This is the history of less than a minute I'm giving you. It seemed much longer than that, but I don't suppose it was. I tried to shut down the motor, but couldn't manage it because my left arm was gone. I really believed that it had been blown off into space until I glanced down and saw that it was still there. But for any service it was to me, I might just as well have lost it. There was a vacant period of ten or fifteen seconds which I can't fill in. After that I knew that I was falling, with my motor going full speed. It was a helpless realization. My brain refused to act. I could do nothing. Finally, I did have one clear thought, "Am I on fire?" This cut right through the fog, brought me up broad awake. I was falling almost vertically, in a sort of half vrille. No machine but a Spad could have stood the strain. The Huns were following me and were not far away, judging by the sound of their guns. I fully expected to feel another bullet or two boring its way through. One did cut the skin of my right leg, although I didn't know this until I reached the hospital. Perhaps it was well that I did fall out of control, for the firing soon stopped, the Germans thinking, and with reason, that they had bagged me. Some proud Boche airman is wearing an iron cross on my account. Perhaps the whole crew of dare-devils has been decorated. However, no unseemly sarcasm. We would pounce on a lonely Hun just as quickly. There is no chivalry in war in these modern days.

I pulled out of the spin, got the broom-stick between my knees, reached over, and shut down the motor with my right hand. The propeller stopped dead. I didn't much care, being very drowsy and tired. The worst of it was that I couldn't get my breath. I was gasping as though I had been hit in the pit of the stomach. Then I lost control again and started falling. It was awful! I was almost ready to give up. I believe that I said, out loud, "I'm going to be killed. This is my last sortie." At any rate, I thought it. Made one last effort and came out in ligne de vol, as nearly as I could judge, about one hundred and fifty metres from the ground. It was an ugly-looking place for landing, trenches and shell-holes everywhere. I was wondering in a vague way whether they were French or German, when I fell into the most restful sleep I've ever had in my life.

I have no recollection of the crash, not the slightest. I might have fallen as gently as a leaf. That is one thing to be thankful for among a good many others. When I came to, it was at once, completely. I knew that I was on a stretcher and remembered immediately exactly what had happened. My heart was going pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, and I could hardly breathe, but I had no sensation of pain except in my chest. This made me think that I had broken every bone in my body. I tried moving first one leg, then the other, then my arms, my head, my body. No trouble at all, except with my left arm and side.

I accepted the miracle without attempting to explain it, for I had something more important to wonder about: who had the handles of my stretcher? The first thing I did was to open my eyes, but I was bleeding from a scratch on the forehead and saw only a red blur. I wiped them dry with my sleeve and looked again. The broad back in front of me was covered with mud. Impossible to distinguish the color of the tunic. But the shrapnel helmet above it was—French! I was in French hands. If ever I live long enough in one place, so that I may gather a few possessions and make a home for myself, on one wall of my living-room I will have a bust-length portrait, rear view, of a French brancardier, mud-covered back and battered tin hat.

Do you remember our walk with Menault in the rain, and the dejeuner at the restaurant where they made such wonderful omelettes? I am sure that you will recall the occasion, although you may have forgotten the conversation. I have not forgotten one remark of Menault's apropos of talk about risks. If a man were willing, he said, to stake everything for it, he would accumulate an experience of fifteen or twenty minutes which would compensate him, a thousand times over, for all the hazard. "And if you live to be old," he said quaintly, "you can never be bored with life. You will have something, always, very pleasant to think about." I mention this in connection with my discovery that I was not in German hands. I have had five minutes of perfect happiness without any background—no thought of yesterday or to-morrow—to spoil it.

I said, "Bonjour, messieurs," in a gurgling voice. The man in front turned his head sidewise and said,—

"Tiens! Ca va, monsieur l'aviateur?"

The other one said, "Ah, mon vieux!" You know the inflection they give this expression, particularly when it means, "This is something wonderful!" He added that they had seen the combat and my fall, and little expected to find the pilot living, to say nothing of speaking. I hoped that they would go on talking, but I was being carried along a trench; they had to lift me shoulder-high at every turn, and needed all their energy. The Germans were shelling the lines. Several fell fairly close, and they brought me down a long flight of wooden steps into a dugout to wait until the worst of it should be over. While waiting, they told me that I had fallen just within the first-line trenches, at a spot where a slight rise in ground hid me from sight of the enemy. Otherwise, they might have had a bad time rescuing me. My Spad was completely wrecked. It fell squarely into a trench, the wings breaking the force of the fall. Before reaching the ground, I turned, they said, and was making straight for Germany. Fifty metres higher, and I would have come down in No Man's Land.

For a long time we listened in silence to the subdued crr-ump, crr-ump, of the shells. Sometimes showers of earth pattered down the stairway, and we would hear the high-pitched, droning V-z-z-z of pieces of shell-casing as they whizzed over the opening. One of them would say, "Not far, that one"; or, "He's looking for some one, that fellow," in a voice without a hint of emotion. Then, long silences and other deep, earth-shaking rumbles.

They asked me, several times, if I was suffering, and offered to go on to the poste de secours if I wanted them to. It was not heavy bombardment, but it would be safer to wait for a little while. I told them that I was ready to go on at any time, but not to hurry on my account; I was quite comfortable.

The light glimmering down the stairway faded out and we were in complete darkness. My brain was amazingly clear. It registered every trifling impression. I wish it might always be so intensely awake and active. There seemed to be four of us in the dugout; the two brancardiers, and this second self of mine, as curious as an eavesdropper at a keyhole, listening intently to everything, and then turning to whisper to me. The brancardiers repeated the same comments after every explosion. I thought: "They have been saying this to each other for over three years. It has become automatic. They will never be able to stop." I was feverish, perhaps. If it was fever, it burned away any illusions I may have had of modern warfare from the infantryman's viewpoint. 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.

The dressing-station was in a very deep dugout, lighted by candles. At a table in the center of the room the medical officer was working over a man with a terribly crushed leg. Several others were sitting or lying along the wall, awaiting their turn. They watched every movement he made in an apprehensive, animal way, and so did I. They put me on the table next, although it was not my turn. I protested, but the doctor paid no attention. "Aviateur americain," again. It's a pity that Frenchmen can't treat us Americans as though we belong here.

As soon as the doctor had finished with me, my stretcher was fastened to a two-wheeled carrier and we started down a cobbled road to the ambulance station. I was light-headed and don't remember much of that part of the journey. Had to take refuge in another dugout when the Huns dropped a shell on an ammunition-dump in a village through which we were to pass. There was a deafening banging and booming for a long time, and when we did go through the town it was on the run. The whole place was in flames and small-arms ammunition still exploding. I remember seeing a long column of soldiers going at the double in the opposite direction, and they were in full marching order.

Well, this is the end of the tale; all of it, at any rate, in which you would be interested. It was one o'clock in the morning before I got between cool, clean sheets, and I was wounded about a quarter past eight. I have been tired ever since.

There is another aviator here, a Frenchman, who broke his jaw and both legs in a fall while returning from a night bombardment. His bed is across the aisle from mine; he has a formidable-looking apparatus fastened on his head and under his chin, to hold his jaw firm until the bones knit. He is forbidden to talk, but breaks the rule whenever the nurse leaves the ward. He speaks a little English and has told me a delightful story about the origin of aerial combat. A French pilot, a friend of his, he says, attached to a certain army group during August and September, 1914, often met a German aviator during his reconnaissance patrols. In those Arcadian days, fighting in the air was a development for the future, and these two pilots exchanged greetings, not cordially, perhaps, but courteously: a wave of the hand, as much as to say, "We are enemies, but we need not forget the civilities." Then they both went about their work of spotting batteries, watching for movements of troops, etc. One morning the German failed to return the salute. The Frenchman thought little of this, and greeted him in the customary manner at their next meeting. To his surprise, the Boche shook his fist at him in the most blustering and caddish way. There was no mistaking the insult. They had passed not fifty metres from each other, and the Frenchman distinctly saw the closed fist. He was saddened by the incident, for he had hoped that some of the ancient courtesies of war would survive in the aerial branch of the service, at least. It angered him too; therefore, on his next reconnaissance, he ignored the German. Evidently the Boche air-squadrons were being Prussianized. The enemy pilot approached very closely and threw a missile at him. He could not be sure what it was, as the object went wide of the mark; but he was so incensed that he made a virage, and drawing a small flask from his pocket, hurled it at his boorish antagonist. The flask contained some excellent port, he said, but he was repaid for the loss in seeing it crash on the exhaust-pipe of the enemy machine.

This marked the end of courtesy and the beginning of active hostilities in the air. They were soon shooting at each other with rifles, automatic pistols, and at last with machine guns. Later developments we know about. The night bombarder has been telling me this yarn in serial form. When the nurse is present, he illustrates the last chapter by means of gestures. I am ready to believe everything but the incident about the port. That doesn't sound plausible. A Frenchman would have thrown his watch before making such a sacrifice!



VIII

ONE HUNDRED HOURS

A little more than a year after our first meeting in the Paris restaurant which has so many pleasant memories for us, Drew completed his first one hundred hours of flight over the lines, an event in the life of an airman which calls for a celebration of some sort. Therefore, having been granted leave for the afternoon, the two of us came into the old French town of Bar-le-Duc, by the toy train which wanders down from the Verdun sector. We had dinner in one of those homelike little places where the food is served by the proprietor himself. On this occasion it was served hurriedly, and the bill presented promptly at eight o'clock. Our host was very sorry, but "les sales Boches, vous savez, messieurs?" They had come the night before: a dozen houses destroyed, women and children killed and maimed. With a full moon to guide them, they would be sure to return to-night. "Ah, cette guerre! Quand sera-t-elle finie?" He offered us a refuge until our train should leave. Usually, he said, he played solitaire while waiting for the Germans, but with houses tumbling about one's ears, he much preferred company. "And my wife and I are old people. She is very deaf, heureusement. She hears nothing."

J. B. declined the invitation. "A brave way that would be to finish our evening!" he said as we walked down the silent street. "I wanted to say, 'Monsieur, I have just finished my first one hundred hours of flight at the front.' But he wouldn't have known what that means."

I said, "No, he wouldn't have known." Then we had no further talk for about two hours. A few soldiers, late arrivals, were prowling about in the shadow of the houses, searching for food and a warm kitchen where they might eat it. Some insistent ones pounded on the door of a restaurant far in the distance.

"Dites donc, patron! Nous avons faim, nom de Dieu! Est-ce-que tout le monde est mort ici?"

"Only a host of phantom listeners, That dwelt in the lone house then, Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men."

It was that kind of silence, profound, tense, ghostlike. We walked through street after street, from one end of the town to the other, and saw only one light, a faint glimmer which came from a slit of a cellar window almost on the level of the pavement. We were curious, no doubt. At any rate, we looked in. A woman was sitting on a cot bed with her arms around two little children. They were snuggled up against her and both fast asleep; but she was sitting very erect, in a strained, listening attitude, staring straight before her. Since that night we have believed, both of us, that if wars can be won only by haphazard night bombardments of towns where there are women and children, then they had far better be lost.

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 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.

At first we were far too busy learning the rudiments of combat to keep an accurate record of flying time. We thought our aeroplane clocks convenient pieces of equipment rather than necessary ones. I remember coming down from my first air battle and the breathless account I gave of it at the bureau, breathless and vague. Lieutenant Talbott listened quietly, making out the compte rendu as I talked. When I had finished, he emphasized the haziness of my answers to his questions by quoting them: "Region: 'You know, that big wood!' Time: 'This morning, of course!' Rounds fired: 'Oh, a lot!'" etc.

Not until we had been flying for a month or more did we learn how to make the right use of our clocks and of our eyes while in the air. We listened with amazement to after-patrol talk at the mess. We learned more of what actually happened on our sorties, after they were over than while they were in progress. All of the older pilots missed seeing nothing which there was to see. They reported the numbers of the enemy planes encountered, the types, where seen and when. They spotted batteries, trains in stations back of the enemy lines, gave the hour precisely, reported any activity on the roads. In moments of exasperation Drew would say, "I think they are stringing us! This is all a put-up job!" Certainly this did appear to be the case at first. For we were air-blind. We saw little of the activity all around us, and details on the ground had no significance. How were we to take thought of time and place and altitude, note the peculiarities of enemy machines, count their numbers, and store all this information away in memory at the moment of combat? This was a great problem.

"What I need," J. B. used to say, "is a traveling private secretary. I'll do the fighting and he can keep the diary."

I needed one, too, a man air-wise and battle-wise, who could calmly take note of my clock, altimeter, temperature and pressure dials, identify exactly the locality on my map, count the numbers of the enemy, estimate their approximate altitude,—all this when the air was criss-crossed with streamers of smoke from machine-gun tracer bullets, and opposing aircraft were maneuvering for position, diving and firing at each other, spiraling, nose-spinning, wing-slipping, climbing, in a confusing intermingling of tricolor cocards and black crosses.

We made gradual progress, the result being that our patrols became a hundred-fold more fascinating, sometimes, in fact, too much so. It was important that we should be able to read the ground, but more important still to remember that what was happening there was only of secondary concern to us. Often we became absorbed in watching what was taking place below us, to the exclusion of any thought of aerial activity, our chances for attack or of being attacked. The view, from the air, of a heavy bombardment, or of an infantry attack under cover of barrage fires, is a truly terrible spectacle, and in the air one has a feeling of detachment which is not easily overcome.

Yet it must be overcome, as I have said, and cannot say too many times for the benefit of any young airman who may read this journal. During an offensive the air swarms with planes. They are at all altitudes, from the lowest artillery reglage machines at a few hundreds of metres, to the highest avions de chasse at six thousand meters and above. Reglage, photographic, and reconnaissance planes have their particular work to do. They defend themselves as best they can, but almost never attack. Combat avions, on the other hand; are always looking for victims. They are the ones chiefly dangerous to the unwary pursuit pilot.

Drew's first official victory came as the result of a one-sided battle with an Albatross single-seater, whose pilot evidently did not know there was an enemy within miles of him. No more did J. B. for that matter. "It was pure accident," he told me afterward. He had gone from Rheims to the Argonne forest without meeting a single German. "And I didn't want to meet one; for it was Thanksgiving Day. It has associations for me, you know. I'm a New Englander." It is not possible to convince him that it has any real significance for men who were not born on the North Atlantic seaboard. Well, all the way he had been humming

"Over the river and through the wood To grandfather's house we go,"

to himself. It is easy to understand why he didn't want to meet a German. He must have been in a curiously mixed frame of mind. He covered the sector again and passed over Rheims, going northeast. Then he saw the Albatross; "and if you had been standing on one of the towers of the cathedral you would have seen a very unequal battle." The German was about two kilometres inside his own lines, and at least a thousand metres below. Drew had every advantage.

"He didn't see me until I opened fire, and then, as it happened, it was too late. My gun didn't jam!"

The German started falling out of control, Drew following him down until he lost sight of him in making a virage.

I leaned against the canvas wall of a hangar, registering incredulity. Three times out of seven, to make a conservative estimate, we fight inconclusive battles because of faulty machine guns or defective ammunition. The ammunition, most of it that is bad, comes from America.

While Drew was giving me the details, an orderly from the bureau brought word that an enemy machine had just been reported shot down on our sector. It was Drew's Albatross, but he nearly lost official credit for having destroyed it, because he did not know exactly the hour when the combat occurred. His watch was broken and he had neglected asking for another before starting. He judged the time of the attack, approximately, as two-thirty, and the infantry observers, reporting the result, gave it as twenty minutes to three. The region in both cases coincided exactly, however, and, fortunately, Drew's was the only combat which had taken place in that vicinity during the afternoon.

For an hour after his return he was very happy. He had won his first victory, always the hardest to gain, and had been complimented by the commandant, by Lieutenant Nungesser, the Roi des Aces, and by other French and American pilots. There is no petty jealousy among airmen, and in our group the esprit de corps is unusually fine. Rivalry is keen, but each squadron takes almost as much pride in the work of the other squadrons as it does in its own.

The details of the result were horrible. The Albatross broke up two thousand metres from the ground, one wing falling within the French lines. Drew knew what it meant to be wounded and falling out of control. But his Spad held together. He had a chance for his life. Supposing the German to have been merely wounded—An airman's joy in victory is a short-lived one.

Nevertheless, a curious change takes place in his attitude toward his work, as the months pass. I can best describe it in terms of Drew's experience and my own. We came to the front feeling deeply sorry for ourselves, and for all airmen of whatever nationality, whose lives were to be snuffed out in their promising beginnings. I used to play "The Minstrel Boy to the War Has Gone" on a tin flute, and Drew wrote poetry. While we were waiting for our first machine, he composed "The Airman's Rendezvous," written in the manner of Alan Seeger's poem.

"And I in the wide fields of air Must keep with him my rendezvous. It may be I shall meet him there When clouds, like sheep, move slowly through The pathless meadows of the sky And their cool shadows go beneath,— I have a rendezvous with Death Some summer noon of white and blue."

There is more of it, in the same manner, all of which he read me in a husky voice. I, too, was ready to weep at our untimely fate. The strange thing is that his prophecy came so very near being true. He had the first draft of the poem in his breast-pocket when wounded, and has kept the gory relic to remind him—not that he needs reminding—of the airy manner in which he canceled what ought to have been a bona-fide appointment.

I do not mean to reflect in any way upon Alan Seeger's beautiful poem. Who can doubt that it is a sincere, as well as a perfect, expression of a mood common to all young soldiers? Drew was just as sincere in writing his verses, and I put all the feeling I could into my tin-whistle interpretation of "The Minstrel Boy." What I want to make clear is, that a soldier's moods of self-pity are fleeting ones, and if he lives, he outgrows them.

Imagination is an especial curse to an airman, particularly if it takes a gloomy or morbid turn. We used to write "To whom it may concern" letters before going out on patrol, in which we left directions for the notification of our relatives and the disposal of our personal effects in case of death. Then we would climb into our machines thinking, "This may be our last sortie. We may be dead in an hour, in half an hour, in twenty minutes." We planned splendidly spectacular ways in which we were to be brought down, always omitting one, however, the most horrible as well as the most common,—in flames. Thank Fortune, we have outgrown this second and belated period of adolescence and can now take a healthy interest in our work.

Now, an inevitable part of the daily routine is to be shelled, persistently, methodically, and often accurately shelled. Our interest in this may, I suppose, be called healthy, inasmuch as it would be decidedly unhealthy to become indifferent to the activities of the German anti-aircraft gunners. It would be far-fetched to say that any airman ever looks forward zestfully to the business of being shot at with one hundred and fives; and seventy-fives, if they are well placed, are unpleasant enough. After one hundred hours of it, we have learned to assume that attitude of contemptuous toleration which is the manner common to all pilotes de chasse. We know that the chances of a direct hit are almost negligible, and that we have all the blue dome of the heavens in which to maneuver.

Furthermore, we have learned many little tricks by means of which we can keep the gunners guessing. By way of illustration, we are patrolling, let us say, at thirty-five hundred metres, crossing and recrossing the lines, following the patrol leader, who has his motor throttled down so that we may keep well in formation. The guns may be silent for the moment, but we know well enough what the gunners are doing. We know exactly where some of the batteries are, and the approximate location of all of them along the sector; and we know, from earlier experience, when we come within range of each individual battery. Presently one of them begins firing in bursts of four shells. If their first estimate of our range has been an accurate one, if they place them uncomfortably close, so that we can hear, all too well, above the roar of our motors, the rending Gr-r-rOW, Gr-r-rOW, of the shells as they explode, we sail calmly—to all outward appearances—on, maneuvering very little. The gunners, seeing that we are not disturbed, will alter their ranges, four times out of five, which is exactly what we want them to do.

The next bursts will be hundreds of metres below or above us, whereupon we show signs of great uneasiness, and the gunners, thinking they have our altitude, begin to fire like demons. We employ our well-earned immunity in preparing for the next series of batteries, or in thinking of the cost to Germany, at one hundred francs a shot, of all this futile shelling. Drew, in particular, loves this cost-accounting business, and I must admit that much pleasure may be had in it, after patrol. They rarely fire less than fifty shells at us during a two-hour patrol. Making a low general average, the number is nearer one hundred and fifty. On our present front, where aerial activity is fairly brisk and the sector is a large one, three or four hundred shells are wasted upon us often before we have been out an hour.

We have memories of all the good batteries from Flanders to the Vosges Mountains. Battery after battery, we make their acquaintance along the entire sector, wherever we go. Many of them, of course, are mobile, so that we never lose the sport of searching for them. Only a few days ago we located one of this kind which came into action in the open by the side of a road. First we saw the flashes and then the shell-bursts in the same cadence. We tipped up and fired at him in bursts of twenty to thirty rounds, which is the only way airmen have of passing the time of day with their friends, the enemy anti-aircraft gunners, who ignore the art of camouflage.

But we can converse with them, after a fashion, even though we do not know their exact position. It will be long before this chapter of my journal is in print. Having given no indication of the date of writing, I may say, without indiscretion, that we are again on the Champagne front. We have a wholesome respect for one battery here, a respect it has justly earned by shooting which is really remarkable. We talk of this battery, which is east of Rheims and not far distant from Nogent l'Abbesse, and take professional pride in keeping its gunners in ignorance of their fine marksmanship. We signal them their bad shots—which are better than the good ones of most of the batteries on the sector—by doing stunts, a barrel turn, a loop, two or three turns of a vrille.

As for their good shots, they are often so very good that we are forced into acrobacy of a wholly individual kind. Our avions have received many scars from their shells. Between forty-five hundred and five thousand metres, their bursts have been so close under us that we have been lifted by the concussions and set down violently again at the bottom of the vacuum; and this on a clear day when a chasse machine is almost invisible at that height, and despite its speed of two hundred kilometres an hour. 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. Coming out of a tonneau in answer to three coups from the battery, his propeller stopped dead. By planing flatly (the wind was dead ahead, and the area back of the first lines there is a wide one, crossed by many intersecting lines of trenches) he got well over them and chose a field as level as a billiard table for landing-ground. In the very center of it, however, there was one post, a small worm-eaten thing, of the color of the dead grass around it. He hit it, just as he was setting his Spad on the ground, the only post in a field acres wide, and it tore a piece of fabric from one of his lower wings. No doubt the crack battery has been given credit for disabling an enemy plane. The honor, such as it is, belongs to our aerial godfather, among whose lesser vices may be included that of practical joking.

The remnants of the post were immediately confiscated for firewood by some poilus who were living in a dugout near by.



IX

"LONELY AS A CLOUD"

The French attack which has been in preparation for the past month is to begin at dawn to-morrow. It has been hard, waiting, but it must have been a great deal worse for the infantrymen who are billeted in all of the surrounding villages. They are moving up to-night to the first lines, for these are the shock troops who are to lead the attack. They are chiefly regiments of Chasseurs—small men in stature, but clean, hard, well-knit—splendid types. They talk of the attack confidently. It is an inspiration to listen to them. Hundreds of them have visited our aerodrome during the past week, mainly, I think, for a glimpse of Whiskey and Soda, our lions, who are known to French soldiers from one end of the line to the other. Whiskey is almost full-grown, and Soda about the size of a wild cat. They have the freedom of the camp and run about everywhere.

The guns are thundering at a terrific rate, the concussions shaking our barracks and rattling the dishes on the table. In the messroom the gramophone is playing, "I'm going 'way back home and have a wonderful time." Music at the front is sometimes a doubtful blessing.

We are keyed up, some of us, rather nervous in anticipation of to-morrow. Porter is trying to give Irving a light from his own cigarette. Irving, who doesn't know the meaning of nerves, asks him who in hell he is waving at. Poor old Porter! His usefulness as a combat pilot has long past, but he hangs on, doing the best he can. He should have been sent to the rear months ago.

The first phase of the battle is over. The French have taken eleven thousand prisoners, and have driven the enemy from all the hills down to the low ground along the canal. For the most part, we have been too high above them to see the infantry actions; but knowing the plans and the objectives beforehand, we have been able to follow, quite closely, the progress of the battle.

It opened on a wet morning with the clouds very low. We were to have gone on patrol immediately the attack commenced, but this was impossible. About nine o'clock the rain stopped, and Rodman and Davis were sent out to learn weather conditions over the lines. They came back with the report that flying was possible at two hundred metres. This was too low an altitude to serve any useful purpose, and the commandant gave us orders to stand by.

About noon the clouds began to break up, and both high and low patrols prepared to leave the ground. Drew, Dunham, and I were on high patrol, with Lieutenant Barry leading. Our orders were to go up through the clouds, using them as cover for making surprise attacks upon enemy reglage machines. We were also to attack any enemy formations sighted within three kilometres of their old first lines. The clouds soon disappeared and so we climbed to forty-five hundred metres and lay in wait for combat patrols.

Barry sighted one and signaled. Before I had placed it, he dived, almost full motor, I believe, for he dropped like a stone. We went down on his tail and saw him attack the topmost of three Albatross single-seaters. The other two dived at once, far into their own lines. Dunham, Drew, and I took long shots at them, but they were far outside effective range. The topmost German made a feeble effort to maneuver for position. Barry made a renversement with the utmost nicety of judgment and came out of it about thirty metres behind and above the Albatross. He fired about twenty shots, when the German began falling out of control, spinning round and round, then diving straight, then past the vertical, so that we could see the silver under-surface of his wings and tail, spinning again until we lost sight of him.[1]

[Footnote 1: This combat was seen from the ground, and Barry's victory was confirmed before we returned to the field.]

Lieutenant Talbott joined us as we were taking our height again. He took command of the patrol and Barry went off hunting by himself, as he likes best to do. There were planes everywhere, of both nationalities. Mounting to four thousand metres within our own lines, we crossed over again, and at that moment I saw a Letord, a three-passenger reglage machine, burst into flames and fall. There was no time either to watch or to think of this horrible sight. We encountered a patrol of five Albatross planes almost on our level. Talbott dived at once. I was behind him and picked a German who was spiraling either upward or downward, for a few seconds I was not sure which. It was upward. He was climbing to offer combat. This was disconcerting. It always is to a green pilot. If your foe is running, you may be sure he is at least as badly rattled as you are. If he is a single-seater and climbing, you may be equally certain that he is not a novice, and that he has plenty of sand. Otherwise he would not accept battle at a disadvantage in the hope of having his inning next.

I was foolish enough to begin firing while still about three hundred metres distant. My opponent ungraciously offered the poorest kind of a target, getting out of the range of my sights by some very skillful maneuvering. I didn't want him to think that he had an inexperienced pilot to deal with. Therefore, judging my distance very carefully, I did a renversement in the Lieutenant Barry fashion. But it was not so well done. Instead of coming out of it above and behind the German, when I pulled up in ligne de vol I was under him!

I don't know exactly what happened then, but the next moment I was falling in a vrille (spinning nose dive) and heard the well-known crackling sound of machine-gun fire. I kept on falling in a vrille, thinking this would give the German the poorest possible target.[2]

[Footnote 2: A mistake which many new pilots make. In a vrille, the machine spins pretty nearly on its own axis, and although it is turning, a skillful pilot above it can keep it fairly well within the line of his sights.]

Pulling up in ligne de vol I looked over my shoulder again. The German had lost sight of me for a moment in the swiftness of his dive, but evidently he saw me just before I pulled out of the vrille. He was turning up for another shot, in exactly the same position in which I had last seen him. And he was very close, not more than fifty metres distant.

I believed, of course, that I was lost; and why that German didn't bag me remains a mystery. Heaven knows I gave him opportunity enough! In the end, by the merciful intervention of Chance, our godfather, I escaped. I have said that the sky had cleared. But there was one strand of cloud left, not very broad, not very long; but a refuge,—oh! what a welcome refuge! It was right in my path and I tumbled into it, literally, head over heels. I came skidding out, but pulled up, put on my motor, and climbed back at once; and I kept turning round and round in it for several minutes. If the German had waited, he must have seen me raveling it out like a cat tangled in a ball of cotton. I thought that he was waiting. I even expected him to come nosing into it, in search of me. In that case there would have been a glorious smash, for there wasn't room for two of us. I almost hoped that he would try this. If I couldn't bag a German with my gun, the next best thing was to run into him and so be gathered to my fathers while he was being gathered to his. There was no crash, and taking sudden resolution, I dived vertically out of the cloud, head over shoulder, expecting to see my relentless foe. He was nowhere in sight.

In that wild tumble, and while chasing my tail in the cloud, I lost my bearings. The compass, which was mounted on a swinging holder, had been tilted upside down. It stuck in that position. I could not get it loose. I had fallen to six hundred metres, so that I could not get a large view of the landscape. Under the continuous bombardment the air was filled with smoke, and through it nothing looked familiar. I knew the direction of our lines by the position of the sun, but I was in a suspicious mood. My motor, which I had praised to the heavens to the other pilots, had let me down at a critical moment. The sun might be ready to play some fantastic trick. I had to steer by it, although I was uneasy until I came within sight of our observation balloons. I identified them as French by sailing close to one of them so that I could see the tricolor pennant floating out from a cord on the bag.

Then, being safe, I put my old Spad through every antic we two had ever done together. The observers in the balloons must have thought me crazy, a pilot running amuck from aerial shell shock. I had discovered a new meaning for that "grand and glorious feeling" which is so often the subject of Briggs's cartoons.

Looking at my watch I received the same old start of surprise upon learning how much of wisdom one may accumulate in a half-hour of aerial adventure. I had still an hour and a half to get through with before I could go home with a clear conscience. Therefore, taking height again, I went cautiously, gingerly, watchfully, toward the lines.



X

"MAIS OUI, MON VIEUX!"

The "grand and glorious feeling" is one of the finest compensations for this uncertain life in the air. 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.

Late this afternoon we started, four of us, with Davis as leader, to make the usual two-hour sortie over the lines. No Germans were sighted, and after an uneventful half-hour, Davis, who is always springing these surprises, decided to stalk them in their lairs. The clouds were at the right altitude for this, and there were gaps in them over which we could hover, examining roads, railroads, villages, cantonments. The danger of attack was negligible. We could easily escape any large hostile patrol by dodging into the clouds. But the wind was unfavorable for such a reconnaissance. It was blowing into Germany. We would have it dead against us on the journey home.

We played about for a half-hour, blown by a strong wind farther into Germany than we knew. We walked down the main street of a village where we saw a large crowd of German soldiers, spraying bullets among them, then climbed into the clouds before a shot could be fired at us. Later we nearly attacked a hospital, mistaking it for an aviation field. It was housed in bessonneau hangars, and had none of the marks of a hospital excepting a large red cross in the middle of the field. Fortunately we saw this before any of us had fired, and passed on over it at a low altitude to attack a train. There is a good deal of excitement in an expedition of this kind, and soldiers themselves say that surprise sorties from the air have a demoralizing effect upon troops. But as a form of sport, there is little to be said for it. It is too unfair. For this reason, among others, I was glad when Davis turned homeward.

While coming back I climbed to five thousand metres, far above the others, and lagged a long way behind them. This was a direct violation of patrol discipline, and the result was, that while cruising leisurely along, with motor throttled down, watching the swift changes of light over a wide expanse of cloud, I lost sight of the group. Then came the inevitable feeling of loneliness, and the swift realization that it was growing late and that I was still far within enemy country.

I held a southerly course, estimating, as I flew, the velocity of the wind which had carried us into Germany, and judging from this estimate the length of time I should need to reach our lines. When satisfied that I had gone far enough, I started down. Below the clouds it was almost night, so dark that I could not be sure of my location. In the distance I saw a large building, brilliantly lighted. This was evidence enough that I was a good way from the lines. Unshielded windows were never to be seen near the front. I spiraled slowly down over this building, examining, as well as I could, the ground behind it, and decided to risk a landing. A blind chance and blind luck attended it. In broad day, Drew hit the only post in a field five hundred metres wide. At night, a very dark night, I missed colliding with an enormous factory chimney (a matter of inches), glided over a line of telegraph wires, passed at a few metres' height over a field littered with huge piles of sugar beets, and settled, comme une fleur, in a little cleared space which I could never have judged accurately had I known what I was doing.

Shadowy figures came running toward me. Forgetting, in the joy of so fortunate a landing, my anxiety of a moment before, I shouted out, "Bonsoir, messieurs!" Then I heard some one say, "Ich glaube—" losing the rest of it in the sound of tramping feet and an undercurrent of low, guttural murmurs. In a moment my Spad was surrounded by a widening circle of round hats, German infantrymen's hats.

Here was the ignoble end to my career as an airman. I was a prisoner, a prisoner because of my own folly, because I had dallied along like a silly girl, to "look at the pretty clouds." I saw in front of me a long captivity embittered by this thought. Not only this: my Spad was intact. The German authorities would examine it, use it. Some German pilot might fly with it over the lines, attack other French machines with my gun, my ammunition!

Not if I could help it! They stood there, those soldiers, gaping, muttering among themselves, waiting, I thought, for an officer to tell them what to do. I took off my leather gloves, then my silk ones under them, and these I washed about in the oil under my feet. Then, as quietly as possible, I reached for my box of matches.

"Qu'est-ce-que vous faites la? Allez! Vite!"

A tramping of feet again, and a sea of round hats bobbing up and down and vanishing in the gloom. Then I heard a cheery "Ca va, monsieur? Pas de mal?" By way of answer I lighted a match and held it out, torch fashion. The light glistened on a round, red face and a long French bayonet. Finally I said, "Vous etes Francais, monsieur?" in a weak, watery voice.

"Mais oui, mon vieux! Mais oui!" this rather testily. He didn't understand at first that I thought myself in Germany. "Do I look like a Boche?"

Then I explained, and I have never heard a Frenchman laugh more heartily. Then he explained and I laughed, not so heartily, a great deal more foolishly.

I may not give my location precisely. But I shall be disclosing no military secrets in saying that I am not in Germany. I am not even in the French war-zone. I am closer to Paris than I am to the enemy first-line trenches. In a little while the sergeant with the round red face and the long French bayonet, whose guest I am for the night, will join me here. If he were an American, to the manner born and bred, and if he knew the cartoons of that man Briggs, he might greet me in this fashion:—

"When you have been on patrol a long way behind the enemy lines, shooting up towns and camps and railway trains like a pack of aerial cowboys; when, on your way home, you have deliberately disobeyed orders and loafed a long way behind the other members of your group in order to watch the pretty sunset, and, as a punishment for this aesthetic indulgence, have been overtaken by darkness and compelled to land in strange country, only to have your machine immediately surrounded by German soldiers; then, having taken the desperate resolve that they shall not have possession of your old battle-scarred avion as well as of your person, when you are about to touch a match to it, if the light glistens on a long French bayonet and you learn that the German soldiers have been prisoners since the battle of the Somme, and have just finished their day's work at harvesting beets to be used in making sugar for French poilus—Oh, BOY! Ain't it a GRAND AND GLORYUS FEELING?"

To which I would reply in his own memorable words,—

"Mais oui, mon vieux! Mais OUI!"



XI

THE CAMOUFLAGED COWS

Nancy, a moonlight night, and "les sales Boches encore." I have been out on the balcony of this old hotel, a famous tourist resort before the war, watching the bombardment and listening to the deep throb of the motors of German Gothas. They have dropped their bombs without doing any serious damage. Therefore, I may return in peace to my huge bare room, to write, while it is still fresh in mind, "The Adventure of the Camouflaged Cows."

For the past ten days I have been attached—it is only a temporary transfer—to a French escadrille of which Manning, an American, is a member. The escadrille had just been sent to a quiet part of the front for two weeks' repos, but the day after my arrival orders came to fly to Belfort, for special duty.

Belfort! On the other side of the Vosges Mountains, with the Rhine Valley, the Alps, within view, within easy flying distance! And for special duty. It is a vague order which may mean anything. We discussed its probable meaning for us, while we were pricking out our course on our maps.

"Protection of bombardment avions" was Andre's guess. "Night combat" was Raynaud's. Every one laughed at this last hazard. "You see?" he said, appealing to me, the newcomer. "They think I am big fool. But wait." Then, breaking into French, in order to express himself more fluently: "It is coming soon, chasse de nuit. It is not at all impossible. One can see at night, a moonlight night, very clearly from the air. They are black shadows, the other avions which you pass, but often, when the moonlight strikes their wings, they flash like silver. We must have searchlights, of course; then, when one sees those shadows, those great black Gothas, vite! la lumiere! Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! C'est fini!"

The discussion of the possibility or impossibility of night combat continued warmly. The majority of opinion was unfavorable to it: a useless waste of gasoline; the results would not pay for the wear and tear upon valuable fighting planes. Raynaud was not to be persuaded. "Wait and see," he said. There was a reminiscent thrill in his voice, for he is an old night bombarding pilot. He remembered with longing, I think, his romantic night voyages, the moonlight falling softly on the roofs of towns, the rivers like ribbons of silver, the forests patches of black shadow. "Really, it is an adventure, a night bombardment."

"But how about your objectives?" I asked. "At night you can never be sure of hitting them, and, well, you know what happens in French towns."

"It is why I asked for my transfer to chasse," he told me afterward. "But the Germans, the blond beasts! Do they care? Nancy, Belfort, Chalons, Epernay, Rheims, Soissons, Paris,—all our beautiful towns! I am a fool! We must pay them back, the Huns! Let the innocent suffer with the guilty!"

He became a combat pilot because he had not the courage of his conviction.

We started in flights of five machines, following the Marne and the Marne Canal to Bar-le-Duc, then across country to Toul, where we landed to fill our fuel tanks. Having bestowed many favors upon me for a remarkably long period, our aerial godfather decided that I had been taking my good fortune too much for granted. Therefore, he broke my tail skid for me as I was making what I thought a beautiful atterrissage. It was late in the afternoon, so the others went on without me, the captain giving orders that I should join them, weather permitting, the next day.

"Follow the Moselle until you lose it in the mountains. Then pick up the road which leads over the Ballon d'Alsace. You can't miss it."

I did, nevertheless, and as always, when lost, through my own fault. I followed the Moselle easily enough until it disappeared in small branching streams in the heart of the mountains. Then, being certain of my direction, I followed an irregular course, looking down from a great height upon scores of little mountain villages, untouched by war. After weeks of flying over the desolation of more northerly sectors of the front, this little indulgence seemed to me quite a legitimate one.

But my Spad (I was always flying tired old avions in those days, the discards of older pilots) began to show signs of fatigue. The pressure went down. Neither motor nor hand pump would function, the engine began to gasp, and, although I instantly switched on to my reserve tank, it expired with shuddering coughs. The propeller, after making a few spins in the reverse direction, stopped dead.

I had been in a most comfortable frame of mind all the way, for a long cross-country aerial journey, well behind the zone of fire, is a welcome relaxation after combat patrols. It is odd how quickly one's attitude toward rugged, beautiful country changes, when one is faced with the necessity of finding landing-ground there. The steep ravines yawn like mouths. The peaks of the mountains are teeth—ragged, sinister-looking teeth. Being at five thousand metres I had ample time in which to make a choice—ample time, too, for wondering if, by a miscalculation, I had crossed the trench lines, which in that region are hardly visible from the air.

I searched anxiously for a wide valley where it would be possible to land in safety. While still three thousand metres from the ground I found one. Not only a field. There were bessonneau hangars on it. An aerodrome! A moment of joy,—"but German, perhaps!"—followed by another of anxiety. It was quickly relieved by the sight of a French reconnaissance plane spiraling down for a landing. I landed, too, and found that I was only a ten-minutes' flight from my destination.

* * * * *

With other work to do, I did not finish the story of my adventure with the camouflaged cows, and I am wondering now why I thought it such a corking one. The cows had something to do with it. We were returning from Belfort to Verdun when I met them. Our special duty had been to furnish aerial protection to the King of Italy, who was visiting the French lines in the Vosges. This done we started northward again. Over the highest of the mountains my motor pump failed as before. I got well past the mountains before the essence in my reserve tank gave out. Then I planed as flatly as possible, searching for another aviation field. There were none to be found in this region, rough, hilly country, much of it covered with forests. I chose a miniature sugar-loaf mountain for landing-ground. It appeared to be free from obstacles, and the summit, which was pasture and ploughed land, seemed wide enough to settle on.

I got the direction of the wind from the smoke blowing from the chimneys of a near-by village, and turned into it. As I approached, the hill loomed more and more steeply in front of me. I had to pull up at a climbing angle to keep from nosing into the side of it. About this time I saw the cows, dozens of them, grazing over the whole place. Their natural camouflage of browns and whites and reds prevented my seeing them earlier. Making spectacular virages, I missed collisions by the length of a match-stick. At the summit of the hill, my wheels touched ground for the first time, and I bounded on, going through a three-strand wire fence and taking off a post without any appreciable decrease in speed. Passing between two large apple trees, I took limbs from each of them, losing my wings in doing so. My landing chassis was intact and my Spad went on down the reverse slope—

"Like an embodied joy, whose race is just begun."

After crashing through a thicket of brush and small trees, I came to rest, both in body and in mind, against a stone wall. There was nothing left of my machine but the seat. Unscathed, I looked back along the wreckage-strewn path, like a man who has been riding a whirlwind in a wicker chair.

Now, I have never yet made a forced landing in strange country without having the mayor of the nearest village appear on the scene very soon afterward. I am beginning to believe that the mayors of all French towns sit on the roofs of their houses, field-glasses in hand, searching the sky for wayward aviators, and when they see one landing, they rush to the spot on foot, on horseback, in old-fashioned family phaetons, by means of whatever conveyance most likely to increase expedition their municipality affords.

The mayor of V.-sur-I. came on foot, for he had not far to go. Indeed, had there been one more cow browsing between the apple trees, I should have made a last virage to the left, in which case I should have piled up against a summer pavilion in the mayor's garden. Like all French mayors of my experience, he was a courteous, big-hearted gentleman.

After getting his breath,—he was a fleshy man, and had run all the way from his house,—he said, "Now, my boy, what can I do for you?"

First he placed a guard around the wreckage of my machine; then we had tea in the summer pavilion, where I explained the reason for my sudden visit. While I was telling him the story, I noticed that every window of the house, which stood at one end of the garden, was crowded with children's heads. War orphans, I guessed. Either that or the children of a large family of sons at the front. He was the kind of man who would take them all into his own home.

Having frightened his cows,—they must have given cottage cheese for a week afterward,—destroyed his fences, broken his apple trees, accepted his hospitality, I had the amazing nerve to borrow money from him. I had no choice in the matter, for I was a long way from Verdun, with only eighty centimes in my pocket. Had there been time I would have walked rather than ask him for the loan. He granted it gladly, and insisted upon giving me double the amount which I required.

I promised to go back some day for a visit. First I will do acrobacy over the church steeple, and then, if the cows are not in the pasture, I am going to land, comme une fleur, as we airmen say, on that hill.



XII

CAFARD

It is mid-January, snowing, blowing, the thermometer below zero. We have done no flying for five days. We have read our most recent magazines from cover to cover, including the advertisements, many of which we find more interesting, better written, than the stories. We have played our latest phonograph record for the five hundred and ninety-eighth time. Now we are hugging our one stove, which is no larger than a length of good American stove-pipe, in the absurd hope of getting a fleeting promise of heat.

Boredom, insufferable boredom. There is no American expression—there will be soon, no doubt—for this disease which claims so many victims from the Channel coast to the borders of Switzerland. The British have it without giving it a name. They say "Fed up and far from home." The more inventive French call it "Cafard."

Our outlook upon life is warped, or, to use a more seasonable expression, frozen. We are not ourselves. We make sarcastic remarks about one another. We hold up for ridicule individual peculiarities of individuality. Some one, tiring of this form of indoor sports, starts the phonograph again.

Wind, wind, wind (the crank) Kr-r-r-r-r-r-r (the needle on the disk) La-dee-dum, dee-doodle, di-dee-day (the orchestral introduction)

Sometimes when I feel sad And things look blue, I wish the boy I had Was one like you—

"For the love of Pete! Shut off that damn silly thing!"

"I admire your taste, Irving!"

"Can it!"

"Well, what will you have, then?"

"Play that Russian thing, the 'Danse des Buffons.'"

"Don't play anything."

"Lord! I wish some one would send us some new records."

"Yes, instead of knitted wristers—what?"

"And mufflers."

"Talking about wristers, how many pair do you think I've received? Eight!"

"You try to head 'em off. Doesn't do any good. They keep coming just the same."

"It's because they are easy to make. Working wristers and mufflers is a method of dodging the knitting draft."

"Well, now, I call that gratitude! You don't deserve to have any friends."

"Isn't it the truth? Have you ever known of a soldier or an aviator who wore wristers?"

"I give mine to my mechanician. He sends them home, and his wife unravels the yarn and makes sweaters for the youngsters."

"Think of the waste energy. Harness up the wrist-power and you could keep three aircraft factories going day and night."

"Oh, well, if it amuses the women, what's the difference?"

"That's not the way to look at it. They ought to be doing something useful."

"Plenty of them are; don't forget that, old son."

"Anybody got anything to read?"

"Now, if they would send us more books—"

"And magazines—"

"Two weeks ago, Blake, you were wishing they wouldn't send so many."

"What of it? We were having fine weather then."

"There ought to be some system about sending parcels to the front."

"The Germans have it, they say. Soldier wants a book, on engineering, for example, or a history, or an anthology of recent poetry. Gets it at once through Government channels."

"Say what you like about the Boches, they don't know the meaning of waste energy."

"But you can't have method and efficiency in a democracy."

"There you go! Same old fallacy!"

"No fallacy about it! Efficiency and personal freedom don't go together. They never have and they never will."

"And what does our personal freedom amount to? When you get down to brass tacks, personal freedom is a mighty poor name for it, speaking for four fifths of the population."

"Germany doesn't want it, our brand, and we can't force it on her."

"And without it, she has a mighty good chance of winning this war—"

When the talk begins with the uselessness of wristers, shifts from that to democratic inefficiency, and from that to the probability of Deutschland ueber Alles, you may be certain of the diagnosis. The disease is cafard.

The sound of a motor-car approaching. Dunham rushes to the window and then swears, remembering our greased-cloth window panes.

"Go and see who it is, Tiffin, will you? Hope it's the mail orderly."

Tiffin goes on outpost and reports three civilians approaching.

"Now, who can they be, I wonder?"

"Newspaper men probably."

"Good Lord! I hope not."

"Another American mission."

"That's my guess, too."

Rodman is right. It is another American mission coming to "study conditions" at the front.

"But unofficially, gentlemen, quite unofficially," says Mr. A., its head, a tall, melancholy-looking man, with a deep, bell-like voice. Mr. B., the second member of the mission, is in direct contrast, a birdlike little man, who twitters about the room, from group to group.

"Oh! If you boys only knew how splendid you are! How much we in America—You are our first representatives at the front, you know. You are the vanguard of the millions who—" etc.

Miller looks at me solemnly. His eyes are saying, "How long, O Lord, how long!"

Mr. C., the third member, is a silent man. He has keen, deep-set eyes. "There," we say, "is the brain of the mission."

Tea is served very informally. Mr. A. is restless. He has something on his mind. Presently he turns to Lieutenant Talbott.

"May I say a few words to your squadron?"

"Certainly," says Talbott, glancing at us uneasily.

Mr. A. rises, steps behind his chair, clears his throat, and looks down the table where ten pilots,—the others are taking a constitutional in the country,—caught in negligee attire by the unexpected visitors, are sitting in attitudes of polite attention.

"My friends—" the deep, bell-like voice. In fancy, I hear a great shifting of chairs, and following the melancholy eyes with my own, over the heads of my ten fellow pilots, beyond the limits of our poor little messroom, I see a long vista of polished shirt fronts, a diminishing track of snowy linen, shimmering wineglasses, shining silver.

"My friends, believe me when I say that this occasion is one of the proudest and happiest of my life. I am standing within sound of the guns which for three—long—years have been battering at the bulwarks of civilization. I hear them, as I utter these words, and I look into the faces of a little group of Americans who, day after day, and week after week" (increasing emphasis) "have been facing those guns for the honor and glory of democratic institutions" (rising inflection).

"We in America have heard them, faintly, perhaps, yet unmistakably, and now I come to tell you, in the words of that glorious old war song, 'We are coming, Father Woodrow, ONE HUN-DRED MIL-LION strong!'"

We listen through to the end, and Lieutenant Talbott, in his official capacity, begins to applaud. The rest of us join in timidly, self-consciously. I am surprised to find how awkwardly we do it. We have almost forgotten how to clap our hands! My sense of the spirit of place changes suddenly. I am in America. I am my old self there, with different thoughts, different emotions. I see everything from my old point of view. I am like a man who has forgotten his identity. I do not recover my old, or, better, my new one, until our guests have gone.

* * * * *

FROM A LETTER RECEIVED IN BOSTON, OCTOBER 1, 1918

OFFIZIERS-KRIEGSGEFANGENEN LAGER, KARLSRUHE, BADEN, DEUTSCHLAND July 27, 1918

I've been wondering about the ultimate fate of my poor old "High Adventure" story, whether it was published without those long promised concluding chapters which I really should have sent on had I not had the misfortune to be taken prisoner. I hope the book has been published, incomplete as it is. Not that I am particularly proud of it as a piece of literature!

I told you briefly, on my card, how I happened to be taken prisoner. We were a patrol of three and attacked a German formation at some distance behind their lines. I was diving vertically on an Albatross when my upper right plane gave way under the strain. Fortunately, the structure of the wing did not break. It was only the fabric covering it, which ripped off in great strips. I immediately turned toward our lines and should have reached them, I believe, even in my crippled condition; but by that time I was very low and under a heavy fire from the ground. A German anti-air craft battery made a direct hit on my motor. It was a terrific smash and almost knocked the motor out of the frame. My machine went down in a spin and I had another of those moments of intense fear common to the experience of aviators. Well, by Jove! I hardly know how I managed it, but I kept from crashing nose down. I struck the ground at an angle of about 30 degrees, the motor, which was just hanging on, spilled out, and I went skidding along, with the fuselage of the machine, the landing chassis having been snapped off as though the braces were so many toothpicks. One of my ankles was broken and the other one sprained, and my poor old nose received and withstood a severe contact with my wind-shield. I've been in hospital ever since until a week ago, when I was sent to this temporary camp to await assignment to a permanent one. I now hobble about fairly well with the help of a stick, although I am to be a lame duck for several months to come, I believe.

Needless to say, the lot of a prisoner of war is not a happy one. The hardest part of it is, of course, the loss of personal liberty. Oh! I shall know how to appreciate that when I have it again. But we are well treated here. Our quarters are comfortable and pleasant, and the food as good as we have any right to expect. My own experience as a prisoner of war and that of all the Frenchmen and Englishmen here with whom I have talked, leads me to believe that some of those tales of escaped or exchanged prisoners must have been highly imaginative. Not that we are enjoying all the comforts of home. On the contrary, a fifteen-cent lunch at a Child's restaurant would seem a feast to me, and a piece of milk chocolate—are there such luxuries as chocolate in the world? But for prisoners, I for one, up to this point, have no complaint to make with respect to our treatment. We have a splendid little library here which British and French officers who have preceded us have collected. I didn't realize, until I saw it, how book-hungry I was. Now I'm cramming history, biography, essays, novels. I know that I'm not reading with any judgment but I'll soon settle down to a more profitable enjoyment of my leisure. Yesterday and to-day I've been reading "The Spoils of Poynton," by Henry James. It is absurd to try cramming these. I've been longing for this opportunity to read Henry James, knowing that he was Joseph Conrad's master. "The Spoils of Poynton" has given me a foretaste of the pleasure I'm to have. A prisoner of war has his compensations. Here I've come out of the turmoil of a life of the most intense nervous excitement, a life lived day to day with no thought of to-morrow, into this other life of unlimited bookish leisure.

We are like monks in a convent. We're almost entirely out of touch with the outside world. We hear rumors of what is taking place at the front, and now and then get a budget of stale news from newly arrived prisoners. But for all this we are so completely out of it all that it seems as though the war must have come to an end. Until now this cloistered life has been very pleasant. I've had time to think and to make plans for a future which, comparatively speaking, seems assured. One has periods of restlessness, of course. When these come I console myself as best I may. 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. There are obvious superficial effects which I can trace back to causes quite easily. But there are others which have me guessing. By Jove! this is an interesting place! Conrad would find material here which would set him to work at once. I can imagine how he would revel in it.

Well, I'm getting to be a very wise man. I'm deeply learned in many kinds, or, better, phases, of human psychology and I'm increasing my fund of knowledge every day. Therefore, I've decided that, when the war is over, I'll be no more a wanderer. I'll settle down in Boston for nine months out of the year and create deathless literature. And for vacations, I've already planned the first one, which is to be a three months' jaunt by aeroplane up and down the United States east and west, north and south. You will see the possibilities of adventure in a trip of this sort. By limiting myself somewhat as to itinerary I can do the thing. I've found just the man here to share the journey with, an American in the British Air Force. He is enthusiastic about the plan. If only I can keep him from getting married for a year or so after getting home!

I had a very interesting experience, immediately after being taken prisoner on May 7th. I was taken by some German aviators to their aerodrome and had lunch with them before I was sent on to the hospital. Some of them spoke English and some of them French, so that there was no difficulty in conversing. I was suffering a good deal from my twisted ankles and had to be guarded in my remarks because of the danger of disclosing military information; but they were a fine lot of fellows. They respected my reticence, and did all they could to make me comfortable. It was with pilots from this squadron that we had been fighting only an hour or so before. One of their number had been killed in the combat by one of the boys who was flying with me. I sat beside the fellow whom I was attacking when my wing broke. I was right "on his tail," as we airmen say, when the accident occurred, and had just opened fire. Talking over the combat with him in their pleasant quarters, I was heartily glad that my affair ended as it did. I asked them to tell me frankly if they did not feel rather bitterly toward me as one of an enemy patrol which had shot down a comrade of theirs. They seemed to be surprised that I had any suspicions on this score. We had "a fair fight in an open field." Why should there be any bitterness about the result. One of them said to me, "Hauptmann, you'll find that we Germans are enemies of a country in war, but never of the individual." My experience thus far leads me to believe that this is true. There have been a few exceptions, but they were uneducated common soldiers. Bitterness toward America there certainly is everywhere, and an intense hatred of President Wilson quite equal in degree and kind to the hatred in America of the emperor....

NORMAN HALL.

THE END