SOMEWHERE to the north of Paris, in the zone des
armées, there is a village, known to all aviators in the French
service as G. D. E. It is the village through which pilots who have completed
their training at the aviation schools pass on their way to the front; and it
is here that I again take up this journal of aerial adventure.
We are in lodgings, Drew and I, at the Hôtel de la
Bonne Rencontre, which belies its name in the most villainous fashion. An inn
at Rochester in the days of Henry the Fourth must have been a fair match for
it, and yet there is something to commend it other than its convenience to the
flying field. Since the early days of the Escadrille Lafayette, many Americans
have lodged here while awaiting their orders for active service. As I write, J.
B. is asleep in a bed which has done service for a long line of them. It is for
this reason that he chose it, in preference to one in a much better state of
repair which he might have had. And he has made plans for its purchase after
the war. Madame Rodel is to keep careful record of all its American occupants,
Just as she has done in the past. She is pledged not to repair it beyond the
bare necessity which its uses as a bed may require, an injunction which it was
hardly necessary to lay upon her, judging by the other furniture in our
apartment. 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 in- sipidity.
They should show not the faintest trace of wear. With them, one might hope, now
and then, to startle the imagination, to set it running in channels which are
strange and delightful to it. For there is something new under the sun: aerial
adventure; and the most lively and unjaded fancy may, at first, need direction
toward the realization of this fact. Soon it will have a literature of its own,
of prose and poetry, of fiction, biography, memoirs, of history which will read
like the romance it really is. The essayists will turn to it with joy. And the
poets will discover new aspects of beauty which have been hidden from them
through the ages; and as men's experience "in the wide fields of air"
increases, epic material which will tax their most splendid powers.
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 pointof
the Escadrille Lafayette. To go back to some of those earlier ones, when we
were making our first crosscountry 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. I did in the course of half an hour, reaching
the high C of acute panic as I came tumbling out of the first cloud of my
aerial experience. Fortunately, in the air the sense of equilibrium usually
compels one to do the right thing, and so, after some desperate handling of my
"broom-stick," as the control is called which governs ailerons and elevating
planes, I soon had the horizons nicely adjusted again. What a relief it was! I
shut down my motor and commenced a more gradual descent, for I was lost, of
course, and it seemed wiser to land and make inquiries than to go cruising over
half of France looking for one among hundreds of picturesque old towns. There
were at least a dozen within view. Some of them were at least a three hours'
walk distant from each other. But in the air! I was free to go whither I would,
and swiftly.
After leisurely deliberation I selected one surrounded by
wide fields which appeared to be as level as a floor. But as I descended the
landscape widened, billowing into hills and folding into valleys. By sheer good
luck, nothing more, I made a landing without accident. My Caudron barely missed
colliding with a hedge of fruit trees, rolled down a long incline, and stopped
not ten feet short of a small stream. The experience taught me the folly of
choosing landing-ground from high altitudes. I needn't have landed, of course,
but I was then so much an amateur that the buffering of cross-currents of air
near the ground awed me into it, come what might. The village was out of sight
over the crest of the hill. However, thinking that some one must have seen me,
I decided to await developments where I was.
Very soon I heard a shrill, jubilant shout. A boy of eight
or ten years was running along the ridge as fast as he could go. Outlined
against the sky, he reminded me of silhouettes I had seen in Paris shops, of
children dancing, the very embodiment of joy in movement. He turned and waved
to some one behind, whom I could not see, then came on again, stopping a short
distance away, and looking at me with an air of awe, which, having been a small
boy myself, I was able to understand and appreciate. I said, "Bonjour, mon
petit," as cordially as I could, but he just stood there and gazed without
saying a word. Then the others began to appear: scores of children, and old men
as well, and women of all ages, some with babies in their arms, and young
girls. The whole village came, I am sure. I was mightily impressed by the
haleness of the old men and women, which one rarely sees in America. Some of
them were evidently well over seventy, and yet, with one or two exceptions,
they had sound limbs, clear eyes, and healthy complexions. As for the young
girls, many of them were exceptionally pretty; and the children were sturdy
youngsters, not the wan, thin-legged little creatures one sees in Paris. In
fact, all of these people appeared to belong to a different race from that of
the Parisians, to come from finer, more vigorous stock.
They were very curious, but equally courteous, and stood in
a large circle around my machine, waiting for me to make my wishes known. For
several minutes I pretended to be busy attending to dials and valves inside the
car. While trying to screw my courage up to the point of making a verbless
explanation of my difficulty, some one pushed through the crowd, and to my
great relief began speaking to me. It was Monsieur the Mayor. As best I could,
I explained that I had lost my way and had found it necessary to come down for
the purpose of making inquiries. I knew that it was awful French, but hoped
that it would be intel ligible, in part at least. However, the Mayor understood
not a word, and I knew by the curious expression in his eyes that he must be
wondering from what weird province I hailed. After a moment's thought he said,
"Vous etes Anglais, monsieur?" with a smile of very real pleasure. I said,
"Non, monsieur, Americain."
That magic word! What potency it has in France, the more so
at that time, perhaps, for America had placed herself definitely upon the side
of the Allies only a short time before. I enjoyed that moment. I might have had
the village for the asking. I willingly accepted the role of ambassador of the
American people. Had it not been for the language barrier, I think I would have
made a speech, for I felt the generous spirit of Uncle Sam prompting me to give
those fathers and mothers, whose husbands and sons were at the front, the
promise of our unqualified support. I wanted to tell them that we were with
them now, not only in sympathy, but with all our resources in men and guns and
ships and aircraft. I wanted to convince them of our new understanding of the
significance of the war. Alas! this was impossible. 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. To have an American aviator drop down upon them was an event even
in the history of that ancient village. To have been that aviator, well,
it was an unforgettable experience, coming as it did so opportunely with
America's entry into the war. I shall always have it in the background of
memory, and one day it will be among the pleasantest of many pleasant tales
which I shall have in store for my grandchildren.
However, it is not their potentialities as memories which
endear these adventures now, but rather it is because they are in such contrast
to any that we had known before. We are always comparing this new life with the
old, so different in every respect as to seem a separate existence, almost a
previous incarnation.
Having been set right about my course, I pushed my biplane
to more level ground, with the willing help of all the boys, started my motor,
and was away again. 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.
A flight of fifteen minutes brought me within sight of the
large white circle which marks the landing-field at R. J. B. had not yet
arrived. This was a great disappointment, for we had planned a race home. I was
anxious about him, too, knowing that the godfather of all adventurers can be
very stern at times, particularly with his aerial godchildren. I waited for an
hour and then decided to go on alone. "The weather having cleared, the
opportunity was too favorable to be lost. The cloud formations were the most
remarkable that I had ever seen. I flew around and over and under them,
watching at close hand the play of light and shade over their great, billowing
folds.. Sometimes I skirted them so closely that the current of air from my
propeller raveled out fragments of shining vapor, which streamed into the clear
spaces like wisps of filmy silk. I knew that I ought to be savoring this
experience, but for some reason I couldn't. One usually pays for a fine mood by
a sudden and unaccountable change of feeling which shades off into a kind of
dull, colorless depression.
I passed a twin-motor Caudron going in the opposite
direction. It was fantastically painted, the wings a bright yellow and the
circular hoods, over the two motors, a fiery red. As it approached, it looked
like some prehistoric bird with great ravenous eyes. The thing startled me, not
so much because of its weird appearance as by the mere fact of its being there.
Strangely enough, for a moment it seemed impossible that I should meet another
avion. Despite a long apprenticeship in aviation, in these days when
one's mind has only begun to grasp the fact that the mastery of the air has
been accomplished, the sudden presentation of a bit of evidence sometimes
shocks it into a moment of amazement bordering upon incredulity.
As I watched the big biplane pass, I was conscious of a
feeling of loneliness. I remembered what J. B. had said that morning. There was
something unpleasant in the isolation; it made us look longingly down to earth,
wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the air. I, too, longed
for the sound of human voices, and all that I heard was the roar of the motor
and the swish of the wind through wires and struts, sounds which have no human
quality in them, and are no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to
a man adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this feeling, and no doubt in
part responsible for it, was the knowledge of the fallibility of that seemingly
perfect mechanism which rode so steadily through the air; of the quick response
that ingenious arrangement of inanimate matter would make to an eternal and
inexorable law if a few frail wires should part; of the equally quick, but less
phlegmatic response of another fallible mechanism, capable of registering
horror, capable it is said of passing its past life in review in
the space of a few seconds, and then capable of becoming equally
inanimate matter.
Luckily nothing of this sort happened, and the feeling of
loneliness passed the moment I came in sight of the long rows of barracks, the
hangars and machine shops of the aviation school. My joy when I saw them can
only be appreciated in full by fellow aviators who remember the end of their
own first long Sight. I had been away for years. I would not have been
surprised to find great changes. If the brevet monitor had come hobbling out to
meet me holding an ear trumpet in his withered hand, the sight would have been
quite in keeping with my own sense of the lapse of time. However, he approached
with his ancient springy, businesslike step, as I climbed down from my machine.
I swallowed to clear the passage to my ears, and heard him say, "Alors ca va?"
in a most disappointingly perfunctory tone of voice.
I nodded.
"Where's your biograph?"
My biograph! It is the altitude-registering instrument which
also marks, on a cross-lined chart, the time consumed on each lap of an aerial
voyage. My card should have shown four neat outlines in ink, something like
this:
one for each stage of my journey, including the forced
landing when I had lost my way. But having started the mechanism going upon
leaving A, I had then forgotten all about it, so that it had gone on
running while my machine was on the ground as well as during the time it was in
the air. The result was a sketch of a magnificent mountain range which might
have been drawn by the futurist son, aged five, of a futurist artist. Silently
I handed over the instrument. The monitor looked at it, and then at me without
comment. But there is an international language of facial expression, and his
said, unmistakably, "You poor, simple prune! You choice sample of mouldy
American cheese!"
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