It is rather tiresome sitting in the hospital when I am not sick in the
least, but to suggest leaving is to insult the man with authority to
release me. When he finally decides to let me go, it will take three
days for the red tape to be carried through, which permits me to return
to the Ecole d’Aviation. Meanwhile, I am losing several hours of flying.
The good September season is just opening, and the days are delightful.
We are given permission to leave the hospital and spend a day wandering
around the historical city of Tours. I have been making pencil sketches
and water colors, and it would really be very enjoyable if I were not so
restless to get to work. You see, the time is a rather critical one.
Anything is liable to happen; the United States Government may take us
over. They want monitors in the States to teach flying, and if we are
taken over we will probably be sent back without any fighting experience
to act as monitors in the training school over there.
This is all very indefinite, but I do not like to get behind the bunch
or be away from the camp at a time when these changes may be made; still
there is no use fretting and I suppose things will work out all right.
Anyway, I am not sick, and they must let me out pretty soon. I am on
good terms with the chief doctor, who is a painter, and took an interest
in my sketches and paintings. He offered to take me out to his house and
show me his collection. I do not know when he will do so. I am trying to
develop my general culture while there is opportunity, and have read six
of Balzac’s novels, historical and otherwise. There is a wonderful
chance to study architecture, and I am keeping up my sketching in water
color, as well as studying a little French. Unfortunately, I left my
history book in Paris, but will get what I can from Baedeker, and all
the time I am storing up energy to use when the time comes. As to this
prospect of the members of the Foreign Legion returning to America as
monitors, most of the men do not like the idea of returning without some
fighting experience. I am of that turn of mind. Men going back would be
so much more able monitors if they had served on the Front, and they
would be much more contented to return. There would be no doubt in my
mind that I would remain in the French Foreign Legion if it were not for
the fact that at present they are making monitors first lieutenants,
with high pay, and a respectable office. Reason dictates that this will
be changed very soon. I believe the men who are already officers will
not be put back, however. If this should be the case, the time to enter
United States service is now. Money is not everything, but three
thousand a year is not to be ignored. This is all conjecture, and I have
not made up my mind as to what to do, and shall not until fuller and
more reliable information is given out.
The life here in the hospital is very pleasant. We wake at seven and
have a little French breakfast of bread and coffee in bed; then we lie
awake and read or doze for an hour or so. Rising at eight-thirty, we
clean up and make our bed and read or write letters till lunch, which is
a heavy meal served at eleven. By permission from the doctor, we are
then at liberty to go out and spend our time as we please until five,
when we eat again. Of late I have been going over and watching the full
moon rise on the river Loire after supper; I retire at eight or nine.
The French have a strange custom of closing all their windows at night,
but Americans are permitted to have one window open in their end of the
room. French medical authorities are convinced that two open windows in
the same room are very unhealthy and dangerous.
We have a good time wandering about the quaint, narrow streets, where
strange people peer out of small, low windows, and undersized doors. The
houses are so old that different materials and workmanship of a dozen
repairs give their façades a mottled appearance of many centuries, which
suggest a strange collection of antiques within. This is carried out by
glimpses through windows whose shutters are hanging aslant or thrown
open. Within are seen old four-poster beds with canopies and feather
mattresses which are round and swelled up as if inflated. Wrinkled old
women with queer caps squint as they peer out, while their hands rest in
embroidery. Elsewhere, little low passageways open into crammed little
courts, with uneven tile floors, scrub trees, and a half-open circular
stone staircase. Natural flowers and grass grow from the moss-covered
tile roofs.
Washing hangs from front windows, and people come out to empty their
wash water and their refuse in the street gutter. Cats abound. I hope
the sights and experiences of war will not wipe out all these quaint and
pleasant sights which make Europe what it is.