The first week here was restless, the second nerve-wrecking, and now I
have relaxed and settled down to pleasant, contented routine which
varies according to the weather. When it rains or is foggy, I come over
alone to a little wine shop in a near-by village; its name is
Tagny-le-Sec. Here I have chocolate, toast, and butter for _petit
déjeuner_ (little breakfast). Then I write and read and draw according
to my whim till lunch time. If the sky has not cleared in the afternoon,
I go for a walk and up to the barracks where I lie down and read until
supper. After supper a bunch of us go to a wine shop and talk until
roll-call at nine o’clock.
When the weather is favorable, we stand out on the field eight hours a
day waiting our turn to fly; that is a strain. Usually we fly a half
hour a day, but at times, one may go three or four days without a
flight, but no matter how long you wait, a single half hour in the air
satisfies all desire for action, excitement, and exercise for the time
being. That is one of the strange things about aviation. Though a man is
strapped in his seat and moves no part of his body more than three
inches, an hour in the air will keep him in excellent physical
condition, provided he is nervously fitted for the work. And the mind
and eyes are equally fatigued. Absolute concentration is necessary. The
more I see of the game, the more I believe that nine-tenths of the
accidents and deaths are due to the inability of the pilot to
concentrate or to recognize that concentration is necessary.
We are using the best and fastest fighting plane now, the Spad,
Guynemer’s plane. In starting, one must immediately throw every nerve
into stress to keep the machine in its given course; not doing so means
a quick turn, a crushing of the running gear, and a broken wing. This is
an inexcusable accident with a trained pilot; yet it happens about once
a day because someone is only three-fourths on the job. In gaining
speed, the machine must be brought to its line of flight, the danger
here being to tip it too far forward and break the propeller on the
ground. This is easy to prevent, and so is inexcusable, yet it happens
once a week because someone forgets himself. There is danger in leaving
the ground too soon, and danger in mounting too quickly.
About one pilot a month is killed at the Front by attempting to mount
too quickly while close to the ground. At a height of twenty feet, one
must be all alert for sharp heat waves that are liable to get under one
wing. When one comes to make the first turn, there is danger of too
great a bank allowing the head-on wind to get under the high wing and
slide you down, yet this almost never happens because by the time the
pilot is up there he is all present. All this time he must have been
alert for arriving and departing machines which are dangerous, not only
because of collision, but because of the turbulent current of air they
leave in their wake. One machine passing through the wake of another
acts like a wild goose frightened by a passing bullet.
As the pilot gains height and distance from the field he may begin to
relax and get his geographical bearings, and it is well for him to do
so, for the strain he was under in those first thirty seconds would
exhaust him in fifteen minutes. He can then glance over his gauges and
listen to his motor. When he gets to a thousand or fifteen hundred
meters he can lean back, throttle down his motor, and count the clouds
with a freedom from worry which the motorist never knows. At the Front
of course it is different. There the pilot must make a complete study of
the whole horizon every thirty seconds to be sure of his safety from
enemy planes, meanwhile changing his course and height continually to
evade the anti-aircraft shells. Most pilots are brought down at the
Front by surprise, which again is due to lack of concentration.
Having had a pleasant flight and enjoyed the beauties of nature, it is
time to drift down to the home roost. You locate the hangars, cut your
engine down low, and strike your peaking angle. The good old machine
purrs like a kitten, the clouds whisk by, you breathe a sigh of relief
and wonder if dinner will be any better than lunch. Well, anyway, it was
a good ride. And just there is where “dat dar grimacin’ skeleton pusson
begins to rattle dem bones.” Maybe you have let the plane flatten out
its peaking angle a little and lost your velocity. Maybe the engine was
turning over a good speed because of your descent when you last noticed
it. Maybe the evening air has quieted down somewhat and it was safe
enough to drift along and settle as long as you had altitude. But now
that you are fifty meters from the ground and the _piece_ two or three
hundred meters away and you have come to horizontal flight a little and
your plane is slowly losing its speed of descent and your engine is
still throttled down too slow to even roll you along the ground—and the
sunset is beautiful—like a hole in the sidewalk, your plane gives a
sudden lurch, you jump all over and find your controls “mushy”—you slip
sideways, the ground coming at you—you jerk open the throttle—the motor,
cold from the descent, chokes a bit—you can see the grass blades red in
the sun—then she catches! God bless that motor—she booms! There is a
moment of clenched teeth while the plane wavers in its slide, and then
she bounds forward, skimming the ground, gaining speed just in time to
clear those deadly telegraph wires. With eyes set on the horizon, you
let her sink, and every nerve tense, she pulls her tail down, touches
the ground in a three-point landing like a gull on the wave. She rolls
up and stops; you take a breath and feel the color come back to your
cheeks. Slowly you raise your glasses to your forehead and undo your
belt. Slowly you raise yourself out and drop to the ground. Pensively
you wander back into the group of aviators who watched you land.
“Some landing like a duck,” says an American.
“_Très bien_,” says the monitor. But you go over and lean against a tent
pole silent, and without a smile. You know what your comrades do not
know—that “a fool there was,” and he lives by a fool’s luck. And you
swear an oath to yourself and the dear old world that you’ll never be
caught like that again.
Most everyone has the experience sooner or later and almost everyone
lives to be a wiser and more prudent man, not excluding
Your son,