"Go and 'phone to Luxeuil! Say we've had engine failure!"
On the way to the road I passed a French priest--an amazed little figure
in black--who had seen this winged monster drop out of the skies to his
feet. Already from the town were pouring the excited people, who had
thought at first that our machine was a German one.
Before I got into the town I met a grey naval car, which was attached to
the aerodrome, and had chanced to be near, and had followed us when we
came down. I hurried back to the machine. It had been landed with
wonderful skill by the pilot on a sloping field, into which he had
side-slipped. Not a wire of it had been broken in spite of its weight
and its heavy load.
The rest of the evening is a confused memory of a high tea in the little
hotel--a meal of countless omelettes, grey vinegarish bread, coffee,
and butter of sorts: of a long, long drive, sitting in the floor of a
crowded car, rushing under the stars and the trees which hissed at us
one by one for mile after mile as we whirled down the winding roads: of
arriving in the dark at an apparently limitless aerodrome, strangely
full of British and Canadian officers in this remote corner of France:
of going to bed in the Hotel de la Pomme d'Or in the town of Luxeuil.
Next day we returned to the machine, which was surrounded by an enormous
crowd of curious peasants. My pilot wished to open a tool-box, and asked
the C.O. for the keys. The C.O., dreading that he might lose them, had
handed them on to me. When I looked for them, I found I had lost them!
My pilot, in his irritation, stood me up in front of the open-eyed
French people and searched me all over. To my shame he found the keys in
one of my pockets! The C.O. said to me afterwards--
"Thank Heaven, I gave them to you, or he would have searched me!"
The machine was repaired. The engines were started. I stayed on the
ground and helped to keep the field clear. (French people _will_ insist
on running in front of an aeroplane as it gathers speed on the
ground--in order to see it better!) It rose up into the air, and turned
round towards Luxeuil, to which I went in a car.
Then began strange months in the wild forest country of the Haute Saone.
They were days of flying over the snow-clad country, when you could see,
hanging like dream-castles above the haze of the horizon, the whole
panorama of the Alps from the Matterhorn to Mont Blanc--sublime summits,
pure sun-kissed white against the thin blue of the November sky. They
were days of long drowsy motor drives through the Vosges to the deserted
city of Belfort, with its few collapsed houses to give witness of its
nearness to the lines,--days in which I became an inhabitant of the
historical town of Luxeuil-les-Bains.
This old town was very interesting. Some of its buildings went back to
1200 A.D. Its thermal establishments (so frequent in this part of
France, where every town almost is--_les-Bains_) were full of relics of
the former Roman baths.
In the old cathedral I saw one of the most crude and striking examples
of modernity which I have ever met. As I sat in the tall and gloomy
building at twilight one day, the verger asked me if I would like to see
how he rang the Angelus. He led me to an old stone room, on one wall of
which was a large shiny black switch-board, studded with copper switches
and other electrical devices. He pulled down one switch--high in the
belfry a bell chimed three times. He pushed the switch up and pulled it
down again. Once more the bell chimed three times. He did this a third
time, and then rang the bell continuously for a little while.
He seemed to have great pride in such an up-to-date affair, but to see
the Angelus rung by electricity in an old church was distressing. He
followed up the performance by tolling a knell for the dead. He pulled
another lever, and left it down for five minutes, during which a deep
bell slowly rang.
"They pay five francs for that!" he said with gusto, as he looked at
his watch and pushed up the lever again.
There were no British troops within a hundred miles of the place. The
officers and men of the naval flying wing were the only British there,
and they must have seemed strange to the French people.
We had amusing evenings, and became quite French in our ways. We dined
off frogs' legs and pike fresh taken from the tank in the yard of the
restaurant. We went to organ recitals in the cathedral, and paid visits
to learn French and to exchange conversations. Of course, in our turn,
we introduced the custom of taking tea in the afternoon. Wherever we
were in France, we demanded, at four o'clock, tea, bread and butter,
honey and cakes. It amazed the French people, but we generally got it. I
do not think they understood it at all, because one evening after dinner
I asked for a cup of tea instead of coffee, and it came accompanied by a
plate of cakes, and, I believe, bread and honey. I had to explain that
an Englishman _can_ drink tea alone. It is amusing how an Englishman
always takes his customs with him, and, instead of doing in Rome as the
Romans do, rather makes Rome do what is done in London.
Bacon and eggs for breakfast; meat and vegetables _together_ for lunch;
tea and cake and bread and butter and honey for tea in the
afternoon--says the Englishman. If he does not get this, he
exclaims--"My hat! What a place!" as he walks indignantly out of the
hotel.
Among other things, I learnt how to fly, at Luxeuil, and found it very
much like learning to ride a bicycle. It has the same fascination and
the same characteristics. You have the same certainty, to begin with,
that you will never be able to do it; you know the same triumph of
achievement when you fly ten yards alone; and when you are flying along
smoothly in complete confidence that the instructor is holding the
controls and is checking you the whole time, you turn round, see he is
looking over the side, become overtaken with nervousness, and dive and
climb, and slip and slew, in a fever of anxiety and dread.
The advantage of being able to fly yourself is that if you feel
depressed and weary of the ground, and of the people on it, you can get
a book, jump into an aeroplane, and shoot up into the solitude of the
sky. When you have climbed three or four thousand feet you can bring out
your book, and go round and round in great circles far away from the
earth in utter seclusion, reading sublime verse, and dreaming of any
unreality you desire.
The tranquillity of these days was ended suddenly by a rather welcome
order to proceed to the advanced base at Ochey-les-Bains, near Nancy,
from which raids were to be carried out at once.
Over miles of ravine and forest, over Plombieres and Remiremont and
Epinal, over winding river and rolling down, we flew till we approached
the region of Nancy, where a few kite-balloons hanging above the haze
showed us that we were near the lines. We landed on the wide French
aerodrome, and once again met a crowd of English officers in a strange
corner of France.
We began to prepare at once for a night raid on some blast-furnaces
beyond Metz. My pilot and I had never flown before at night, and had
never crossed the lines. With mingled trepidation and excitement we
awaited the first voyage amidst the darkness and the stars beyond the
frontier of Alsace into what was then Germany--with its unknown dangers
and its unknown difficulties.