December 3rd, 1917.
Dear ----[F]:
Thanks for the merry, merry wishes for the gay Xmas season and I’ll
try to remember them when the day comes along. Sundays and holidays
are not very much noticed here at the front, except that on Sunday the
mechanics all get full of _pinard_ and song and devilment--the _pinard_
(meaning cheap red ink used by the French in place of drinking water)
is of course responsible for the two latter. In the villages, the
entire male population likewise drinks much wine and everyone--man,
woman, child, dog, and domestic animal, parades the streets--dressed
up all like a picture book (applying mostly to women and children).
Occasionally they cross the sidewalk, but the middle of the street is
_the_ place to walk.
One Sunday, I went to church, the first time since last Easter, I
think, to attend the mass given for the departed brethren of the
_escadrille_. The chapel is in a little town a few miles from our
camp. Along in the Middle Ages or anyway a long time ago, there was a
beautiful cathedral there--now the town is insignificantly small. The
front of the cathedral is standing almost in its entirety and the walls
for a little way back, dwindling down into glorious ruins and finally
tumbled masses of rock and stray pillars. Where the back wall once
stood, there now runs a little brook (I almost called it bubbling, but
it happens to be an unusually dead and not over-clean little stream).
The chapel is a place about as big as a minute, snuggling in beside the
big front wall of the ancient cathedral. The service was meaningless
to me--what wasn’t Latin was French. I followed the fellow in front of
me and didn’t miss it once on the getting up and down (fortunately,
_militaires_ don’t have to kneel, I suppose because they appreciate the
fact that most of them wear breeches made by French tailors).
But they fooled me once. What must have been the village belle (what
a village!) passed a little button bag affair in baby blue ribbon,
and gathered up the shekels. I dropped mine in and horror--here comes
the young sister with an identical bag and asks for more and I was
unprepared and had to turn her down amidst my blushes. I thought she
was working on the other side of the house as we used to do at evening
service and to this day I don’t know why they took up two collections
though it has been explained to me three times in French.
Have had some very pleasant trips over the German border (present, not
1914), have watched a few Archies bursting at a safe distance away and
seen some specks which were Boche planes, but am not ready to write a
book yet. Yesterday morning we had the first sortie at 6:45 daylight. A
solid bank of clouds over the camp here at 2,000 metres. The lines are
parallel to a river and a few kilometres north. The edge of the cloud
bank was over the river, sharp as if cut by a knife and all Germany
cloudless. We slipped out from under it and back on top just in time to
see the sun get over the horizon--almost as far away as Rheims, which
we just cannot see. The river and canal were just silver ribbons on a
black cloth stretching for miles due east. Under us we could make out
the ground on one side and the clouds on the other, and to the west
the cloud bank continued to follow the lines, a gloriously beautiful
panorama. The cloud bank stayed nearly the same the two hours we were
up. From a distance above or below, a cloud is just a big, soft, quiet
cushion of cotton fluff, but near to it is a seething, irregular,
tossing, furious jumble of mist.
We saw a few Boches, far behind their lines. An hour after we were
back, they said that Lufbery had just brought down another machine,
his 15th, in flames. He was using a new machine and the gun was not
properly regulated--seven balls were in each blade of the propeller,
yet it held together and brought him home. I was down at the Lafayette
hangars talking to Bill Thaw, and here comes the mighty man in a
hurry from reporting his flight. With fire in his eye he got in his
old machine and off again for the lines. At noon he had brought down
another, which hasn’t yet been officially _homologué_, but is none the
less sure for that. Thaw brought down one this morning. They are doing
well, these men of the American Escadrille--still French, however,
though shortly to be transferred, we hear.
May your Xmas be a happy one, and the new year and those to follow
bring you ever better fortune than the last one.