IT was on a cool, starlit evening, early in September, 1916,
that I first met Drew of Massachusetts, and actually began my adventures as a
prospective member of the Escadrille Americaine. We had sailed from New York by
the same boat, had made our applications for enlistment in the Foreign Legion
on the same day, without being aware of each other's existence; and in Paris,
while waiting for our papers, we had gone, every evening, for dinner, to the
same large and gloomy-looking restaurant in the neighborhood of the Seine.
As for the restaurant, we frequented it, not assuredly
because of the quality of the food. We might have dined better and more cheaply
elsewhere. But there was an air of vanished splendor, of faded magnificence,
about the place which, in the capital of a warring nation, appealed to both of
us. Every evening the tables were laid with spotless linen and shining silver.
The wineglasses caught the light from the tarnished chandeliers in little
points of color. At the dinner-hour, a half-dozen ancient serving-men silently
took their places about the room. There was not a sound to be heard except the
occasional far-off honk of a motor or the subdued clatter of dishes from the
kitchens. The serving-men, even the tables and the empty chairs, seemed to be
listening, to be waiting for the guests who never came. Rarely were there more
than a dozen diners-out during the course of an evening. There was something
mysterious in these elaborate preparations, and something rather fine about
them as well; but one thought, not without a touch of sadness, of the old days
when there had been laughter and lights and music, sparkling wines and
brilliant talk, and how those merrymakers had gone, many of them, long ago to
the wars..
As it happened on this evening. Drew and I were sitting at
adjoining tables. Our common citizenship was our introduction, and after five
minutes of talk, we learned of our common purpose in coming to France. I
suppose that we must have eaten after making this latter discovery. I vaguely
remember seeing our old waiter hobbling down a long vista of empty tables on
his way to and from the kitchens. But if we thought of our food at all, it must
have been in a purely mechanical way .
Drew can talk by Jove, how the man can talk! and
he has the faculty of throwing the glamour of romance over the most commonplace
adventures. Indeed, the difficulty which I am going to have in writing this
narrative is largely due to this romantic influence of his. I might have
succeeded in writing a plain tale, for I have kept my diary faithfully, from
day to day, and can set down our adventures, such as they are, pretty much as
they occurred. But Drew has bewitched me. He does not realize it, but he is a
weaver of spells, and I am so enmeshed in his moonshine that I doubt if I shall
be able to write of our experiences as they must appear to those of our
comrades in the Franco- American Corps who remember them only through the
medium of the revealing light of day.
Not one of these men, I am sure, would confess to so strange
an immediate cause for joining the aviation service, as that related to me by
Drew, as we sat over our coffee and cigarettes, on the evening of our first
meeting. He had come to France, he said, with the intention of joining the
Legion Etrangere as an infantryman. But he changed his mind, a few days
after his arrival in Paris, upon meeting Jackson of the American Aviation
Squadron, who was on leave after a service of six months at the front. It was
all because of the manner in which Jackson looked at a Turkish rug. He told him
of his adventures in the most matter-of-fact way. No heroics, nothing of that
sort. He had not a glimmer of imagination, he said. But he had a way of looking
at the floor which was " irresistible," which " fascinated him with the sense
of height." He saw towns, villages, networks of trenches, columns of toy troops
moving up ribbons of road all in the patterns of a Turkish rug. And the
next day, he was at the headquarters of the Franco-American Corps, in the
Champs Elysees, making application for membership.
It is strange that we should both have come to France with
so little of accurate knowledge of the corps, of the possibilities for
enlistment, and of the nature of the requirements for the service. Our
knowledge of it, up to the time of sailing, had been confined to a few brief
references in the press. It was perhaps necessary that its existence should not
be officially recognized in America, or its furtherance encouraged. But it
seemed to us at that time, that there must have been actual discouragement on
the part of the Government at Washington. However that may be, we wondered if
others had followed clues so vague or a call so dimly heard.
This led to a discussion of our individual aptitudes for the
service, and we made many comforting discoveries about each other. It is
permissible to reveal them now, for the particular encouragement of others who,
like ourselves at that time, may be conscious of deficiencies, and who may
think that they have none of the qualities essential to the successful aviator.
Drew had never been farther from the ground than the top of the Woolworth
building. I had once taken a trip in a captive balloon. Drew knew nothing of
motors, and had no more knowledge of mechanics than would enable him to wind a
watch without breaking the mainspring. My ignorance in this respect was a fair
match for his.
We were further handicapped for the French service by our
lack of the language. Indeed, this seemed to be the most serious obstacle in
the way to success. With a good general knowledge of the language it seemed
probable that we might be able to overcome our other deficiencies. 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. In so far as Drew and I were concerned, these
were matters for the future. It was enough for us at the moment that our
applications had been approved, our papers signed, and that to-morrow we were
leaving for the Ecole d' Aviation Militaire to begin our training. And so,
after a long evening of pleasant talk and pleasanter anticipation of coming
events, we left our restaurant and walked together through the silent streets
to the Place de la Concorde. The great windy square was almost deserted. The
monuments to the lost provinces bulked large in the dim lamplight. Two disabled
soldiers hobbled across the bridge and disappeared in the deep shade of the
avenue. Their service had been rendered, their sacrifices made, months ago.
They could look about them now with a peculiar sense of isolation, and with,
perhaps, a feeling of the futility of the effort they had made. Our adventures
were all before us. Our hearts were light and our hopes high. As we stood by
the obelisk, talking over plans for the morrow, we heard, high overhead, the
faint hum of motors, and saw two lights, one green, one red, moving rapidly
across the sky. A moment later the long, slender finger of a searchlight probed
among little heaps of cloud, then, sweeping in a wide arc, revealed in striking
outline the shape of a huge biplane circling over the sleeping city. It was one
of the night guard of Paris.
On the following morning, we were at the Gare des Invalides
with our luggage, a long half-hour before train-time. The luggage was absurdly
bulky. Drew had two enormous suitcases and a bag, and I a steamer trunk and a
family-size portmanteau. We looked so much the typical American tourists that
we felt ashamed of ourselves, not because of our nationality, but because we
revealed so plainly, to all the world military, our non-military antecedents.
We bore the hallmark of fifty years of neutral aloofness, of fifty years of
indifference to the business of national defense. What makes the situation
amusing as a retrospect is the fact that we were traveling on third-class
military passes, as befitted our rank as élève-pilotes and
soldiers of thedeuxieme classe.
To our great discomfiture, a couple of poilus volunteered
their services in putting our belongings aboard the train. Then we crowded into
a third-class carriage filled with soldiers permissionnaires,
blesses, reformes, men from all corners of France and her colonies. Their
uniforms were faded and weather-stained with long service. The stocks of their
rifles were worn smooth and bright with constant usage, and their packs fairly
stowed themselves upon their backs.
Drew and I felt uncomfortable in our smart civilian
clothing. We looked too soft, too clean, too spick-and-span. We did not feel
that we belonged there. 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.
By the time we had reached our destination we had persuaded
ourselves into a much more comfortable frame of mind. There we piled into a
cab, and soon we were rattling over the cobblestones, down a long, sunlit
avenue in the direction of B. It was late of a mild afternoon when we
reached the summit of a high plateau and saw before us the barracks and hangars
of the Ecole d' Aviation. There was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was
just sinking behind a bank of crimson cloud. The earth was already in shadow,
but high overhead the light was caught and reflected from the wings of scores
of avions which shone like polished bronze and silver. We saw the long lines of
Bleriot monoplanes, like huge dragon-flies, and as pretty a sight in the air as
heart could wish. Farther to the left, we recognized Farman biplanes, floating
battleships in comparison with the Bleriots, and twin-motor Caudrons, much more
graceful and alert of movement.
But, most wonderful of all to us then, we saw a strange, new
avion, a biplane, small, trim, with a body like a fish. 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 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 " Ecole d'Aviation Militaire de
B."
After we had paid the cabman, we stood in the road, with our
mountain of luggage heaped about us, waiting for something to happen. A moment
later a window in the administration building was thrown open and we were
greeted with a loud and not over-musical chorus of
" Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light"
It all came from one throat, belonging to a chap in
leathers, who came down the drive to give us welcome.
" Spotted you toute suite" he said. " You can tell Americans
at six hundred yards by their hats. How's things in the States? Do you think
we're coming in?"
We gave him the latest budget of home news, whereupon he
offered to take us over to the barracks. When he saw our luggage he grinned. "
Some equipment, believe me! Attendee un peu while I
commandeer a battalion of Annamites to help us carry it, and we'll be on our
way."
The Annamites, from Indo-China, who are quartered at the
camp for guard and fatigue duty, came back with him about twenty strong, and we
started in a long procession to the barracks. Later, we took a vindictive
pleasure in witnessing the beluggaged arrival of other Americans, for in nine
cases out of ten they came as absurdly over-equipped as did we.
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