James Norman Hall

“ Drew is not sentimental, but he sometimes carries sentiment to extremities which appear to me absurd.
When I attempt to define, even to myself, the charm of our adventures thus far, I find it impossible. How, then, make it real to others? To tell of aerial adventure one needs a new language, or, at least, a parcel of new adjectives, sparkling with bright and vivid meaning, as crisp and fresh as just-minted bank-notes. They should have no taint of flatness or insipidity. They should show not the faintest trace of wear. ”

“ This gave me a dangerous sense of safety, and so I tipped up on one side, then on the other, examining the roads, searching the ruins of villages, the trenches, the shell-marked ground. I saw no living thing; brute or human; nothing but endless, inconceivable desolation.
The foolishness of that close scrutiny alone, without the protection of other avions, I realize now much better than I did then. Unless flying at six thousand metres or above,—when he is comparatively safe from attack,—a pilot may never relax his vigilance for thirty seconds together. ”

“ After supper, all of the Americans adjourned for coffee to Ciret's, a little café in the village which nestles among the hills not far from the camp. The café itself was like any one of thousands of French provincial restaurants. There was a great dingy common room, with a sanded brick floor, and faded streamers of tricolor paper festooned in curious patterns from the smoky ceiling. The kitchen was clean, and filled with the appetizing odor of good cooking. Beyond it was another, inner room, “toujours réservée à mes Américains,” as M. Ciret, the fat, genial patron continually asserted. ”

“ Sometimes the winds would die away and the thick clouds lift, and we would go joyously to work on a morning of crisp, bright winter weather. Then we had moments of glorious revenge upon the crows. They would watch us from afar, holding noisy indignation meetings in a row of weather-beaten trees at the far side of the field. And when some inexperienced pilot lost control of his machine and came crashing to earth, they would take the air in a body, circling over the wreckage, cawing and [54] jeering with the most evident delight. ”

“ I know that there is no glamour in it for them; that it has long since become a deadly monotony, an endless repetition of the same kinds of horror and suffering, a boredom more terrible than death itself, which is repeating itself in the same ways, day after day and month after month. It isn't often that an aviator has the chance I've had. It would be a good thing if they were to send us into the trenches for twenty-four hours, every few months. It would make us keener fighters, more eager to do our utmost to bring the war to an end for the sake of those poilus. ”

“ War on the earth may be reasonable and natural, but in the air it seems the most senseless folly. How is an airman, who has just learned a new meaning for the joy of life, to reconcile himself to the insane business of killing a fellow aviator who may have just learned it too? ”

“ This brings me sadly back to my own purpose, which is, despite many wistful longings of a more ambitious nature, to write a plain tale of the adventures of two members—prospective up to this point—of the Escadrille Lafayette. To go back to some of those earlier ones, when we were making our first cross-country flights, I remember them now with a delight which, at the time, was not unmixed with other emotions. Indeed, an aviator, and a fledgling aviator in particular, often runs the whole gamut of human feeling during a single flight. ”

“ Let there be a strong odor of burnt castor oil and gasoline as you enter the door; a wide view from the verandas of earth and sky; maps on the walls; and on the roof a canvas “pantaloon-leg” to catch the wind. Nothing else matters very much. There they will be as happy as any old airman can expect to be, arguing about the winds and disputing one another's judgment about the height of the clouds. ”

“ One has it every time he turns from the lines toward—home! It comes in richer glow, if hazardous work has been done, after moments of strain, uncertainty, when the result of a combat sways back and forth; and it gushes up like a fountain, when, after making a forced landing in what appears to be enemy territory, you find yourself among friends. ”

“ A few days before I had been watching without emotion the bombardment of a German plane. I had seen it twisting and turning through the éclatements, and had heard the shells popping faintly, with a sound like the bursting of seed-pods in the sun.
My feeling was not that of fear, exactly. It was more like despair. Every airman must [136] have known it at one time or another, a sudden overwhelming realization of the pitilessness of the forces which men let loose in war. In that moment one doesn't remember that men have loosed them. He is alone, and he sees the face of an utterly evil thing. ”

“ A spice of interest was added to the morning's thrills when an American, not to be outdone by his French compatriot, wrecked a machine so completely that it seemed incredible that he could have escaped without serious injury. But he did, and then we witnessed the amusing spectacle of an American, who had no French at all, explaining through the interpreter just how the accident had happened. I saw his moniteur, who knew no English, grin in a relieved kind of way when the American crawled out from under the wreckage. ”

“ I have instructions from the commandant touching on this point. In case any pilot objects to attacking the observers with machine-gun fire, he is to strew their parachutes with autumn leaves and such field-flowers as the season affords. Now, listen! What difference, ethically, is there, between attacking one observation officer in a parachute, [151] and dropping a ton of bombs on a train-load of soldiers? And to kill the observers is really more important than to destroy the balloon. If you are going to be a military pilot, for the love of Pete and Alf be one! ”

“ There are many French pilots with excellent records of achievement in war-flying who have but a sketchy knowledge of motor and aircraft construction. Some are college-bred men, but many more have only a common-school education. It is not at all strange that this should be the case, for one may have had no technical training worth mentioning; one may have only a casual speaking acquaintance with motors, and a very imperfect idea of why and how one is able to defy the law of gravity, and yet prove his worth as a pilot in what is, after all, the best possible way—by his record at the front. ”

“ But I am writing a journal of high adventure of a cleaner kind, in which all the resources in skill and cleverness of one set of men are pitted against those of another set. We have no bomb-dropping to do, and there are but few women and children living in the territory over which we fly. One hundred hours is not a great while as time is measured on the ground, but in terms of combat patrols, the one hundredth [185] part of it has held more of an adventure in the true meaning of the word than we have had during the whole of our lives previously. ”

“ In winter it is a series of seemingly endless delays. Day after day, the plain on the high plateau overlooking the old city of V—— was storm-swept, a forlorn and desolate place as we looked at it from our windows, watching the flocks of crows as they beat up against the wind, or as they turned, and were swept with it, over our barracks, crying and calling derisively to us as they passed. ”

“ Without it, we could see no way to mastering the mechanical knowledge which we supposed must be required as a foundation for the training of a military pilot. In this connection, it may be well to say that we have both been handicapped from the beginning. We have had to learn, through actual experience in the air, and at risk to life and limb, what many of our comrades, both French and American, knew before they had ever climbed into an aeroplane. But it is equally true that scores of men become very excellent pilots with little or no knowledge of the mechanics of the business. ”

“ At the last, the machine made a quick swoop downward, from a height of about fifty metres, then careened upward, tipped [31] again, and diving sidewise, struck the ground with a sickening rending crash, the motor going at full speed. For a moment it stood, tail in air; then slowly the balance was lost, and it fell, bottom up, and lay silent.
An enterprising moving-picture company would have given a great deal of money to film that accident. It would have provided a splendid dramatic climax to a war drama of high adventure. Civilian audiences would have watched in breathless, awe-struck silence ”

“ To see it in flight was to be convinced for all time that man has mastered the air, and has outdone the birds in their own element. Never was swallow more [11] consciously joyous in swift flight, never eagle so bold to take the heights or so quick to reach them. Drew and I gazed in silent wonder, our bodies jammed tightly into the cab-window, and our heads craned upward. We did not come back to earth until our ancient, earth-creeping conveyance brought up with a jerk, and we found ourselves in front of a gate marked “École d'Aviation Militaire de B——.” ”

“ The handicap was not a serious one, and I think I may truthfully say that we kept pace with our French comrades. The most important thing was to gain actual flying experience, and as much of it as possible. Only in this way can one acquire a sensitive ear for motors, and an accurate sense of flying speed: the feel of one's machine in the air. These are of the greatest importance. Once the pilot has developed this airman's sixth sense, he need not, and never does, worry about the scantiness of his knowledge of the theory of flight. ”

“ On a gray day, when we are flying between twenty-five hundred and three thousand metres beneath a film of cloud, they repay the honor we do them by our acrobatic turns. They bracket us, put barrages between us and our own lines, give us more trouble than all the other batteries on the sector combined.
For this reason it is all the more humiliating to be forced to land with motor trouble, just at the moment when they are paying off some old scores. This happened to Drew while I have been writing up my journal. ”

“ Even for prisoners of war there are possibilities for quite interesting adventure, adventure in companionship. Thrown into such intimate relationships as we are here, and under these peculiar circumstances, we make rather surprising discoveries about ourselves and about each other. ”

“ We knew that the Escadrille Lafayette was one of four pursuit squadrons occupying hangars on the same field, and that, together, these formed what is called a groupe de combat, with a definite sector of front to cover. We had been told that combat pilots are “the police of the air,” whose duty it is to patrol the lines, harass the enemy, attacking whenever possible, thus giving protection to their own corps-d'armée aircraft—which are only incidentally fighting machines—in their work of reconnaissance, photography, artillery direction, and the like. ”

“ But in a whispered conversation we comforted ourselves with the assurance that if ever America took her rightful stand with the Allies, in six months after the event, hundreds of thousands of American boys would be lugging packs and rifles with the same familiarity of use as these French poilus. They would become equally good soldiers, and soon would have the same community of experience, of dangers and hardships shared in common, which make men comrades and brothers in fact as well as in theory. ”

“ Then I found that, despite the new motor, my machine was not a rapid climber. Talbott noticed this and kept me well in the group, he and the others losing height in renversements and retournements, diving under me and climbing up again. It was fascinating to watch them doing stunts, to observe the constant changing of positions. Sometimes we seemed, all of us, to be hanging motionless, then rising and falling like small boats riding a heavy swell. ”

“ Once he discussed the possibility of “falling in flames,” which is so often the end of an airman's career. I shall never again be able to take the same whole-hearted delight in flying that I did before he was so horribly eloquent upon the subject. He often speculated upon one's emotions in falling in a machine damaged beyond the possibility of control.
“Now try to imagine it,” he would say: “your gasoline tanks have been punctured and half of your fuselage has been shot away. You believe that there is not the slightest chance for you to save your life. ”

“ Instead I gave each one of an army of small boys the privilege of sitting in the pilot's seat, and showed them how to manage the controls.
The astonishing thing to me was, that while this village was not twenty kilometres off the much-frequented air route between C—— and R——, mine was the first aeroplane which most of them had seen. During long months at various aviation schools pilots grow accustomed to thinking that aircraft are as familiar a sight to others as to them. But here was a village, not far distant from several aviation schools, where an aviator was looked upon with wonder. ”

“ The war was always in the background of one's musings, and while we were far removed from actual contact with it, every depopulated country village brought to mind the sacrifice which France has made for the cause of all freedom-loving nations. Every roadside café, long barren of its old patronage, was an evidence of the completeness of the sacrifice. Americans, for the most part, are of an unconquerably healthy cast of mind; but there were few of us who could frequent these places light-heartedly.
Paris was our emotional storehouse, to use Kipling's term, during the time we were at B——. ”

“ Their shrill cheers reached me even above the roar of the motor. As a lad in a small, Middle-Western town, I have known the rapture of holding to a balloon guy-rope at a county fair, until “the world's most famous aeronaut” shouted, “Let 'er go, boys!” and swung off into space. I kept his memory green until I had passed the first age of hero worship. I know that every youngster in a small village in central France will so keep mine. Such fame is the only kind worth having. [88]
A flight of fifteen minutes brought me within sight of the large white circle which marks the landing-field at R——. ”