We have now arrived at the last stage of aerial training in France. It is a school of special merits, and the best of its kind. Not only that, but it is also a very pleasant place to live. The barracks are situated in orderly rows in a wood of Norway pine bordering a large lake. From the shores long piers and rows of low hangars painted gray and white run out into the water, forming harbors. In the little harbors, speed boats with khaki awnings and machine guns on prow and stern lie anchored in flotillas, and hydroaeroplanes are drawn up in rows on the docks. Flags float, and sailors and soldiers in the uniforms of five nations move about in military manner. From one broad pier containing a row of shooting pavilions, the rattle of musketry and light artillery keeps the air tense. The sky line is dotted with man-flown water birds going and coming, and off In the distance the chase machines at practice look like dragon flies as they swoop and whirl about the drifting balloon which is their target. Though it has the sound and aspect of war, there is the spirit of a carnival present.
Our work consists of lectures, target practice, and air training. In the lectures we learn the science of gun construction and that of marksmanship in aviation. It is a science, too. Considering that the target and shooter are both moving at the greatest speed of man, allowance must be made instantaneously without instruments for the speed of each plane. The angle of their flight is in three dimensions, and in addition there is the speed of the bullet to be considered. Of course, each plane type of the enemy has its own speed, which varies according to whether it is climbing or diving. Practice must make all this calculation second nature. The calculation made, we are then ready to try our ability in directing the course of an aeroplane in carrying out the calculation. The target practice consists of shooting clay pigeons with shotgun and rifle, shooting carbines at fixed and floating targets and shooting floating targets from the observer’s seat of an aeroplane. The third branch is shooting from a chase monoplane; we shoot at balloons and sausages towed by other machines, and dive at marks in the water and on the ground. It is great sport.
In twenty days we leave here. We hope to be at the Front.
I must eat now. Love to all.
Yours ever,
Dins.
December 19, 1917.
My Dear Mrs. Halbert:
After all, it is the surprises that add the most spice, and it was certainly a pleasant surprise to receive your knit helmet. As a matter of fact, no gift could have been more aptly chosen. The only helmet I had was knit by a girl friend whose enthusiasm was greater than her skill; it no doubt represented much painstaking, but romance will not keep the head warm nor the ravelings out of one’s eyes when aloft, and I had wished hard and oft for a helmet of just the type you sent; others had them. Thank you so much for it, it fits perfectly.
You probably know something of how my time has been spent. I am still in the LaFayette Flying Corps of the French Foreign Legion. We have been through four French schools of aviation and are now as good pilots as can be made without experience at the Front. We are now working in machines the same as are used at the Front, and engage daily in target practice and sharpshooting as well as the theory of gunmanship. We have been trained for pilots in the class machines, that is, fighting monoplane biplanes. They travel at a speed of from ninety to one hundred and fifty miles an hour; in a dive they will go two hundred and fifty or so. Aerial acrobatics in these machines are like a morning swim, and they have the appearance of a clipped-wing dragon fly. The life is wonderful and healthy and full of thrills. Every flight brings a new experience. We have flown circles around the highest peaks of the Pyrenees and swooped over the bathers at Biarritz. We have played hide-and-seek in the clouds and fought sham battles above them. One day I went to an altitude of 21,500 feet and froze three finger tips; I came down out of the sunshine through a snow storm and landed in the rain after sunset. Such changes were never possible before this age. They are a great strain on the system, and it is resisting that strain which is an aviator’s real work. The rest is play and sport.