loneliness. I remembered what J. B. had said that morning. There _was_
something unpleasant in the isolation; it made us look longingly down
to earth, wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the
air. I, too, longed for the sound of human voices, and all that I
heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through
wires and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are
no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on
a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this feeling, and no doubt in part
responsible for it, was the knowledge of the fallibility of that
seemingly perfect mechanism which rode so steadily through the air; of
the quick response that ingenious arrangement of inanimate matter
would make to an eternal and inexorable law if a few frail wires
should part; of the equally quick, but less phlegmatic response of
another fallible mechanism, capable of registering horror, capable--it
is said--of passing its past life in review in the space of a few
seconds, and then--capable of becoming equally inanimate matter.
Luckily nothing of this sort happened, and the feeling of loneliness
passed the moment I came in sight of the long rows of barracks, the
hangars and machine shops of the aviation school. My joy when I saw
them can only be appreciated in full by fellow aviators who remember
the end of their own first long flight. I had been away for years. I
would not have been surprised to find great changes. If the brevet
monitor had come hobbling out to meet me holding an ear trumpet in his
withered hand, the sight would have been quite in keeping with my own
sense of the lapse of time. However, he approached with his ancient
springy, businesslike step, as I climbed down from my machine. I
swallowed to clear the passage to my ears, and heard him say, "Alors
ça va?" in a most disappointingly perfunctory tone of voice.
I nodded.
"Where's your biograph?"
My biograph! It is the altitude-registering instrument which also
marks, on a cross-lined chart, the time consumed on each lap of an
aerial voyage. My card should have shown four neat outlines in ink,
something like this--
[Illustration]
one for each stage of my journey, including the forced landing when I
had lost my way. But having started the mechanism going upon leaving
A----, I had then forgotten all about it, so that it had gone on
running while my machine was on the ground as well as during the time
it was in the air. The result was a sketch of a magnificent mountain
range which might have been drawn by the futurist son, aged five, of a
futurist artist. Silently I handed over the instrument. The monitor
looked at it, and then at me without comment. But there is an
international language of facial expression, and his said,
unmistakably, "You poor, simple prune! You choice sample of mouldy
American cheese!"
J. B. didn't return until the following afternoon. After leaving me
over C----, he had blown out two spark-plugs. For a while he limped
along on six cylinders, and then landed in a field three kilometres
from the nearest town. His French, which is worse, if that is
possible, than mine, aroused the suspicions of a patriot farmer, who
collared him as a possible German spy. Under a bodyguard of two
peasants, armed with hoes, he was marched to a neighboring château.
And then, I should have thought, he would have had another historical
illusion,--this time with a French Revolutionary setting. He says not,
however. All his faculties were concentrated in enjoying this unusual
adventure; and he was wondering what the outcome of it would be. At
the château he met a fine old gentleman who spoke English with that
nicety of utterance which only a cultivated Frenchman can achieve. He
had no difficulty in clearing himself. Then he had dinner in a hall
hung with armor and hunting trophies, was shown to a chamber half as
large as the lounge at the Harvard Club, and slept in a bed which he
got into by means of a ladder of carved oak. This is a mere outline.
Out of regard for J. B.'s opinions about the sanctities of his own
personal adventures, I refrain from giving further details.
These were the usual experiences which every American pilot has had
while on his brevet flights. As I write I think of scores of others,
for they were of almost daily occurrence.
Jackson landed--unintentionally, of course--in a town square and was
banqueted by the Mayor, although he had nearly run him down a few
hours earlier, and had ruined forever his reputation as a man of
dignified bearing. But the Mayor was not alone in his forced display
of unseemly haste. Many other townspeople, long past the nimbleness of
youth, rushed for shelter; and pride goeth before a collision with a
wayward aeroplane. Jackson said the sky rained hats, market baskets,
and wooden shoes for five minutes after his Blériot had come to rest
on the steps of the _bureau de poste_. And no one was hurt.
Murphy's defective motor provided him with the names and addresses of
every possible and impossible _marraine_ in the town of Y----, near
which he was compelled to land. While waiting for the arrival of his
mechanician with a new supply of spark-plugs, he left his monoplane in
a field close by. A path to the place was worn by the feet of the
young women of the town, whose dearest wish appeared to be to have an
aviator as a _filleul_. They covered the wings of his _avion_ with
messages in pencil. The least pointed of these hints were, "Écrivez le
plus tôt possible"; and, "Je voudrais bien un filleul américain, très
gentil, comme vous."
Matthews' biplane crashed through the roof of a camp bakery. If he had
practiced this unusual _atterrissage_ a thousand times he could not
have done it so neatly as at the first attempt. He followed the motor
through to the kitchen and finally hung suspended a few feet from the
ceiling. The army bread-bakers stared up at him with faces as white as
fear and flour could make them. The commandant of the camp rushed in.
He asked, "What have you done with the corpse?" The bread-bakers
pointed to Matthews, who apologized for his bad choice of
landing-ground. He was hardly scratched.
Mac lost his way in the clouds and landed near a small village for
gasoline and information. The information he had easily, but gasoline
was scarce. After laborious search through several neighboring
villages he found a supply and had it carried to the field where his
machine was waiting. Some farmer lads agreed to hold on to the tail
while Mac started the engine. At the first roar of the rotary motor
they all let loose. The Blériot pushed Mac contemptuously aside,
lifted its tail and rushed away. He followed it over a level tract of
country miles in extent, and found it at last in a ditch, nose down,
tail in air, like a duck hunting bugs in the mud. This story loses
nine tenths of its interest for want of Mac's pungent method of
telling it.
One of the _bona-fide_ godchildren of Chance was Millard. The
circumstances leading to his engagement in the French service as a
member of the Franco-American Corps proves this. Millard was a real
human being,--he had no grammar, no polish, no razor, safety or
otherwise, but likewise no pretense, no "swank." He was _persona non
grata_ to a few, but the great majority liked him very much, although
they wondered how in the name of all that is curious he had ever
decided to join the French air service. Once he told us his history at
great length. He had been a scout in the Philippine service of the
American army. He had been a roustabout on cattle boats. He had boiled
his coffee down by the stockyards in every sizable town on every
transcontinental railroad in America. In the spring of 1916 he had
employment with a roofing company which had contracted for a job in
Richmond, Virginia, I think it was. But Richmond went "dry" in the
State elections; the roofing job fell through, owing, so Millard
insisted, to the natural and inevitable depression which follows a dry
election. Having lost his prospective employment as a roofer, what
more natural than that he should turn to this other high calling?
He was game. He tried hard and at last reached his brevet tests. Three
times he started off on triangles. No one expected to see him return,
but he surprised them every time. He could never find the towns where
he was supposed to land, so he would keep on going till his gas gave
out. Then his machine would come down of itself, and Millard would
crawl out from under the wreckage and come back by train.
"I don't know," he would say doubtfully, rubbing his eight-days'
growth of beard; "I'm seeing a lot of France, but this coming-down
business ain't what it's cracked up to be. I can swing in on the rods
of a box car with the train going hell bent for election, but I guess
I'm too old to learn to fly."
The War Office came to this opinion after Millard had smashed three
machines in three tries. Wherever he may be now, I am sure that Chance
is still ruling his destiny, and I hope, with all my heart,
benevolently.
Our final triangle was completed uneventfully. J. B.'s motor behaved
splendidly; I remembered my biograph at every stage of the journey,
and we were at home again within three hours. We did our altitude
tests and were then no longer _élèves-pilotes_, but _pilotes
aviateurs_. By reason of this distinction we passed from the rank of
soldier of the second class to that of corporal. At the tailor's shop
the wings and star insignia were sewn upon our collars and our
corporal's stripes upon our sleeves. For we were proud, as every
aviator is proud, who reaches the end of his apprenticeship and enters
into the dignity of a brevetted military pilot.
* * * * *
Six months have passed since I made the last entry in my journal. J.
B. was asleep in his historic bed, and I was sitting at a rickety
table writing by candle-light, stopping now and then to listen to the
mutter of guns on the Aisne front. It was only at night that we could
hear them, and then not often, the very ghost of sound, as faint as
the beating of the pulses in one's ears. That was a May evening, and
this, one late in November. I arrived at the Gare du Nord only a few
hours ago. Never before have I come to Paris with a finer sense of the
joy of living. I walked down the rue Lafayette, through the rue de
Provence, the rue du Havre, to a little hotel in the vicinity of the
Gare Saint-Lazare. Under ordinary circumstances none of these streets,
nor the people in them, would have appeared particularly interesting.
But on this occasion--it was the finest walk of my life. I saw
everything with the eyes of the _permissionnaire_, and sniffed the
odors of roasting chestnuts, of restaurants, of shops, of people,
never so keenly aware of their numberless variety.
After dinner I walked out on the boulevards from the Madeleine to the
Place de la République, through the maze of narrow streets to the
river, and over the Pont Neuf to Notre Dame. I was surprised that the
spell which Hugo gives it should have lost none of its old potency
for me after coming direct from the realities of modern warfare. If
he were writing this journal, what a story it would be!
It will be necessary to pass rapidly over the period between the day
when we received our _brevets militaires_ and that upon which we
started for the front. The event which bulked largest to us was, of
course, the departure on active service. Preceding it, and next in
importance, was the last phase of our training and the culmination of
it all, at the School of Acrobacy. Preliminary to our work there, we
had a six weeks' course of instruction, first on the twin-motor
Caudron and then on various types of the Nieuport biplane. We thought
the Caudron a magnificent machine. We liked the steady throb of its
powerful motors, the enormous spread of its wings, the slow, ponderous
way it had of answering to the controls. It was our business to take
officer observers for long trips about the country while they made
photographs, spotted dummy batteries, and perfected themselves in the
wireless code. At that time the Caudron had almost passed its period
of usefulness at the front, and there was a prospect of our being
transferred to the yet larger and more powerful Letord, a
three-passenger biplane carrying two machine gunners besides the
pilot, and from three to five machine guns. This appealed to us
mightily. J. B. was always talking of the time when he would command
not only a machine, but also a "gang of men." However, being
Americans, and recruited for a particular combat corps which flies
only single-seater _avions de chasse_, we eventually followed the
usual course of training for such pilots. We passed in turn to the
Nieuport biplane, which compares in speed and grace with these larger
craft as the flight of a swallow with the movements of a great lazy
buzzard. And now the Nieuport has been surpassed, and almost entirely
supplanted, by the Spad of 140, 180, 200, and 230 horse-power, and we
have transferred our allegiance to each in turn, marveling at the
genius of the French in motor and aircraft construction.
At last we were ready for acrobacy. I will not give an account of the
trials by means of which one's ability as a combat pilot is most
severely tested. This belongs among the pages of a textbook rather
than in those of a journal of this kind. But to us who were to undergo
the ordeal,--for it is an ordeal for the untried pilot,--our
typewritten notes on acrobacy read like the pages of a fascinating
romance. A year or two ago these aerial maneuvers would have been
thought impossible. Now we were all to do them as a matter of routine
training.
The worst of it was, that our civilian pursuits offered no criterion
upon which to base forecasts of our ability as acrobats. There was J.
B., for example. He knew a mixed metaphor when he saw one, for he had
had wide experience with them as an English instructor at a New
England "prep" school. But he had never done a barrel turn, or
anything resembling it. How was he to know what his reaction would be
to this bewildering maneuver, a series of rapid, horizontal, corkscrew
turns? And to what use could I put my hazy knowledge of Massachusetts
statutes dealing with neglect and non-support of family, in that
exciting moment when, for the first time, I should be whirling
earthward in a spinning nose-dive? Accidents and fatalities were most
frequent at the school of acrobacy, for the reason that one could not
know, beforehand, whether he would be able to keep his head, with the
earth gone mad, spinning like a top, standing on one rim, turning
upside down.
In the end we all mastered it after a fashion, for the tests are by no
means so difficult of accomplishment as they appear to be. Up to this
time, November 28, 1917, there has been but one American killed at it
in French schools. We were not all good acrobats. One must have a
knack for it which many of us will never be able to acquire. The
French have it in larger proportion than do we Americans. I can think
of no sight more pleasing than that of a Spad in the air, under the
control of a skillful French pilot. Swallows perch in envious silence
on the chimney pots, and the crows caw in sullen despair from the
hedgerows.
At G. D. E., while awaiting our call to the front, we perfected
ourselves in these maneuvers, and practiced them in combat and group
flying. There, the restraints of the schools were removed, for we were
supposed to be accomplished pilots. We flew when and in what manner
we liked. Sometimes we went out in large formations, for a long
flight; sometimes, in groups of two or three, we made sham attacks on
villages, or trains, or motor convoys on the roads. It was forbidden
to fly over Paris, and for this reason we took all the more delight in
doing it. J. B. and I saw it in all its moods: in the haze of early
morning, at midday when the air had been washed clean by spring rains,
in the soft light of afternoon,--domes, theaters, temples, spires,
streets, parks, the river, bridges, all of it spread out in
magnificent panorama. We would circle over Montmartre, Neuilly, the
Bois, Saint-Cloud, the Latin Quarter, and then full speed homeward,
listening anxiously to the sound of our motors until we spiraled
safely down over our aerodrome. Our monitor never asked questions. He
is one of many Frenchmen whom we shall always remember with gratitude.
We learned the songs of all motors, the peculiarities and uses of all
types of French _avions_, pushers and tractors, single motor and
bimotor, monoplace, biplace, and triplace, monoplane and biplane. And
we mingled with the pilots of all these many kinds of aircraft. They
were arriving and departing by every train, for G. D. E. is the dépôt
for old pilots from the front, transferring from one branch of
aviation to another, as well as for new ones fresh from the schools.
In our talks with them, we became convinced that the air service is
forming its traditions and developing a new type of mind. It even has
an odor, as peculiar to itself as the smell of the sea to a ship.
There are those who say that it is only a compound of burnt castor oil
and gasoline. One might, with no more truth, call the odor of a ship a
mixture of tar and stale cooking. But let it pass. It will be all
things to all men; I can sense it as I write, for it gets into one's
clothing, one's hair, one's very blood.
We were as happy during those days at G. D. E. as any one has the
right to be. Our whole duty was to fly, and never was the voice of
Duty heard more gladly. It was hard to keep in mind the stern purpose
behind this seeming indulgence. At times I remembered Drew's warning
that we were military pilots and had no right to forget the
seriousness of the work before us. But he himself often forgot it for
days together. War on the earth may be reasonable and natural, but in
the air it seems the most senseless folly. How is an airman, who has
just learned a new meaning for the joy of life, to reconcile himself
to the insane business of killing a fellow aviator who may have just
learned it too? This was a question which we sometimes put to
ourselves in purely Arcadian moments. We answered it, of course.
I was sitting at our two-legged table, writing up my _carnet de vol_.
Suzanne, the maid of all work at the Bonne Rencontre, was sweeping a
passageway along the center of the room, telling me, as she worked,
about her family. She was ticking off the names of her brothers and
sisters, when Drew put his head through the doorway.
"Il y a Pierre," said Suzanne.
"We're posted," said J. B.
"Et Hélène," she continued.
I shall never know the names of the others.
V
OUR FIRST PATROL
We got down from the train late in the afternoon at a village which
reminded us, at first glance, of a boom town in the Far West. Crude
shelters of corrugated iron and rough pine boards faced each other
down the length of one long street. They looked sadly out of place in
that landscape. They did not have the cheery, buoyant ugliness of
pioneer homes in an unsettled country, for behind them were the ruins
of the old village, fragments of blackened wall, stone chimneys filled
with accumulations of rubbish, garden-plots choked with weeds,
reminding us that here was no outpost of a new civilization, but the
desolation of an old one, fallen upon evil days.
A large crowd of _permissionnaires_ had left the train with us. We
were not at ease among these men, many of them well along in middle
life, bent and streaming with perspiration under their heavy packs. We
were much better able than most of them to carry our belongings, to
endure the fatigue of a long night march to billets or trenches; and
we were waiting for the motor in which we should ride comfortably to
our aerodrome. There we should sleep in beds, well housed from the
weather, and far out of the range of shell fire.
"It isn't fair," said J. B. "It is going to war _de luxe_. These old
poilus ought to be the aviators. But, hang it all! Of course, they
couldn't be. Aviation is a young man's business. It has to be that
way. And you can't have aerodromes along the front-line trenches."
Nevertheless, it did seem very unfair, and we were uncomfortable among
all those infantrymen. The feeling increased when attention was called
to our branch of the service by the distant booming of anti-aircraft
guns. There were shouts in the street, "A Boche!" We hurried to the
door of the café where we had been hiding. Officers were ordering the
crowds off the street. "Hurry along there! Under cover! Oh, I know
that you're brave enough, mon enfant. It isn't that. He's not to see
all these soldiers here. That's the reason. Allez! Vite!"
Soldiers were going into dugouts and cellars among the ruined houses.
Some of them, seeing us at the door of the café, made pointed remarks
as they passed, grumbling loudly at the laxity of the air service.
"It's up there you ought to be, mon vieux, not here," one of them
said, pointing to the white _éclatements_.
"You see that?" said another. "He's a Boche, not French, I can tell
you that. Where are your comrades?"
There was much good-natured chaffing as well, but through it all I
could detect a note of resentment. I sympathized with their point of
view then as I do now, although I know that there is no ground for the
complaint of laxity. Here is a German over French territory. Where are
the French aviators? Soldiers forget that aerial frontiers must be
guarded in two dimensions, and that it is always possible for an
airman to penetrate far into enemy country. They do not see their own
pilots on their long raids into German territory. Furthermore, while
the outward journey is often accomplished easily enough, the return
home is a different matter. Telephones are busy from the moment the
lines are crossed, and a hostile patrol, to say nothing of a lone
_avion_, will be fortunate if it returns safely.
But infantrymen are to be forgiven readily for their outbursts against
the aviation service. They have far more than their share of danger
and death while in the trenches. To have their brief periods of rest
behind the lines broken into by enemy aircraft--who would blame them
for complaining? And they are often generous enough with their praise.
On this occasion there was no bombing. The German remained at a great
height and quickly turned northward again.
Dunham and Miller came to meet us. We had all four been in the schools
together, they preceding us on active service only a couple of months.
Seeing them after this lapse of time, I was conscious of a change.
They were keen about life at the front, but they talked of their
experiences in a way which gave one a feeling of tension, a tautness
of muscles, a kind of ache in the throat. It set me to thinking of a
conversation I had had with an old French pilot, several months
before. It came apropos of nothing. Perhaps he thought that I was
sizing him up, wondering how he could be content with an instructor's
job while the war is in progress. He said: "I've had five hundred
hours over the lines. You don't know what that means, not yet. I'm no
good any more. It's strain. Let me give you some advice. Save your
nervous energy. You will need all you have and more. Above everything
else, don't think at the front. The best pilot is the best machine."
Dunham was talking about patrols.
"Two a day of two hours each. Occasionally you will have six hours'
flying, but almost never more than that."
"What about voluntary patrols?" Drew asked. "I don't suppose there is
any objection, is there?"
Miller pounded Dunham on the back, singing, "_Hi-doo-dedoo-dum-di_.
What did I tell you! Do I win?" Then he explained. "We asked the same
question when we came out, and every other new pilot before us. This
voluntary patrol business is a kind of standing joke. You think, now,
that four hours a day over the lines is a light programme. For the
first month or so you will go out on your own between times. After
that, no. Of course, when they call for a voluntary patrol for some
necessary piece of work, you will volunteer out of a sense of duty. As
I say, you may do as much flying as you like. But wait. After a month,
or we'll give you six weeks, that will be no more than you have to
do."
We were not at all convinced.
"What do you do with the rest of your time?"
"Sleep," said Dunham. "Read a good deal. Play some poker or bridge.
Walk. But sleep is the chief amusement. Eight hours used to be enough
for me. Now I can do with ten or twelve."
Drew said: "That's all rot. You fellows are having it too soft. They
ought to put you on the school régime again."
"Let 'em talk, Dunham. They know. J. B. says it's laziness. Let it go
at that. Well, take it from me, it's contagious. You'll soon be
victims."