Our Army at the Front

by Heywood Broun

The Americans accepted from the beginning the edict on squadron flying. It was as much a part of their training as field-manœuvres for the infantry. And because they had no golden days of derring-do to look back upon, they did less grumbling. Besides, there was always the chance of getting lost, and patrols offered some good opportunities to the venturesome.

The air service had at this time an extra distinction. They were the only arm of America's service that had really impressed the Germans. The German experts, as they spoke through their newspapers, were contemptuous of the army and all its works. They maintained that it would be impossible for American transports to bring more than half a million men to France, if they tried forever, because the submarines would add to the inherent difficulties, and make "American participation" of less actual menace than that of Roumania.

The Frankfurter Zeitung said: "There is no doubt that the Entente lay great stress on American assistance on this point (air warfare). Nor do we doubt that the technical resources of the enemy will achieve brilliant work in this branch. But all this has its limits ... in this field, superiority in numbers is by no means decisive. Quality and the men are what decide."

Major Hoffe, of the German General Staff, wrote in the Weser Zeitung: "The only American help seriously to be reckoned with is aerial aid."

There was a quantity of such talk. Incidentally, the same experts who limited America's troops to half a million in France at the most indulgent estimate, said, over and over, that a million were to be feared, just the number announced to be in France by President Wilson one year from the time of the first debarkation.

The aviators worked hard enough to deserve the German honor. In the French school supervised by the Americans the schedule would have furnished Dickens some fine material for pathos.

The day began at 4 A. M., with a little coffee for an eye-opener. The working-day began in the fields at 5 sharp. If the weather permitted there were flights till 11, when the pupil knocked off for a midday meal. He was told to sleep then till 4 in the afternoon, when flying recommenced, and continued till 8.30. The rest of his time was all his own. He spent it getting to bed.

There was an average of four months under this régime. The flier began on the ground, and for weeks he was permitted no more than a dummy machine, which wobbled along the ground like a broken-winged duck, and this he used to learn levers and mechanics—those things he had toiled over on paper before he was even allowed on the field.

After a while he was permitted in the air with an instructor, and finally alone. There were creditably few disasters. For months there was never a casualty. But if a man had an accident it was a perfectly open-and-shut affair. Either he ruined himself or he escaped. It was part of the French system with men who escaped to send them right back into the air, as soon as they could breathe, so that the accident would not impair their flying-nerves.

After the three or four months of foundation work, if the term is not too inept for flying, the aviator had his final examination, a triangular flight of about ninety miles, with three landings. The landings are the great trick of flying. Like the old Irish story, it isn't the falling that hurts you, it's the sudden stop.