pace, only a few meters from the ground. I can see him now as he leaned out over the hood of this machine and aviators' helmets set a tilt over his powdered wig, and his eyes glowing like coals through the goggles. He was waving two lighted torches and shouting, The produce are coming, the produce are coming, in a voice strangely like Drew's. Having simple civilian notions as to the amount of time necessary for dressing, Drew and I rose with the sound of the bugle on the following morning. We had promised each other that we would begin our new life in true soldier-style, and so we reluctantly hurried to the wash-house where we shaved in cold water, washed after a fasion, and then hurried back to the unheeded barrack-room. We felt refreshed, morally and physically. But our heroic examples seemed to make no impression upon our fellow aviators, whether French or American, indeed. Not one of them stirred until ten minutes before time for the morning appeal, when there was a sudden upheaval of blankets down the entire length of the room. It was as though the patients in a hospital ward had been inoculated with some wonderful instantaneous health-giving virus. Men were jumping into boots and trousers at the same time, and running to and from the wash-house, buttoning their shirts and drying their faces as they ran. It must have taken months of experiment to perfect the system whereby every one remained in bed until the last possible moment. They professed to be very proud of it. But it was clear that they felt more at ease when, Drew and I, after a week of heroic early-morning resolves, abandoned our daily test of courage. We are all, Dr. Johnson's at heart. It was a crisp, calm morning, an excellent day for flying. Already the Mechanicans were bringing out the machines and lining them up in front of the hangars, in preparation for the morning work, which began immediately after appell. Drew and I had received notice that we were to begin our training at once. Solicitous fellow countrymen had warned us to take with us all our flying clothes. We were by no means to forget our goggles and the fur-lined boots which are worn over ordinary boots as a protection against the cold. Innocently we obeyed all instructions to the letter. The absurdity of our appearance will be appreciated, only by airmen. Novices began their training at Bluroyd Monoplane Schools in Penguins, low-powered machines with clipped wings, which are not capable of leaving the ground. We were dressed as we would have no occasion to be dressed until we should be making sustained flights at high altitudes. Everyone, Frenchmen and American alike, had a good laugh at our expense, but it was one in which we joined right willingly and one kind-hearted, adjutant, one sure, in order to remove what discomfort you may have felt, told us through an interpreter that he was sure we would become good airmen. The trace spawned by Lot could be distinguished in embryo by the way he wore his goggles. The beginner's class did not start work with the others, owing to the fact that the penguins, driven by unaccustomed hands, covered a vast amount of ground in the rolling sorties back and forth across the field, therefore drew an eye had leisure to watch the others, and to see in operation the entire scheme by means of which France trains her combat pilots for the front. Exclusive of the penguin there are seven classes graded according to their degree of advancement. These, in their order, were the rolling class, a second-stage penguin class, in which one still kept on the ground, but in machines of higher speed. The first flying class short hops across the field at an altitude of two to three meters. The second flying class, where one learned to mount to and from thirty to fifty meters, and to make landings without the use of the motor tour de France, a flights about the aerodrome in a forty-five horsepower plioite tour dps, b, similar flights in a fifty-horsepower machine, the spiral class and the brevet class. Our reception committee of the day before volunteered his services as guide, and took us from one class to another, making comments upon the nature of the work of each in a bewildering combination of English and Americanized French. I understood but little of his explanation. Although later I was able to appreciate his French translation of some of our breezy Americanisms, but explanation was, for the most part, unnecessary. We could see for ourselves how the prospective pilot advanced from one class to another, becoming accustomed to machines of higher and higher power, growing his wings. Very gradually, until at last he reached the spiral class where he learned to make landings at a given spot and without the use of his motor, from an altitude of from eight hundred to one thousand meters, losing height in bull planes and serpentines. The final test for the military brevet were two cross-country flights of from two hundred to three hundred kilometers, with landings during each flight, at three points, two short voyages of sixty kilometers each, and an hour flight at a minimum altitude of two thousand meters. With all the activities of the school taking place at once, we were as excited as two boys seeing their first three-ring circus. We scarcely knew which way to turn in an anxiety to miss nothing. But my chief concern and anticipation had been this. How were English speaking, evs priots, to overcome the linguistic handicap? My uneasiness was set at rest on the first morning, when I saw how neatly most of the difficulties were overcome. Many of the Americans had no knowledge of French other than that which they had acquired since entering the French service, this as I have already hinted, had no great utilitarian value. An interpreter had been provided for them through the generosity and kindness of the Franco-American committee in Paris. But it was impossible for him to be everywhere once. And much was left to their own quickness of understanding and to the ingenuity of the monitors. The latter being French, were eloquent with their gestures. With the additional aid of a few English phrases which they had acquired from the Americans, and the simplest kind of French, they had little difficulty in making their instructions clear. Both of us felt much encouraged as we listened, for we could understand them very well. As for the business of flying, as we watched it from below, it seemed the safest and simplest thing in the world. Machines left to ground so easily, mounted and descended, with such sureness of movement that I was impatient to begin my training. I believed that I could fly at once, after a few minutes of preliminary instruction without first going through with all the tedious rolling along the ground, in low-powered machines. But before the morning's work was finished, I revised my opinion. Accidents began to happen. The first one, when one of the old family cuckoos, as the rolling machines were disdainfully called, showed a sudden burst of old time speed, and left the ground in an alarming manner. It was evident that the man who was driving it, taken completely by surprise, had lost his head, and was working the controls erratically. First he swooped upward, then dived, tipping dangerously on one wing. In this sudden emergency he had quite forgotten his newly acquired knowledge. I wondered what I would do in such a straight. When one must think with the quickness and sureness of instinct, my heart was in my mouth, for I felt certain that the man would be killed. As for the others who were watching, no one appeared to be excited. A monotour near me said, O la la, est pedo, in a mild voice. The whole affair happened so quickly, that I was not able to think myself into a similar situation before the end had come. At the last the machine made a quick swoop downward, from a height of about fifty meters, then careened upward, tipped again, and, diving sideways, struck the ground with a sickening, rendering crash, the motor going at full speed. For a moment it stood, tail in the air, then slowly the balance was lost and it fell, bottom up, and lay silent. An enterprising moving-pitcher company would have given a great deal of money to film that accident. It would have provided a splendid dramatic climax to a war-drama of high adventure. Civilian audiences would have watched in breathless, awestruck silence. But at a military school of aviation it was a different matter. O la la, est pedo, adequately gauges the degree of emotional interest taken in the incident. At the time I was surprised at this apparent callousness, when I understood it better, when I had seen scores of such accidents occur, and had watched the pilots as, in this case, crawl out from the wreckage and walk sheepishly, and a little shaken back to their classes. Although the machines were usually badly wrecked, the pilots were rarely severely hurt. The landing chassis of a brilloid is so strong that it will break the force of a very heavy fall, and the motor being in front strikes the ground first instead of pinning the pilot beneath it. To anticipate a little in more than four months of training at the brilloid school there was not a single fatality. Although as many as eleven machines were wrecked in the course of one working day and rarely less than two or three, there were so many accidents as to convince me that rewrite training for novices is a mistake from the economic point of view. The upkeep expense is vastly greater than in double command biplane schools, where the student pilot not only learns to fly in a much more stable machine, but makes all his early flights in company with a monotour who has his own set of controls and may immediately collect any mistakes in the handling. But France is not guided by questions of expense in her training of pilots de-chase, and opinion appears to be that single command monoplane training is to be preferred for the airman who is to be a combat pilot. Certain it is that men have greater confidence in themselves when they learn to fly alone from the beginning. And did rewrite, which requires the most delicate and sensitive handling, offers excellent primary schooling for the newport and SPAD, the fast and high-powered biplanes which are the avions de-chase above the French lines. A spice of interest was added to the morning's thrills when an American, not to be odd done by his French compatriot, wrecked a machine so completely that it seemed incredible that he could have escaped without serious injury, but he did. And then we witnessed the amusing spectacle of an American who had no French at all, explaining through the interpreter just how the accident had happened. I saw his monotour, who knew no English, grin in a relieved kind of way when the American crawled out from under the wreckage. The reception committee whispered to me, This is Porcoy, the best baller out we've got. Porcoy is always his first broadside. Then he wades in, and you can hear him from one end of the field to the other. A tenses! This is going to be rich. Both of them started talking at once, the monotour in French and the American in English. Then they turned to the interpreter, and anyone witnessing the conversation from a distance would have thought that he was the culprit. The American had left the ground with the wind behind him, a serious fault in an airman, and he knew it very well. Look here, Pete, he said, Tell him I know it was my fault. Tell him I took a Steve Brody. I wanted to see if the old cuckoo had any pep in her. Porcoy, Nam di doi, yes, J. V. Voye's audit, Gemes Faire, Comes Ca, Gemes Monotour a bet, Le vent, I am as rare, Gemes, Gemes! The others listened in hilarious silence, while the interpreter turned first to one, and then to the other. Tell him I took a Steve Brody. I wondered if he translated that literally. He took a chance. But it is hardly to be expected that a Frenchman would know of that daring gentleman's history. In this connection I remember little talk on caution, which was given to us later by an English-speaking monitor. It was after a rather serious accident for which the spirit of Steve Brody was again responsible. You Americans, he said, when you go to the front you will get the bosh. Let me tell you, they will kill many of you. Not one or two, very many. Accidents delayed the work of flying scarcely at all. As soon as the machine was wrecked, animites appeared on the spot to clear away the debris and take it to the repair shops, where the usable portions were quickly sorted out. We followed one of these processions in, and spent an hour watching the work of this other department of aviation, upon which our own was so entirely dependent. Their machines were being built as well as repaired. The air vibrated with the hum of machinery, with the clang of hammers upon anbils and the roar of motoroos in process of being tested. There was a small army of women doing work of many kinds. They were quite apt at it, particularly in the department where the fine, strong linen cloth, which covers the wings, was being sewn together and stretched over the framework. There were great husky peasant women doing the hardest kind of manual labor. In these days of the Great World War women are doing everything, surely, with the one exception of fighting. It is not a pleasant thing to see them, however strong they be, doing the rough course work of men, bearing great burdens on their back as though they were oxen. There must be many now whose muscles are as hard and whose hands are as horny as those of a stevedor. Several months after this time when we were transferred to another school of aviation, one of the largest in Europe, we saw women employed on a much larger scale. They lived in barracks, worked for no better than our own, not so good, in fact, and roughed it like common soldiers. Toward evening the wind freshened and flying was brought to a halt. Then the penguins were brought from their hangars, and Drew and I properly dressed this time and accompanied by some of the Americans went out to the field for our first sortie. As is usual on such occasions, there was no dearth of advice. Every graduate of the penguin class had a method of his own for keeping that unmanageable bird traveling in a direct line. And every one was only too willing to give us the benefit of his experience. Finally, out of the welter of suggestions one or two points became clear. It was important that one should give the machine full gas and get the tail off the ground. Even by skillful handling of the rudder, it might be kept traveling in the same general direction. But if, as usually happened, it showed wilful tendencies and started to turn within its own length, it was necessary to cut the contact to prevent it from whirling so rapidly as to overturn. Never have I seen a stranger sight than that of a swarm of penguins at work. They looked like a brood of prehistoric birds of enormous size, with wings too short for flight. Most unwieldy birds they were, driven by or more accurately driving beginners in the art of flying. But they ran along that came round at an amazing speed, zigzag this way and that, whirled about as if trying to catch their own tails. As we stood watching them an accident occurred which would have been laughable had we not been too nervous to enjoy it. In a distant part of the field two machines were rushing wildly about. There were acres of room in which they might pass, but after a moment of uncertainty they rushed headlong for each other, as though driven by the hand of fate and met headon with a great rendering of propellers. The onlookers along this side of the field howled and pounded each other in an ecstasy of delight, but Drew and I walked apart for a hasty consultation. For it was our turn next. We kept rehearsing the points which we were to remember in driving a penguin. Full gas and tail up at once. Through the interpreter on monitor explained very carefully what we were to do and mounted the step to show us. In turn the proper handling of the gas manate and the coupé contact button. Then he stepped down and shouted, alis en route, with a smile meant to be reassuring. I buckled myself in, fastened my helmet, and nodded to my mechanic. Coup l'engaze, he said. Coup l'engaze, I replied. He gave the propeller a few spins to suck in the mixture. Contact reduce. Contact reduce. Again he spun the propeller and the motor took. I pulled back my manate. Full gas and off. I went at what seemed to me then break deck speed, remembering instructions I pushed forward on the lever which governs the elevating planes, and up went my tail so quickly, and at such an angle that almost instinctively I cut off my contact, down-dropped my tail again, and I whirled around in a circle. My first chevelle de bruit, as this absurd-looking manoeuvre, is called. I had forgotten that I had rudder. I was like a man learning to swim, and I could not yet coordinate the movements of my hands and feet. My bird was purring gently, with the propeller turning slowly. It seemed thoroughly domesticated. I knew that I had to pull back on the manate, to transform it into a rapid bird of prey. Before starting again I looked about me, and there was Drew. Racing all over the field, suddenly he started in my direction as if the whole force of his will was turned to the business of running me down. Luckily, he shut off his motor, and by the grace of the law of inertia came to a halt when he was within a dozen paces of me. We turned our machines tail to tail, started off in opposite directions. But in a moment I was following hard after him. Almost it seemed that those evil birds had wills of their own. Drew's turned as though it were angry at the indignity of being pursued. We missed each other. But it was a near thing, and not being able to think fast enough I stalled my motor, and had to await helplessly the assistance of a mechanic. Far away at our starting point I could see the Americans waving their arms and embracing each other in huge delight. And then I realized why they had all been so eager to come with us to the field. They had been through all this. Now they were having their innings. I could hear them shouting, although their voices sounded very thin and faint. Why don't you come back? They yelled. This way. Here we are. Here's your class. They were having the time of their vindictive lives, and knew very well that we would go back if we could. Finally we began to get the hang of it. And we did go back, although by circuitous routes. But we got there, and the monitor explained again what we were to do. We were to anticipate the turn of the machine, with the rudder, just as in sailing a boat. Then we understood the difficulty. In my next sortie I fixed my eye upon the flag at the opposite side of the field, and reached it without a single severe devoy. I could have kissed the animite, who was stationed there to turn the machines, which rarely came. I had mastered the penguin. I had forced my will upon it, compelled it to do my bidding. Back across the field I went, keeping a direct course and thinking how they were all watching. The monitor, doubtless making approving comments. I reduced the gas at the proper time and taxied triumphantly to the starting point. But no one had seen my splendid sortie. Now that I had arrived, no one paid the least attention to me. All eyes returned upward and following them with my own. I saw an airplane outlined against a heaped-up pile of snow-white cloud. It was moving at tremendous speed. When suddenly it darted straight upward, wavered for a second or two, then turned slowly on one wing and felt nose down turning round and round as it fell, like a scrap of paper. It was the Vareal, the prettiest piece of aerial acrobatics that one could wish to see, was wonderful. An incredible sight. Only seven years ago Vareal crossed the English Channel. And a year earlier the world was astonished at the exploits of the Wright Brothers, who were making flights, straight-line flights, of from fifteen to twenty minutes duration. One was counting the turns of the Vareal six, seven, eight. Then the airman came out of it, on an even keel, and, nosing down to gather speed, looped twice in quick secession. Afterward he did a retornment, turning completely over in the air and going back in the opposite direction, then spiraled down and passed over our heads at about fifty meters, landing at the opposite side of the field so beautifully that it was impossible to know when the machine touched the ground. Airman taxied back to the hangars and stopped just in front of us, while we gathered round to hear the latest news from the front. For he had left the front, this birdman, only an hour before. I was incredulous at first, for I still thought of distances in the old way. But I was soon convinced, mounted on the hood, was the competent-looking Vickers machine-gun, with a long belt of cartridges in place, and on the side of the fuselage was painted the insignia of an extra-dill. The pilot was recognized as soon as he removed his helmet and goggles. He had been a monitor at the school in former days, and was well known to some of the older Americans. He greeted us all very cordially and excelled in English, and told us how, on the strength of a hard morning's work over the lines, he had asked his captain for an afternoon off, that he might visit his old friends at B. As soon as he had climbed down, those of us who had never before seen the latest type of French avion de Chase, crowded around, examining and admiring with feelings of awe and reverence. It was a marvellous piece of aerial craftsmanship, the result of more than two years of accumulating experience in military aviation. It was hard to think of this as an inanimate thing. Once having seen it in the air, it seemed living, intelligent, almost human. I could readily understand how it is that airmen become attached to the machines and speak of their fine points, their little peculiarities of individuality, with a kind of loving interest, as one might speak of a fine-spirited horse. While the Mechanicans were grooming this one and replenishing the fuel tanks, Drew and I examined it line by line, talking in low tones which seemed fitting and so splendid a presence. We climbed a step and looked down into the compact little car, where the pilot sat in a luxuriously upholstered seat. There were his compasses, his alternmer, his revolution counter, his map in its rotor case, with a course pricked out on it in a red line. Attached to the machine gun, there was an ingenious contrivance by which he fired it while still keeping a steady hand on his controls. The gun itself was fired directly through the propeller by means of a device which timed the shots. The necessity for accuracy in this timing device is clear, when one remembers that the propeller turns over at a normal rate of between 1500 and 1900 revolutions per minute. It was with a chastened spirit that I looked from this splendid fighting plane back to my little three-cylinder penguin with its absurd clipped wings and its impure tail. A moment ago it had seemed a thing of speed, and the mastery of its glorious achievement. I told Drew what my feeling was when I came racing back to the starting line, and how brief my moment of triumph had been. He answered me at first in grunts and nods, so that I knew he was not listening. Presently he began to talk about romance again, the romance of high adventure, as he called it. All this, moving his arm in a wide gesture, was but an evidence of man's unconquerable craving for romance. War itself was a manifestation of it, gave it scope, relieved the pent-up longings for which it could not find sufficient outlet in times of peace. Romance would always be one of the minor and, sometimes, one of the major causes for war. Indirectly, of course, but nonetheless really. For the craving for it was one reason why millions of men so readily accepted war at the hands of the little groups of diplomats who ruled their destinies. As we stood watching the little biplane again, climbing into the evening sky, I understood in a way what he was driving at, and with what keen anticipation he was looking forward to the time when he too would know all that there was to know of the joy of light. Higher and higher it mounted, now and then catching the sun on its silver wings in a flash of light, growing smaller and smaller until it vanished in a golden haze far to the north. It was then four o'clock, in an hour's time the pilot would be circling down over his aerodrome on the champagne front. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of High Adventure, a narrative of air-fighting in France by James Norman Hall. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Vendetti, mikevendetti.com. High Adventure, a narrative of air-fighting in France by James Norman Hall. Chapter 3 By the Route of the Air The winter of 1916 and 17 was the most prolonged and bitter that France had known in many years. It was a trying period to the little group of Americans assembled anti-cold military de-aviation, eager as they were to complete their training, and to be ready, when spring should come, to share in the great offensive, which they knew would then take place on the western front. Aviation is a waiting game at the best of seasons. In winter it is a series of seemingly endless delays, day after day. The plane on the high plateau overlooking the old city of V. Wash Thornswept, a forlorn and desolate place, as we looked at it from our windows, watching the flocks of crows as they beat up against the wind, or as they turned and were swept with it over our barracks, crying and calling derisively to us as they passed. Birdmen, you call yourselves, they seem to say. Then come on up, the weather's fine. Well, they knew that we were imposters, fair-weather fliers, who dared not accept their challenge. It is strange how vague and shadowy my remembrance is of those long weeks of inactivity. When we were dependent for employment and amusement on our own devices, to me there was a quality of unreality about our life at B. Our environment was, no doubt, partly responsible for this feeling. Although we were not far distant from Paris, less than an hour by train, the country round about our camp seemed to be quite cut off from the rest of the world, with the exception of our Sunday afternoons of leave, when we joined the boulevardiers in town. We lived a life as remote and clustered, as that of some brotherhood of monks in an inaccessible monastery. That is how it appeared to me, although, here again, I am in danger of making it seem that my own impressions were those of all the others. This, of course, was not true. The spirit of the place appealed to us, individually in wildly different ways, and upon some, perhaps, it had no effect at all. Sometimes we spent our winter afternoons of enforced leisure, in long walks through country roads which lay empty to the eye for miles. They gave one a sense of loneliness, which colored thought, not in any sentimental way, but in a manner very natural and real. The war was always in the background of one's musings, and though we were far removed from actual contact with it, every depopulated country village brought to mind the sacrifice which France has made for the cause of all freedom-loving nations. Every roadside café, long barren of its old patronage, was at evidence of the completeness of the sacrifice. Americans, for the most part, are of an unconquerably healthy cast of mind. But there were few of us who could frequent these places lightheartedly. Paris was our emotional store-house, to use Kipling's term. During the time we were at B., we spent our Sunday afternoons there, mingling with the crowds on the boulevards, or in pleasant weather sitting outside the cafés, watching the soldiers of the world go by. The streets were filled with permissioneers from all parts of the western front, and there were many of those despised of all the rest, in busquays, as they were called, who held comfortable billets in safe places well back of the lines. It was very easy to distinguish them from the men newly arrived from the trenches, in whose eyes one saw the look of wonder, almost of unbelief. That there was still a goodly world to be enjoyed. It was often beyond the pathetic to see them trying to satisfy their need for all the wholesome things of life in a brief seven days of leave. To see the family parties at the modest restaurants on the side streets, making merry in a kind of forced way, as if everyone were thinking of the brevity of the time for such enjoyment. Scarcely a week went by, without bringing one or two additional recruits to the Franco-American Corps. We wondered why they came so slowly. There must have been thousands of Americans who would have been not only willing but glad to join us, and yet the opportunities for doing so had been made widely known. For those who did come, this was the legitimate byproduct of glorious adventure and a training in aviation not to be surpassed in Europe. This was to be had by any healthy young American, almost for the asking. But our numbers increased very gradually from fifteen to twenty-five until by the spring of 1917 there were fifty of us at the various aviation schools of France. Territorially we represented at least a dozen states from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There were rich men's sons and poor men's sons among our number, the sons of very old families, and those who neither knew nor cared what their antecedents were. The same was true of our French comrades, for membership in the French Air Service is not based upon wealth or family position or political influence. The policy of the government is as broad and democratic as may be. Men are chosen because of an aptitude that promises well, or as a reward for distinguished service at the front. A few of the French invalids pilots had been officers, but most of them NCOs and private soldiers and infantry or artillery regiments. This very wide latitude in choice at first seemed laxitude to some of us Americans, but evidently experience in training war pilots and the practical results obtained by these men at the front have been proof enough for the French authorities of the folly of setting rigid standards, making hard and fast rules to be met by prospective aviators. As our own experience increased, we saw the wisdom of a policy which is more concerned with a man's courage, his self-reliance, and his powers of initiative, then with his ability to work out theoretical problems and aerodynamics. There are many French pilots with excellent records of achievement in the more flying, who have but a sketchy knowledge of motor and aircraft construction. Some are college-bred men, but many more have only a common school education. It is not at all strange that this should be the case, for one may have had no technical training worth mentioning, one may have only a casual speaking acquaintance with motors, and a very imperfect idea of why and how one is able to define the law of gravity, and yet prove his worth as a pilot in what is, after all, the best possible way, by his record at the front. A judicious amount of theoretical instruction is, of course, not wanting in the aviation schools of France, but its importance is not exaggerated. We Americans with our imperfect knowledge of the language lost the greater part of this, the handicap was not a serious one, and I think I may truthfully say that we kept pace with our French comrades. The most important thing was to gain actual flying experience, and as much of it as possible. Only in this way can one acquire a sensitive ear to motors, and an accurate sense of flying speed, the feel of one's machine in the air. These are of the greatest importance. Once a pilot has developed the airman's sixth sense, he need not, and never does, worry about the scantiness of his knowledge of the theory of flight. Since the winds would die away and the thick clouds lift, and we would go joyously to work on a morning of crisp, bright winter weather. Then we had moments of glorious revenge upon the crows. They would watch us from afar, holding noisy indignation meetings in a row of weather-beaten trees at the far side of the field. And when some inexperienced pilot lost control of his machine and came crashing to earth, they would take the air in a body circling over the wreckage, cawing and jeering with the most evident delight. The Oriental Wrecking Company, as the Ammonites were called, were on the scene almost as quickly as our enemies, the crows. They were a familiar sight on every working day, chattering together in their high-pitched gutterls as they hauled away the wrecked machines. They appeared to side with the birds, and must have thought us the most absurd of men making wings for ourselves and always coming to grief when we tried to use them. We made progress regardless of all the skepticism. It was necessarily slow, for beginners at a single-command monoplane school are permitted to fly only under the most favourable weather conditions. Even then, old Mother Earth, who was not kindly disposed towards those of her children who leave her so jauntly, clutches back to her bosom, whenever we gave her the slightest opportunity, with an embrace that was anything but tender. We were inclined to think rather highly of our own courage in defying her, and sometimes our vanity was increased by our monotourists. After an exciting misadventure they often gave expression to their belief at finding an amateur pilot still whole by praising his presence of mind in too generous French fashion. We should not have been so proud, I think, of our own exploits, had we remembered those of the pioneers in aviation, so many of whom lost their lives in experiment with the first crude types of the heavier-than-air machines. They were pioneers in the fine and splendid meaning of the word men to be compared in spirit with the old fifteenth-century navigators. We were but followers, adventuring in comparative safety along a well-defined trail. Just at any rate was Drew's opinion. He would never allow me the pleasure of indulging in any flights of fancy over these trivial adventures of ours. He would never let me set them off against the heroic background of Paris. As for Paris, he saw nothing of war there. He would say, except the lighter side, the homecoming, leave enjoying side. We needed to know more of the horror and the tragedy of it. We needed to keep that close and intimate to us as a right perspective for our future adventures. He believed it to be our duty as aviators to anticipate every kind of experience which we might have to meet at the front. His imagination was abnormally vivid. Once he discussed the possibility of falling in flames, which is so often the end of an airman's career, I shall never again be able to take the same wholehearted delight in flying that I did before he was so horribly eloquent upon the subject. He often speculated upon one's emotions in falling in a machine damaged beyond the possibility of control. I'd try to imagine it, he would say. Your gasoline tanks have been punctured, and half of your fuselage has been shot away. You believe that there is not the slightest chance for you to save your life. What are you going to do? Push your head and give up the game? No. You've got to attempt the impossible, and so on, and so forth. I would accuse him of being morbid. Furthermore, I saw no reason why we should plan for terrible emergencies which might never arrive. His answer was that we were military pilots in training for combat machines. We had no right to ignore the grimness of the business ahead of us, if we did so much to the words for us when we would go to the front. But beyond this practical interest, he had a great curiosity about the nature of fear, and a great dread of it, too. He was afraid that in some last adventure in which death came slowly enough for him to recognize it, he might die like a terror-stricken animal, and not bravely as a man should. We did not often discuss these gruesome possibilities, although this was not Druzefalt. I would not listen to him, and so we would be silent about them until convinced that the furtherance of our careers as airmen demanded additional pleasant imaginings. There was something of the Hindu fanatic in him, or perhaps it was the outcropping of the stern spirit of his New England forebearers. But when he talked of the pleasant side of the adventure before us, it was more than compensation for all the rest. Then he would make me restless and impatient, for I did not have his faculty of enjoyment in anticipation. The early period of training when we were flying only a few meters above the ground seemed endless. At last came the event which really marked the beginning of our careers as airmen. The first tour de-piste. The first flight around the aerodrome. We had talked of this for weeks, but when at last the day for it came, our enthusiasm had waned. We were eager to try our wings and yet afraid to make the start. This first tour de-piste was always the occasion for a gathering of the Americans, and there was the usual assembly present. The beginners were there to shiver in anticipation of their own forthcoming trials, and the more advanced pilots, who had already taken the leap, to offer gratuitous advice. Now don't try to pull any big league stuff. Not too much rudder on the turns. Remember how that Frenchman piled up on the farm in Lehangers When he tried to bank the corners, you'll find it pretty rotten when you go over the woods. The air currents there are something scandalous. Believe me, it's a lot worse over the fort, Rob. Oolala. And that's where you have to cut your motor and dive if you're going to make a landing without hanging up in the telephone wires. When you do come down, don't be afraid to stick her nose forward. Scare the life out of you. That drop will, but you may as well get used to it in the beginning. But wait till we see them redress. Where's the Oriental wrecking gang? Don't let that worry you, Drew. Pancaking isn't too bad. None of them will be right. Just like falling through a shingle roof can't hurt yourself much. If you do spill, make it a good one. There hasn't been a decent smash-up to-day. These were the usual comforting assurances. They did not frighten us much, although there was just enough truth in the warnings to make us uneasy. We took our hazing as well as we could inwardly, and, of course, with the imperturable calm outwardly. But to make a confession, I was somewhat reluctant to hear the business like, Hallease, enroute, of the monotour. When it came, I taxed across to the other side of the field, turned into the wind, and came racing back full motor. It seemed a thing of tremendous power, that little forty-five horsepower and zany. The roar of it stuck on into my soul, and I gripped the controls in no very professional manner. Then when I had gathered full ground speed, I eased her off gently. And up we went. Over the class and the assembled visitors above the hangars. The lake, the forest, until, at the halfway point, my altimeter registered three hundred and fifty meters. Out of the corner of my eye I saw all the beautiful countryside spread out beneath me. But I was too busy occupying to take in the prospect. I was watching my wings nervously in order to anticipate and counteract the slightest pitch of the machine. But nothing happened, and I soon realized that this first grand tour was not going to be nearly so bad as we had been led to believe. I began to enjoy it. I even looked down over the side of the fuselage. Although it was a very hasty glance. All the time I was thinking of the rapidly approaching moment when I should have to come down. I knew well enough how the descent was to be made. It was very simple. I had only to shut off a motor, push forward with my broomstick, the control connected to the elevating planes, and then wait and redress gradually. Beginning at from six to eight meters from the ground, the descent would be exciting, a little more rapid than shooting the shoots. Only one could not safely hold on to the sides of the car and await the splash. That sort of thing had sometimes been done in aeroplanes by over-excited pilots. The results were disastrous, without exception. The moment for the decision came. I was above the fort. Otherwise I should not have known when to dive. At first the sensation was I imagined exactly that of falling, feet foremost. But after pulling back slightly on the controls, I felt the machine answer to them, and the uncomfortable feeling past. I brought up on the ground in the usual bumpy manner of the beginner. Nothing gave way, however, so this did not spoil the fine rapture of a rare moment. It was shared, at least it was pleasant to think so, by my old Anamite friend of the Penguin experience, who stood by his flag nodding his head at me. He said, Bokuban, showing his polished black teeth in an approving grin, I forgot for the moment that Bokuban was his ignigual comment upon all occasions, and that he would have grinned just as broadly had he been dragging me out from a mass of wreckage. Drew came in a few moments later, making an almost perfect landing. In the evening we walked to a neighboring village, where we had a wonderful dinner to celebrate the end of our apprenticeship. It was a curious feast. We had little to say to one another, or better, we were both afraid to talk. We were under an enchantment which words would have broken. After a silent meal we walked all the way home without speaking. We started off together on our triangles. That was in April just past, so that I have now brought this casual diary almost up to date. We were then at the Great School of Aviation at A in Central France, where for the first time we were associated with men in training for every branch of aviation service, and became familiar with other types of French machines. But the brevet test, which every pilot must pass before he becomes a military aviator, were the same in every department of the school. The triangles were two cross-country flights of two hundred kilometers each, three landings to be made and wrote, and each flight to be completed within forty-eight hours. In addition, there were two short voyages of sixty kilometers each. These preceded the triangular tests, and an hour of flight at a minimum altitude of sixty-five hundred feet. The short voyages gave us a delightful foretaste of what was to come. We did them both one afternoon, and were at the hangars at five o'clock on the following morning, ready to make an early start. A fresh wind was blowing from the northeast, but the brevet mondatur, who went up for a short flight to try the air, came back with the information that it was quite calm at twenty-five hundred feet. We might start, he said, as soon as we liked. Drew, in his joy, embraced the old woman who kept a coffee stall at the hangars, while I danced a one-step with a mechanican. Neither of them was surprised at this procedure. They were accustomed to such emotional outbursts on the part of aviators, who, by the very nature of their calling, were always in the depths of despair, or on the furthest jutting peak of some mountain of delight. Our departure had been delayed day after day, for more than a week, because of the weather. We were so eager to start that we were willingly have gone off in a blizzard. During the week of waiting, we had studied our map until we knew the location of every important road and railroad, every forest, river, canal, and creek within a radius of one hundred kilometers. We studied it at close range, on a table, and then on the floor, with the compass points properly oriented, so that we might see all the important landmarks with the Birdman's Eye. We knew our course so well, that there seemed no possibility of our losing direction. Our military papers had been given us several days before. Among these was an official looking document to be presented to the mayor of any town or village near which we might be compelled to land. It contained an extract from the law concerning aviators, and the duty towards them of the civilian and military authorities. In another was an itemized list of the amounts which might be extracted by farmers for damage to growing crops. So much for an attarashaj in a field of sugar-beats, so much for wheat, etc. Besides these we had a book of detailed instructions as to our duty in case of emergencies of every conceivable kind. Among others the course of action to be followed if we should be compelled to land in an enemy country at first sight. This seemed an unnecessary precaution, but we remembered the experience of one of our French comrades at B, who started confidently off on his first cross-country flight. He lost his way and did not realize how far astray he had gone until he found himself under fire from German anti-aircraft batteries on the Belgian front. The most interesting paper of all was our order deservice, the text of which was as follows. It is commanded that the bearer of this order report himself at the cities of C and R by the route of air flying in Avion-Calderon and leaving the Ecole Militaire de Evision at A on the twenty-first of April, 1917, without passenger on board. Sainte-les-commandant, Captain D. Elcoe, Capitaine B. We read this with feelings which must have been nearly akin to those of Columbus on a memorable day in 1492 when he received his clearance papers from Cadiz by the route of the air. How the imagination lingered over that phrase. We had the better of Columbus there, although we had to admit that there was more glamour in the hazard of his adventure and the uncertainty of his destination. Drew was ready first. I helped him into his fur-lined combination and strapped him to his seat. A moment later he was off. I watched him as he gathered height over the air-drome. Then, finding that his motor was running satisfactorily, he struck out in an east-early direction, his machine growing smaller and smaller, until it vanished in the early morning haze. I followed immediately afterward and had a busy ten minutes being buffeted this way and that, until, as a brevet monitor had foretold, I reached quiet air at twenty-five hundred feet. This was my first experience in passing from one air-current to another. It was a unique one, for I was still a little incredulous. I had not entirely lost my old boyhood belief that the wind went all the way up. I passed over the old cathedral town of B at fifteen hundred meters. Many a pleasant afternoon had we spent walking through its narrow crooked streets or lounging on the banks of the canal. The cathedral, too, was a favorite haunt. I loved the fine spaciousness of it. Looking down on it now, it seemed no larger than a toy cathedral in a toy town. Such as one sees in the shops of Paris. The streets were empty. For it was not yet seven o'clock. Strips of shadow crossed them where tall roofs cut off the sunshine. A toy train, which I could have put nicely into my fountain pen case, was pulling into a station no larger than a rinse-house. The Greeks called their gods derisive. No doubt they realized how small they looked to them, and how insignificant this little world of affairs must have appeared from high Olympus. There was a road, a fine straight thoroughfare, converging from the left. It led almost due south-west. This was my route to sea. I followed it, climbing steadily until I was at two thousand meters. I had never flown so high before. Over a mile, I thought. It seemed a tremendous altitude. I could see scores of villages and fine old chateaus, and great stretches of forest and miles upon miles of open country in checkered patterns, just beginning to show the first fresh green of the early spring crops. It looked like a world planned and laid out by the best of Santa Clauses for the eternal delight of all good children. And, for untold generations, only the birds have had the privilege of seeing and enjoying it from the wing. Small wonder that they sing. As for non-musical birds, well, they all sing after a fashion, and there is no doubt the crows, at least, are extremely jealous of their prerogative of flight. My biplane was flying itself. I had nothing to do other than to give occasional attention to the revolution counter, altimeter, and speed dial. The motor was running with perfect regularity. The propeller was turning over at twelve hundred revolutions per minute without the slightest fluctuation. Flying is the simplest thing in the world, I thought. Why doesn't everyone travel by route of the air? If people knew the joy of it, the exhilaration of it, aviation schools would be overwhelmed with applicants. Biplanes of the Farman and Vison type would make excellent family cars. Quite safe for women to drive. Mothers, busy with household affairs, could tell their children to run out and fly a calderon such as I was driving, and feel not the slightest anxiety about them. I remember an imaginative drawing I had once seen of aerial activity in 1950. Even house pets were granted the privilege of traveling by the air route. The artist was not far wrong except in his date. He should have put it at nineteen twenty-five. On a fine April morning there seemed no limit to the realization of such interesting possibilities. I had no more than started my south-west course, as it seemed to me when I saw the spires of the red-roofed houses of sea. And a kilometer or so from the outskirts, the barracks and hangars of the Ave. Asian school where I was to make the first landing. I reduced the gas and, with the motor purring gently, began a long, gradual descent. It was interesting to watch the change in the appearance of the country beneath me as I lost height. Checkerboard patterns of brown and green grew larger and larger. Shining threads of silver became rivers and canals. Tiny green shrubs became trees. Individual aspects of houses emerged. Soon I could see people going about the streets and lorry-maids hanging out the family washing in the back gardens. I even came low enough to witness a minor household tragedy. A mother vigorously spanking a small boy. Hearing the whir of my motor she stopped in the midst of the process whereupon the youngster very naturally took advantage of his opportunity to cut and run for it. Drew doubted my veracity when I told him about this. He called me an aerial eavesdropper and said I ought to be ashamed to go buzzing over towns at such low altitudes, frightening housemaids, disorganizing domestic penal institutions, and generally disturbing the privacy of respectable French citizens. But I was unrepentant, for I knew that one small boy in France was thanking me with joy. To have escaped, maternal justice with the assistance of an aviator would be an event of glorious memory to him. How vastly more worthwhile such a method of escape and how jubilant Tom Sawyer would have been over such an opportunity when his horrified warning, Look behind you aunt, had lost efficiency. Drew had been waiting a quarter of an hour and came rushing out to meet me as I taxied across the field. We shook hands as though he had not seen each other for years. We could not have been more surprised and delighted if we had met on another planet after long and hopeless wanderings in space. While I superintended the replenishing my fuel and oil tanks, he walked excitedly up and down in front of the hangars. He was an odd-looking sight and he'd flying close, with a pair of Merowitz Glogels set back on his head, like another set of eyes gazing at the sky with an air of wide astonishment. He paid no attention to my critical comments, but started thinking aloud as soon as I rejoined him. It was lonely, yes by Jove, that it was, a glorious thing, one's isolation up there, but it was too profound to be pleasant, a relief to get down again to hear people talk, to feel the solid earth under one's feet. How did it impress you? This was like Drew. I felt ashamed of the lightness of my own thoughts, but I had to tell him of my speculation upon the after-the-war developments in aviation. Nurses flying by-sons, with the cars filled with babies, old men having after-dinner naps in twenty-three meter near-ports, fitted for safety with sparing gyroscopes, family parties taking comfortable outings in gigantic bi-planes of the R6 type, mothers as of old, gazing apprehensively at speed dials cautioning fathers about driving too fast, and all the rest. Drew looked at me reprovingly to be sure, but felt the need, just as I did, of an outlet to his feelings, and so he turned to this kind of comic relief with the most delightful reluctance. He quickly lost his resolve, and in the imaginative spree which followed he went afar beyond the last outpost of absurdity. We laughed over our own wit, until our faces were tired. However, I will not be explicit about our folly. It might not be so amusing from a critical point of view. After our papers have been viscid at the office of the Commandant, we hurried back to our machines, eager to be away again. We were to make our second landing at R. This was about seventy kilometers distant and almost due north. The mere name of the town was an invitation. Somewhere, in one of the novels of William J. Locke, may be found this bit of dialogue. But, Master, said I, there is, after all, color in words. Don't you remember how delighted you were with the name of a little town we passed through on the way to Orleans, R? You were haunted by it, and said it was like the purple note of an organ. We were haunted by it, too. For we were going to that prairie town. We would see it long before our arrival, a cluster of quaint old houses lying in the midst of pleasant fields, with roads curving toward it from the north and south, as though they were glad to pass through so delightful a place. Drew was for taking a leisurely route to the eastward, so that we might look at some village which laid some distance off our course. I wanted to fly by a compass in a direct line without falling my map very closely. We had planned to fly together, and were more than eager to do this because of an argument we had had about the relative speed of our machines. He was certain that his was faster. I knew that with mine I could fly circles around him. As we were not able to agree on the course, we decided to postpone the race until we started on our homeward journey. Therefore, after we had passed over the road, he waved his hand, bent off to the northeast, and was soon out of sight. I kept straight on, climbing steadily until I was again at five thousand feet, as before my motor was running perfectly, and I had plenty of leisure, to enjoy the always-new sensation of flight and to watch the wide expanse of magnificent country as it moved slowly past. I let my mind lie fallow, and even now and then I would find it hauling out fragments of old memories which I had forgotten that I possessed. I recalled for the first time in many years my earliest interpretations of the meanings of all the phenomena of the heavens. Two old janitor saints had charge of the floor of the skies. One of them was a jolly old man who liked boys, and always kept the sky swept clean and blue. The other took sour delight in shirking his duties, so that it might rain and spoil all our fun. Perhaps it was Drew's sense of loneliness and helplessness so far from earth, which made him think of winds and clouds in friendly human terms. However that may be. These reveries, hardly worthy of a military airman, were abruptly broken into. All at once I realized that while my biplane was headed to north, I was drifting north and west. This seemed strange. I puzzled over it for some time and then brilliantly, in the manner of the novice, deducted the reason, wind. I was being blown off my course, all the while comfortably certain that I was flying in a direct line towards R. Our monitors had often cautioned us against being comfortably certain about anything, while in the air. It was our duty to be uncomfortably alert, wind. I wonder how many times we had been told to keep it in mind at all times, whether on the ground or in the air. And here I was, forgetting the existence of wind on the very first occasion. The speed of my machine and the current of air from the propeller had deceived me into thinking that I was driving dead into whatever breeze there was at that altitude. I discovered that it was blowing out of the east, therefore I headed a quarter into it, to overcome the drift and look for landmarks. I had not long to search, whists of mist obstructed the view and within ten minutes a bank of solid cloud cut it off, completely. I had only a vague notion of my location with reference to my course, but I could not persuade myself to come down just then, to be flying in the full splendor of bright April sunshine, knowing that all the earth was in shadow, gave me a feeling of exhilaration, for there is no sensation like that of flight, no isolation so complete as that of the airman, who was has above him only the blue sky and below, a level floor of pure white cloud, stretching in an unbroken expanse towards every horizon. And so I kept my machine headed northeast, that I might regain the ground lost before I discovered the drift northwest. I had made a rough calculation of the time required to cover the seventy kilometers to arm, at the speed at which I was traveling. The rest I left to chance, the godfather of all adventurers. He took the initiative, as he so frequently does with aviators who in moments of calm weather are inclined to forget that they are still children of earth. The floor of dazzling white cloud was broken and tumbled into heaped up masses which came drifting by at various altitudes. They were scattered at first and offered splendid opportunities for aerial steeple-chasing. Then almost before I was aware of it they surrounded me on all sides. For a few minutes I avoided them by flying in curves and circles, in rapidly vanishing pools of blue sky. I feared to take my first plunge into a cloud, for I knew by report what an alarming experience it is to the new pilot. The wind was no longer blowing steadily out of the east, it came in gusts from all points of the compass. I made a haste revision of my opinion as to the calm and tranquil joys of aviation, thinking of what fools men are who willingly leave the good green earth and trust themselves to all the winds of heaven in a frail box of cloth-covered sticks. The last clear space grew smaller and smaller. I searched for an outlet, but the clouds closed in and in a moment I was hopelessly lost in a blanket of cold, drenching mist. I could hardly see the outlines of a machine and had no idea of my position with reference to the earth. In the excitement of this new adventure I forgot to speed-dial, and it was not until I heard the air screaming through the wires that I remembered it. The indicator had leapt up fifty kilometers an hour, above safety speed, and I realized that I am less to be traveling earthward at a terrific pace. The manner of the descent became clear at the same moment. As I rolled out of the cloud bank I saw the earth jotterly tilted up on one rim, looking like a gigantic enlargement of a page of Peter Newell's slant book. I expected to see dogs and dishpans, baby carriages, and ash barrels roll out of every house in France and go clattering off into space.