in complete darkness. My brain was amazingly clear. It
registered every trifling impression. I wish it might always
be so intensely awake and active. There seemed to be four of
us in the dugout; the two _brancardiers_, and this second
self of mine, as curious as an eavesdropper at a keyhole,
listening intently to everything, and then turning to
whisper to me. The _brancardiers_ repeated the same comments
after every explosion. I thought: "They have been saying
this to each other for over three years. It has become
automatic. They will never be able to stop." I was feverish,
perhaps. If it was fever, it burned away any illusions I may
have had of modern warfare from the infantryman's
viewpoint. I know that there is no glamour in it for them;
that it has long since become a deadly monotony, an endless
repetition of the same kinds of horror and suffering, a
boredom more terrible than death itself, which is repeating
itself in the same ways, day after day and month after
month. It isn't often that an aviator has the chance I've
had. It would be a good thing if they were to send us into
the trenches for twenty-four hours, every few months. It
would make us keener fighters, more eager to do our utmost
to bring the war to an end for the sake of those _poilus_.
The dressing-station was in a very deep dugout, lighted by
candles. At a table in the center of the room the medical
officer was working over a man with a terribly crushed leg.
Several others were sitting or lying along the wall,
awaiting their turn. They watched every movement he made in
an apprehensive, animal way, and so did I. They put me on
the table next, although it was not my turn. I protested,
but the doctor paid no attention. "Aviateur américain,"
again. It's a pity that Frenchmen can't treat us Americans
as though we belong here.
As soon as the doctor had finished with me, my stretcher was
fastened to a two-wheeled carrier and we started down a
cobbled road to the ambulance station. I was light-headed
and don't remember much of that part of the journey. Had to
take refuge in another dugout when the Huns dropped a shell
on an ammunition-dump in a village through which we were to
pass. There was a deafening banging and booming for a long
time, and when we did go through the town it was on the run.
The whole place was in flames and small-arms ammunition
still exploding. I remember seeing a long column of soldiers
going at the double in the opposite direction, and they were
in full marching order.
Well, this is the end of the tale; all of it, at any rate,
in which you would be interested. It was one o'clock in the
morning before I got between cool, clean sheets, and I was
wounded about a quarter past eight. I have been tired ever
since.
There is another aviator here, a Frenchman, who broke his
jaw and both legs in a fall while returning from a night
bombardment. His bed is across the aisle from mine; he has a
formidable-looking apparatus fastened on his head and under
his chin, to hold his jaw firm until the bones knit. He is
forbidden to talk, but breaks the rule whenever the nurse
leaves the ward. He speaks a little English and has told me
a delightful story about the origin of aerial combat. A
French pilot, a friend of his, he says, attached to a
certain army group during August and September, 1914, often
met a German aviator during his reconnaissance patrols. In
those Arcadian days, fighting in the air was a development
for the future, and these two pilots exchanged greetings,
not cordially, perhaps, but courteously: a wave of the hand,
as much as to say, "We are enemies, but we need not forget
the civilities." Then they both went about their work of
spotting batteries, watching for movements of troops, etc.
One morning the German failed to return the salute. The
Frenchman thought little of this, and greeted him in the
customary manner at their next meeting. To his surprise, the
Boche shook his fist at him in the most blustering and
caddish way. There was no mistaking the insult. They had
passed not fifty metres from each other, and the Frenchman
distinctly saw the closed fist. He was saddened by the
incident, for he had hoped that some of the ancient
courtesies of war would survive in the aerial branch of the
service, at least. It angered him too; therefore, on his
next reconnaissance, he ignored the German. Evidently the
Boche air-squadrons were being Prussianized. The enemy pilot
approached very closely and threw a missile at him. He could
not be sure what it was, as the object went wide of the
mark; but he was so incensed that he made a _virage_, and
drawing a small flask from his pocket, hurled it at his
boorish antagonist. The flask contained some excellent port,
he said, but he was repaid for the loss in seeing it crash
on the exhaust-pipe of the enemy machine.
This marked the end of courtesy and the beginning of active
hostilities in the air. They were soon shooting at each
other with rifles, automatic pistols, and at last with
machine guns. Later developments we know about. The night
bombarder has been telling me this yarn in serial form. When
the nurse is present, he illustrates the last chapter by
means of gestures. I am ready to believe everything but the
incident about the port. That doesn't sound plausible. A
Frenchman would have thrown his watch before making such a
sacrifice!
VIII
ONE HUNDRED HOURS
A little more than a year after our first meeting in the Paris
restaurant which has so many pleasant memories for us, Drew completed
his first one hundred hours of flight over the lines, an event in the
life of an airman which calls for a celebration of some sort.
Therefore, having been granted leave for the afternoon, the two of us
came into the old French town of Bar-le-Duc, by the toy train which
wanders down from the Verdun sector. We had dinner in one of those
homelike little places where the food is served by the proprietor
himself. On this occasion it was served hurriedly, and the bill
presented promptly at eight o'clock. Our host was very sorry, but "les
sales Boches, vous savez, messieurs?" They had come the night before:
a dozen houses destroyed, women and children killed and maimed. With a
full moon to guide them, they would be sure to return to-night. "Ah,
cette guerre! Quand sera-t-elle finie?" He offered us a refuge until
our train should leave. Usually, he said, he played solitaire while
waiting for the Germans, but with houses tumbling about one's ears, he
much preferred company. "And my wife and I are old people. She is very
deaf, heureusement. She hears nothing."
J. B. declined the invitation. "A brave way that would be to finish
our evening!" he said as we walked down the silent street. "I wanted
to say, 'Monsieur, I have just finished my first one hundred hours of
flight at the front.' But he wouldn't have known what that means."
I said, "No, he wouldn't have known." Then we had no further talk for
about two hours. A few soldiers, late arrivals, were prowling about in
the shadow of the houses, searching for food and a warm kitchen where
they might eat it. Some insistent ones pounded on the door of a
restaurant far in the distance.
"Dites donc, patron! Nous avons faim, nom de Dieu! Est-ce-que tout le
monde est mort ici?"
"Only a host of phantom listeners,
That dwelt in the lone house then,
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men."
It was that kind of silence, profound, tense, ghostlike. We walked
through street after street, from one end of the town to the other,
and saw only one light, a faint glimmer which came from a slit of a
cellar window almost on the level of the pavement. We were curious, no
doubt. At any rate, we looked in. A woman was sitting on a cot bed
with her arms around two little children. They were snuggled up
against her and both fast asleep; but she was sitting very erect, in a
strained, listening attitude, staring straight before her. Since that
night we have believed, both of us, that if wars can be won only by
haphazard night bombardments of towns where there are women and
children, then they had far better be lost.
But I am writing a journal of high adventure of a cleaner kind, in
which all the resources in skill and cleverness of one set of men are
pitted against those of another set. We have no bomb-dropping to do,
and there are but few women and children living in the territory over
which we fly. One hundred hours is not a great while as time is
measured on the ground, but in terms of combat patrols, the one
hundredth part of it has held more of an adventure in the true
meaning of the word than we have had during the whole of our lives
previously.
At first we were far too busy learning the rudiments of combat to keep
an accurate record of flying time. We thought our aeroplane clocks
convenient pieces of equipment rather than necessary ones. I remember
coming down from my first air battle and the breathless account I gave
of it at the bureau, breathless and vague. Lieutenant Talbott listened
quietly, making out the _compte rendu_ as I talked. When I had
finished, he emphasized the haziness of my answers to his questions by
quoting them: "Region: 'You know, that big wood!' Time: 'This morning,
of course!' Rounds fired: 'Oh, a lot!'" etc.
Not until we had been flying for a month or more did we learn how to
make the right use of our clocks and of our eyes while in the air. We
listened with amazement to after-patrol talk at the mess. We learned
more of what actually happened on our sorties, after they were over
than while they were in progress. All of the older pilots missed
seeing nothing which there was to see. They reported the numbers of
the enemy planes encountered, the types, where seen and when. They
spotted batteries, trains in stations back of the enemy lines, gave
the hour precisely, reported any activity on the roads. In moments of
exasperation Drew would say, "I think they are stringing us! This is
all a put-up job!" Certainly this did appear to be the case at first.
For we were air-blind. We saw little of the activity all around us,
and details on the ground had no significance. How were we to take
thought of time and place and altitude, note the peculiarities of
enemy machines, count their numbers, and store all this information
away in memory at the moment of combat? This was a great problem.
"What I need," J. B. used to say, "is a traveling private secretary.
I'll do the fighting and he can keep the diary."
I needed one, too, a man air-wise and battle-wise, who could calmly
take note of my clock, altimeter, temperature and pressure dials,
identify exactly the locality on my map, count the numbers of the
enemy, estimate their approximate altitude,--all this when the air
was criss-crossed with streamers of smoke from machine-gun tracer
bullets, and opposing aircraft were maneuvering for position, diving
and firing at each other, spiraling, nose-spinning, wing-slipping,
climbing, in a confusing intermingling of tricolor cocards and black
crosses.
We made gradual progress, the result being that our patrols became a
hundred-fold more fascinating, sometimes, in fact, too much so. It was
important that we should be able to read the ground, but more
important still to remember that what was happening there was only of
secondary concern to us. Often we became absorbed in watching what was
taking place below us, to the exclusion of any thought of aerial
activity, our chances for attack or of being attacked. The view, from
the air, of a heavy bombardment, or of an infantry attack under cover
of barrage fires, is a truly terrible spectacle, and in the air one
has a feeling of detachment which is not easily overcome.
Yet it must be overcome, as I have said, and cannot say too many times
for the benefit of any young airman who may read this journal. During
an offensive the air swarms with planes. They are at all altitudes,
from the lowest artillery _réglage_ machines at a few hundreds of
metres, to the highest _avions de chasse_ at six thousand meters and
above. _Réglage_, photographic, and reconnaissance planes have their
particular work to do. They defend themselves as best they can, but
almost never attack. Combat _avions_, on the other hand; are always
looking for victims. They are the ones chiefly dangerous to the unwary
pursuit pilot.
Drew's first official victory came as the result of a one-sided battle
with an Albatross single-seater, whose pilot evidently did not know
there was an enemy within miles of him. No more did J. B. for that
matter. "It was pure accident," he told me afterward. He had gone from
Rheims to the Argonne forest without meeting a single German. "And I
didn't want to meet one; for it was Thanksgiving Day. It has
associations for me, you know. I'm a New Englander." It is not
possible to convince him that it has any real significance for men who
were not born on the North Atlantic seaboard. Well, all the way he
had been humming
"Over the river and through the wood
To grandfather's house we go,"
to himself. It is easy to understand why he didn't want to meet a
German. He must have been in a curiously mixed frame of mind. He
covered the sector again and passed over Rheims, going northeast. Then
he saw the Albatross; "and if you had been standing on one of the
towers of the cathedral you would have seen a very unequal battle."
The German was about two kilometres inside his own lines, and at least
a thousand metres below. Drew had every advantage.
"He didn't see me until I opened fire, and then, as it happened, it
was too late. My gun didn't jam!"
The German started falling out of control, Drew following him down
until he lost sight of him in making a _virage_.
I leaned against the canvas wall of a hangar, registering incredulity.
Three times out of seven, to make a conservative estimate, we fight
inconclusive battles because of faulty machine guns or defective
ammunition. The ammunition, most of it that is bad, comes from
America.
While Drew was giving me the details, an orderly from the bureau
brought word that an enemy machine had just been reported shot down on
our sector. It was Drew's Albatross, but he nearly lost official
credit for having destroyed it, because he did not know exactly the
hour when the combat occurred. His watch was broken and he had
neglected asking for another before starting. He judged the time of
the attack, approximately, as two-thirty, and the infantry observers,
reporting the result, gave it as twenty minutes to three. The region
in both cases coincided exactly, however, and, fortunately, Drew's was
the only combat which had taken place in that vicinity during the
afternoon.
For an hour after his return he was very happy. He had won his first
victory, always the hardest to gain, and had been complimented by the
commandant, by Lieutenant Nungesser, the _Roi des Aces_, and by other
French and American pilots. There is no petty jealousy among airmen,
and in our group the _esprit de corps_ is unusually fine. Rivalry is
keen, but each squadron takes almost as much pride in the work of the
other squadrons as it does in its own.
The details of the result were horrible. The Albatross broke up two
thousand metres from the ground, one wing falling within the French
lines. Drew knew what it meant to be wounded and falling out of
control. But his Spad held together. He had a chance for his life.
Supposing the German to have been merely wounded--An airman's joy in
victory is a short-lived one.
Nevertheless, a curious change takes place in his attitude toward his
work, as the months pass. I can best describe it in terms of Drew's
experience and my own. We came to the front feeling deeply sorry for
ourselves, and for all airmen of whatever nationality, whose lives
were to be snuffed out in their promising beginnings. I used to play
"The Minstrel Boy to the War Has Gone" on a tin flute, and Drew wrote
poetry. While we were waiting for our first machine, he composed "The
Airman's Rendezvous," written in the manner of Alan Seeger's poem.
"And I in the wide fields of air
Must keep with him my rendezvous.
It may be I shall meet him there
When clouds, like sheep, move slowly through
The pathless meadows of the sky
And their cool shadows go beneath,--
I have a rendezvous with Death
Some summer noon of white and blue."
There is more of it, in the same manner, all of which he read me in a
husky voice. I, too, was ready to weep at our untimely fate. The
strange thing is that his prophecy came so very near being true. He
had the first draft of the poem in his breast-pocket when wounded, and
has kept the gory relic to remind him--not that he needs reminding--of
the airy manner in which he canceled what ought to have been a
_bona-fide_ appointment.
I do not mean to reflect in any way upon Alan Seeger's beautiful poem.
Who can doubt that it is a sincere, as well as a perfect, expression
of a mood common to all young soldiers? Drew was just as sincere in
writing his verses, and I put all the feeling I could into my
tin-whistle interpretation of "The Minstrel Boy." What I want to make
clear is, that a soldier's moods of self-pity are fleeting ones, and
if he lives, he outgrows them.
Imagination is an especial curse to an airman, particularly if it
takes a gloomy or morbid turn. We used to write "To whom it may
concern" letters before going out on patrol, in which we left
directions for the notification of our relatives and the disposal of
our personal effects in case of death. Then we would climb into our
machines thinking, "This may be our last sortie. We may be dead in an
hour, in half an hour, in twenty minutes." We planned splendidly
spectacular ways in which we were to be brought down, always omitting
one, however, the most horrible as well as the most common,--in
flames. Thank Fortune, we have outgrown this second and belated period
of adolescence and can now take a healthy interest in our work.
Now, an inevitable part of the daily routine is to be shelled,
persistently, methodically, and often accurately shelled. Our interest
in this may, I suppose, be called healthy, inasmuch as it would be
decidedly unhealthy to become indifferent to the activities of the
German anti-aircraft gunners. It would be far-fetched to say that any
airman ever looks forward zestfully to the business of being shot at
with one hundred and fives; and seventy-fives, if they are well
placed, are unpleasant enough. After one hundred hours of it, we have
learned to assume that attitude of contemptuous toleration which is
the manner common to all _pilotes de chasse_. We know that the chances
of a direct hit are almost negligible, and that we have all the blue
dome of the heavens in which to maneuver.
Furthermore, we have learned many little tricks by means of which we
can keep the gunners guessing. By way of illustration, we are
patrolling, let us say, at thirty-five hundred metres, crossing and
recrossing the lines, following the patrol leader, who has his motor
throttled down so that we may keep well in formation. The guns may be
silent for the moment, but we know well enough what the gunners are
doing. We know exactly where some of the batteries are, and the
approximate location of all of them along the sector; and we know,
from earlier experience, when we come within range of each individual
battery. Presently one of them begins firing in bursts of four shells.
If their first estimate of our range has been an accurate one, if they
place them uncomfortably close, so that we can hear, all too well,
above the roar of our motors, the rending _Gr-r-rOW_, _Gr-r-rOW_, of
the shells as they explode, we sail calmly--to all outward
appearances--on, maneuvering very little. The gunners, seeing that we
are not disturbed, will alter their ranges, four times out of five,
which is exactly what we want them to do.
The next bursts will be hundreds of metres below or above us,
whereupon we show signs of great uneasiness, and the gunners, thinking
they have our altitude, begin to fire like demons. We employ our
well-earned immunity in preparing for the next series of batteries, or
in thinking of the cost to Germany, at one hundred francs a shot, of
all this futile shelling. Drew, in particular, loves this
cost-accounting business, and I must admit that much pleasure may be
had in it, after patrol. They rarely fire less than fifty shells at
us during a two-hour patrol. Making a low general average, the number
is nearer one hundred and fifty. On our present front, where aerial
activity is fairly brisk and the sector is a large one, three or four
hundred shells are wasted upon us often before we have been out an
hour.
We have memories of all the good batteries from Flanders to the Vosges
Mountains. Battery after battery, we make their acquaintance along the
entire sector, wherever we go. Many of them, of course, are mobile, so
that we never lose the sport of searching for them. Only a few days
ago we located one of this kind which came into action in the open by
the side of a road. First we saw the flashes and then the shell-bursts
in the same cadence. We tipped up and fired at him in bursts of twenty
to thirty rounds, which is the only way airmen have of passing the
time of day with their friends, the enemy anti-aircraft gunners, who
ignore the art of _camouflage_.
But we can converse with them, after a fashion, even though we do not
know their exact position. It will be long before this chapter of my
journal is in print. Having given no indication of the date of
writing, I may say, without indiscretion, that we are again on the
Champagne front. We have a wholesome respect for one battery here, a
respect it has justly earned by shooting which is really remarkable.
We talk of this battery, which is east of Rheims and not far distant
from Nogent l'Abbesse, and take professional pride in keeping its
gunners in ignorance of their fine marksmanship. We signal them their
bad shots--which are better than the good ones of most of the
batteries on the sector--by doing stunts, a barrel turn, a loop, two
or three turns of a _vrille_.
As for their good shots, they are often so very good that we are
forced into acrobacy of a wholly individual kind. Our _avions_ have
received many scars from their shells. Between forty-five hundred and
five thousand metres, their bursts have been so close under us that we
have been lifted by the concussions and set down violently again at
the bottom of the vacuum; and this on a clear day when a _chasse_
machine is almost invisible at that height, and despite its speed of
two hundred kilometres an hour. On a gray day, when we are flying
between twenty-five hundred and three thousand metres beneath a film
of cloud, they repay the honor we do them by our acrobatic turns. They
bracket us, put barrages between us and our own lines, give us more
trouble than all the other batteries on the sector combined.
For this reason it is all the more humiliating to be forced to land
with motor trouble, just at the moment when they are paying off some
old scores. This happened to Drew while I have been writing up my
journal. Coming out of a tonneau in answer to three _coups_ from the
battery, his propeller stopped dead. By planing flatly (the wind was
dead ahead, and the area back of the first lines there is a wide one,
crossed by many intersecting lines of trenches) he got well over them
and chose a field as level as a billiard table for landing-ground. In
the very center of it, however, there was one post, a small worm-eaten
thing, of the color of the dead grass around it. He hit it, just as he
was setting his Spad on the ground, the only post in a field acres
wide, and it tore a piece of fabric from one of his lower wings. No
doubt the crack battery has been given credit for disabling an enemy
plane. The honor, such as it is, belongs to our aerial godfather,
among whose lesser vices may be included that of practical joking.
The remnants of the post were immediately confiscated for firewood by
some _poilus_ who were living in a dugout near by.
IX
"LONELY AS A CLOUD"
The French attack which has been in preparation for the past month is
to begin at dawn to-morrow. It has been hard, waiting, but it must
have been a great deal worse for the infantrymen who are billeted in
all of the surrounding villages. They are moving up to-night to the
first lines, for these are the shock troops who are to lead the
attack. They are chiefly regiments of Chasseurs--small men in stature,
but clean, hard, well-knit--splendid types. They talk of the attack
confidently. It is an inspiration to listen to them. Hundreds of them
have visited our aerodrome during the past week, mainly, I think, for
a glimpse of Whiskey and Soda, our lions, who are known to French
soldiers from one end of the line to the other. Whiskey is almost
full-grown, and Soda about the size of a wild cat. They have the
freedom of the camp and run about everywhere.
The guns are thundering at a terrific rate, the concussions shaking
our barracks and rattling the dishes on the table. In the messroom the
gramophone is playing, "I'm going 'way back home and have a wonderful
time." Music at the front is sometimes a doubtful blessing.