Dins.
February 10, 1918.
Dear Family:
The first week here was restless, the second nerve-wrecking, and now I have relaxed and settled down to pleasant, contented routine which varies according to the weather. When it rains or is foggy, I come over alone to a little wine shop in a near-by village; its name is Tagny-le-Sec. Here I have chocolate, toast, and butter for petit déjeuner (little breakfast). Then I write and read and draw according to my whim till lunch time. If the sky has not cleared in the afternoon, I go for a walk and up to the barracks where I lie down and read until supper. After supper a bunch of us go to a wine shop and talk until roll-call at nine o’clock.
When the weather is favorable, we stand out on the field eight hours a day waiting our turn to fly; that is a strain. Usually we fly a half hour a day, but at times, one may go three or four days without a flight, but no matter how long you wait, a single half hour in the air satisfies all desire for action, excitement, and exercise for the time being. That is one of the strange things about aviation. Though a man is strapped in his seat and moves no part of his body more than three inches, an hour in the air will keep him in excellent physical condition, provided he is nervously fitted for the work. And the mind and eyes are equally fatigued. Absolute concentration is necessary. The more I see of the game, the more I believe that nine-tenths of the accidents and deaths are due to the inability of the pilot to concentrate or to recognize that concentration is necessary.
We are using the best and fastest fighting plane now, the Spad, Guynemer’s plane. In starting, one must immediately throw every nerve into stress to keep the machine in its given course; not doing so means a quick turn, a crushing of the running gear, and a broken wing. This is an inexcusable accident with a trained pilot; yet it happens about once a day because someone is only three-fourths on the job. In gaining speed, the machine must be brought to its line of flight, the danger here being to tip it too far forward and break the propeller on the ground. This is easy to prevent, and so is inexcusable, yet it happens once a week because someone forgets himself. There is danger in leaving the ground too soon, and danger in mounting too quickly.
About one pilot a month is killed at the Front by attempting to mount too quickly while close to the ground. At a height of twenty feet, one must be all alert for sharp heat waves that are liable to get under one wing. When one comes to make the first turn, there is danger of too great a bank allowing the head-on wind to get under the high wing and slide you down, yet this almost never happens because by the time the pilot is up there he is all present. All this time he must have been alert for arriving and departing machines which are dangerous, not only because of collision, but because of the turbulent current of air they leave in their wake. One machine passing through the wake of another acts like a wild goose frightened by a passing bullet.
As the pilot gains height and distance from the field he may begin to relax and get his geographical bearings, and it is well for him to do so, for the strain he was under in those first thirty seconds would exhaust him in fifteen minutes. He can then glance over his gauges and listen to his motor. When he gets to a thousand or fifteen hundred meters he can lean back, throttle down his motor, and count the clouds with a freedom from worry which the motorist never knows. At the Front of course it is different. There the pilot must make a complete study of the whole horizon every thirty seconds to be sure of his safety from enemy planes, meanwhile changing his course and height continually to evade the anti-aircraft shells. Most pilots are brought down at the Front by surprise, which again is due to lack of concentration.
Having had a pleasant flight and enjoyed the beauties of nature, it is time to drift down to the home roost. You locate the hangars, cut your engine down low, and strike your peaking angle. The good old machine purrs like a kitten, the clouds whisk by, you breathe a sigh of relief and wonder if dinner will be any better than lunch. Well, anyway, it was a good ride. And just there is where “dat dar grimacin’ skeleton pusson begins to rattle dem bones.” Maybe you have let the plane flatten out its peaking angle a little and lost your velocity. Maybe the engine was turning over a good speed because of your descent when you last noticed it. Maybe the evening air has quieted down somewhat and it was safe enough to drift along and settle as long as you had altitude. But now that you are fifty meters from the ground and the piece two or three hundred meters away and you have come to horizontal flight a little and your plane is slowly losing its speed of descent and your engine is still throttled down too slow to even roll you along the ground—and the sunset is beautiful—like a hole in the sidewalk, your plane gives a sudden lurch, you jump all over and find your controls “mushy”—you slip sideways, the ground coming at you—you jerk open the throttle—the motor, cold from the descent, chokes a bit—you can see the grass blades red in the sun—then she catches! God bless that motor—she booms! There is a moment of clenched teeth while the plane wavers in its slide, and then she bounds forward, skimming the ground, gaining speed just in time to clear those deadly telegraph wires. With eyes set on the horizon, you let her sink, and every nerve tense, she pulls her tail down, touches the ground in a three-point landing like a gull on the wave. She rolls up and stops; you take a breath and feel the color come back to your cheeks. Slowly you raise your glasses to your forehead and undo your belt. Slowly you raise yourself out and drop to the ground. Pensively you wander back into the group of aviators who watched you land.
“Some landing like a duck,” says an American.