Dinsmore.
Dear Family:
Today started out very foggy, because there was no wind. We stood in the field till one o’clock waiting for the air to clear. I got a machine by four. The next hour contained enough excitement to do for the day. The planes are like mad little Indian ponies turned loose in the field—or, better still, like Pegasus bound into the air with a spirit that must be tamed by steady nerves and gentle hand. It is hard to describe just the feeling which possesses one. We are taught the principles and the movements that control the machine and then we are sent alone into the air to find an understanding of them. Perhaps you are turning a corner at an angle of forty-five degrees on the bank. Suddenly you feel something is wrong. The wind whistles louder than usual. Is it because you are pointing nose down, or are you sliding out over the rim of the curve, or down into the center of it? It is one of the three, and to correct the wrong one is to make worse the other two, yet the correction must be made. Now it is too late to figure it out, so you just correct it without thinking, and wonder which fault it was. In an animal we call it instinct, but there is an instant there which, when it passes, leaves a vacuum in the nervous system. The machine climbs like a tiger, and as we are not yet permitted to cut down the gas, it takes much strength to hold its nose down. I made fifteen five-minute rides, and now I’m pleasantly tired and relaxed.
I had ten rides in the eighteen-meter Nieuport and am getting the run of it. It is one of the most difficult machines to drive. I had bad luck in motors or would have finished today. My motor stopped twice when I was twenty-five meters from the ground, but I landed without mishap. With these machines the wing area is so small you head almost straight for the ground and just straighten out in time to land. You make a tour of five or six miles and mount a thousand feet into the air in five minutes—but you will be tired of reading this sort of thing very soon. The thing to do is to go to some aviation field and see it all done.
One of father’s letters arrived with a lot of clippings in it. Those clippings are very interesting. I enjoy them much more than the papers. The Saturday Evening Post is read from cover to cover and passed about till the pages are thin, so it would fill a big demand. Another book on aviation came. I have not yet had time to finish the first one. As they go into the technical end of things rather deeply, I can only study a small amount at a time. Most of my reading lately has been history.
Dins.
Bourges, November 7, 1917.
Dear Family:
I am at Bourges on my way to Avord after my happy permission in Paris. As there were no train connections I had to stay here over night. Well, last Sunday we went to an American church, with an all-American service. It seemed rather pleasant. In the afternoon we went to the Opéra Comique to see Werther and Cavalleria Rusticana. They were both splendid and included some of the best stars. Oh, how I love the opera!
... I spent Monday afternoon in roaming about Paris. I went to the Louvre and Gardens of the Tuileries and Luxembourg, and to several of the less important churches. I saw St. James’s church from the tower of which the bells were rung as a signal on the night of St. Bartholomew. I believe I know Paris and its sights better now than Chicago, not that I have seen everything—one could never do that—but just the general layout. I never will get tired raving about the architecture.