That year, the National Rifle Association of America had decided to enter a team in the international free rifle matches at Milan, Italy, and extended me an invitation to compete for the squad. Here was an opportunity to escape the razzle-dazzle of naval aviation into something I knew about. Better still, it afforded an opportunity for my wife and me to make a joint European tour. At Milan, our team won the championship of the world. By that time, my wife had obtained tickets to the last performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, an event destined to shape my outlook.
We had been billeted in the home of Antone Lang, the Christus of the play, and had been stirred by the devout spirit shining in the faces of the villagers. The play, too, had moved us deeply as a revelation of the fundamental tenets of our Christian faith. Though spoken wholly in German it had remained for us a vital religious experience.
During the evening following the performance we had talked with Antone Lang in his parlor and obtained his autograph on a photograph of himself in his role. And when we had come to settle with Frau Lang for our lodgings, we had been astonished to find them so absurdly cheap. Upon our offer to contribute to a local charity—this at a time when inflation had put the exchange rate up to several thousand marks to the dollar—Frau Lang had set a limit of twenty-five marks. At my exclamation of surprise she had hurried to explain, “We need honest work, not charity. Today there is nothing that money can buy!” I had left with a deep impression of the disaster of inflation and the folly of war.
Upon our return from Europe, I had avoided the Bureau of Aeronautics and obtained an assignment as Executive Officer of the destroyer tender Bridgeport, a converted former German merchantman. Under command of Capt. R. Drace White, I had enjoyed a year and a half of pleasant duty, trying to make a yacht out of a floating machine shop, and had just begun to feel at ease, when Adm. William Adger Moffett reached down into the Caribbean to pluck me off my happy home and install me in his bureau.
Thus it had been that, thanks to Dr. Lucke and the admiral, I was diverted from gunnery into engineering and then into aviation. Now as a buzzer sounded, and the admiral’s secretary smiled her signal to enter the sanctum, I hooked on my sword and pushed open the door, not with the enthusiasm of an aviator but with the reservations of the professional seaman.
Inside his sunny corner office, Admiral Moffett leaned against the old-fashioned high desk at which he stood when signing out papers. That desk, I thought, was a relic of the days of high stools and celluloid eyeshades, and must have been dragged out from some old storeroom by the admiral for the sake of sentiment. He was like that, a curious mixture of sentimental attachment to the days of sail and nervous enthusiasm for the airplane. Over his shoulder draped the silk cord of a pince-nez, poised on the bridge of his nose. His double-breasted blue-serge civilian suit, cut to look like the new uniforms, bespoke revolt against the executive order which had instructed officers on duty in Washington to stow their regimentals away with moth balls in sea chests.
This order was a manifestation of the “return to normalcy,” under which slogan, Senator Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge were to be sledded into the White House and the Vice-Presidency later the same year. For the American people, disillusioned after their recent crusade to make the world safe for democracy, had now turned their backs on Europe to devote themselves to something they knew more about—how to make money fast. During the existing reaction against all things military, the Administration deemed it wise to keep uniforms out of sight as far as possible. They were only permitted to be worn by officers reporting for duty, as I was at that moment.
The admiral turned to shake hands with me and hand me my signed orders. His was the aristocratic bearing of the Southern cavalier.
“Glad to see you aboard,” he greeted me warmly. “You are to relieve Lt. Comdr. B. G. Leighton as Chief of the Engine Section—an important department. I’m sure you’ll do well at it.” His was the accent of Charleston, South Carolina, but without the drawl. He clipped his words like a nervous Yankee.
“Aye, aye, sir,” I replied, acknowledging the order in the conventional manner, “but what I don’t know about aircraft engines,” I added, “would overflow the library of Congress.”