All that is changed now. You go to Paris on leave, you spend two or three days delightfully with Bill or Jim or Harry, a very dear friend, also in on leave from his battery, regiment, or squadron.
A week later some one runs up to you with a long face. "Bill got crowned on Thursday," he says; "joined a Boche patrol by mistake and brought down before he saw the crosses. Poor old cuss." You sigh, thinking of the pleasant hours you have passed with Bill—your long talks together, his curious and interesting kinks of outlook, the things which make personality, make one human being different from another. Somehow your thoughts don't dwell on his death as they would in peace-times—a week or a month later your mind has not settled into taking for granted his non-existence. Next time you visit Paris, you hasten to his former haunts—half expecting to find him absorbing a bock and expounding his peculiar philosophy.
Is there a life after death? Of course there is—you smile a little to yourself to think you could ever have believed otherwise. This, I am confident, is common experience nowadays. The belief that individuality ceases, that death is anything but a quick and not very alarming change, is too absurd to hold water. It is a comforting thought and gives men strength to perform duties and bear losses which in ordinary times would come hard.
I have just been made popotier—I don't know what you call it in English, but it means the individual who attends to the mess: buys provisions, wine, and so forth, makes out menus, keeps accounts, and bosses the cook. A doubtful honor, but one of which I am rather proud when I think that a crowd of French officers have entrusted to me the sacred rites of the table. I was never much of a gourmet, but what little I know stands me in good stead.
To-day was the occasion of the first considerable feast under my régime—a lunch given by the officers of our squadron to some distinguished French visitors. The cook and I held long and anxious consultations and finally turned out a meal on which every one complimented us: excellent hors d'œuvres, grilled salmon steaks, roast veal, asparagus, and salad. A dry Chablis with the fish and some really good Burgundy with the roast. Not bad for the front, really.
I give the cook each night enough money for the next day's marketing. The following evening he tells me the amount of the day's expenses, which sum I divide by the number present, giving each man's share for the day. Very simple.
Since I got my new machine I have become a genuine hangar-loafer. It is so delicate and complicated that my unfortunate mechanics have to work practically all the time to keep me going. The only way to get the work done well is to know about it yourself; and so, against my instincts, I have been forced for the first time to study the technical and mechanical side of my bus.
Some say, "The pilot should never know too much about his machine—it destroys his dash." Perhaps they are right—certainly a plunge into this maze of technicalities destroys his sleep—there is an unwholesome fascination about it: hundreds of delicate and fragile parts, all synchronized as it were and working together, any one of which, by its defection, can upset or even wreck the whole fabric. A simple motor-failure, even in our own lines and at a good altitude, is no joke in the case of the modern single-seater. Small and enormously heavy for its wing-surface, it first touches ground at too high a speed for anything but the longest and smoothest fields. In pannes of this sort, the pilot usually steps out of the most frightful-looking wreck smiling and quite unhurt; but you can scarcely imagine the chagrin and depression one feels at breaking a fine machine. I did it once, and it made me half sick for a week, though it was not really my fault at all.
After lunch, instead of taking a nap as one does when on duty at daybreak, I go to the "bar" to read letters and papers and see friends from the other squadrons. As I go in the door, five friends in flying clothes go out.