We are having sham battles every day. They thought a few of us good
enough to hold over for extra training ten days and send us to a special
shooting school as Cazaux. This increases our efficiency some fifty per
cent before going to the Front and gives us that much more chance. I
have had more training than the average, due to more luck and interest.
Today I shot a machine gun at a pointed aeroplane. Out of eighty shots,
of which three bullets failed to leave the gun, sixty-seven hit the
square target; of these sixty-seven, twenty-seven struck the plane and
the man in it. It is the best score I have seen, and encourages me. This
shooting is very vital.
We leave here in about two days, and remain at Cazaux about ten. Then we
go to Paris and wait for our call to the Front. I’ll be in Bordeaux
Christmas, and in Paris New Years. At the Front we go into different
escadrilles, French, and spend the first month as apprentices before
going to fight the Boche. We attend lectures and fly all the time here
and sleep twelve hours a day. It is a full-sized job, and enough for me.
It may be a beautiful life in training, but I am beginning to realize
that the real service will take all that war requires of any man. In
fact, it will be all that I anticipated before entering the work. There
has been a period in which I thought it rather an easy branch of the
service. But I am much better fitted for it than the average man doing
it. I was a little afraid I would be too conservative; not devilish
enough—but I guess my reason does not curb my abandon. There is not much
to be told just now, as we follow a pretty steady routine from 6 A.M. to
9:30 P.M. The weather has been beautiful; frost on the trees and mist on
the mountains, lighted by a rose-colored winter’s sun in beauty
unsurpassed. I sketch a little and read a little and struggle to keep up
my correspondence. Family letters are slow in coming, but have been
delayed or lost, no doubt.