Please consider this a Christmas letter. It will not arrive on
Christmas, it isn’t even written on Christmas, but the Christmas spirit
is responsible for its writing, and wishes for a “Merry Christmas” and
“Happy New Year” go with it to you, Aunt Virgie, and all my Cleveland
friends.
There are a whole bunch of us sitting at the same table writing home. We
have just discovered that we are to have _permission_ to Paris for
Christmas. The result is that it has required three-quarters of an hour
for me to write this much. Between the silences are bursts of
conversation connected by laughter.
We have now arrived at the last stage of aerial training in France. It
is a school of special merits, and the best of its kind. Not only that,
but it is also a very pleasant place to live. The barracks are situated
in orderly rows in a wood of Norway pine bordering a large lake. From
the shores long piers and rows of low hangars painted gray and white run
out into the water, forming harbors. In the little harbors, speed boats
with khaki awnings and machine guns on prow and stern lie anchored in
flotillas, and hydroaeroplanes are drawn up in rows on the docks. Flags
float, and sailors and soldiers in the uniforms of five nations move
about in military manner. From one broad pier containing a row of
shooting pavilions, the rattle of musketry and light artillery keeps the
air tense. The sky line is dotted with man-flown water birds going and
coming, and off In the distance the chase machines at practice look like
dragon flies as they swoop and whirl about the drifting balloon which is
their target. Though it has the sound and aspect of war, there is the
spirit of a carnival present.
Our work consists of lectures, target practice, and air training. In the
lectures we learn the science of gun construction and that of
marksmanship in aviation. It is a science, too. Considering that the
target and shooter are both moving at the greatest speed of man,
allowance must be made instantaneously without instruments for the speed
of each plane. The angle of their flight is in three dimensions, and in
addition there is the speed of the bullet to be considered. Of course,
each plane type of the enemy has its own speed, which varies according
to whether it is climbing or diving. Practice must make all this
calculation second nature. The calculation made, we are then ready to
try our ability in directing the course of an aeroplane in carrying out
the calculation. The target practice consists of shooting clay pigeons
with shotgun and rifle, shooting carbines at fixed and floating targets
and shooting floating targets from the observer’s seat of an aeroplane.
The third branch is shooting from a chase monoplane; we shoot at
balloons and sausages towed by other machines, and dive at marks in the
water and on the ground. It is great sport.
In twenty days we leave here. We hope to be at the Front.