“That's spreading it, Dunham. What about Huston? is he getting away with it?”
“Now, don't let's get personal. Very likely Huston can't help it. Anyway, it is a matter of temperament mostly.”
“Temperament, hell! There's Van, for example. I happen to know that he has to take himself by his bootlaces every time he crosses into Germany. But he sticks it. He has never played a yellow trick. I hand it to him for pluck above every other man in the squadron.”
“What about Talbott and Barry?”
“Lord! They haven't any nerves. It's no job for them to do their work well.”
This conversation continued during the rest of the journey. The life of a military pilot offers exceptional opportunities for research in the matter of personal bravery. Dunham and Miller agreed that it is a varying quality. Sometimes one is really without fear; at others only a sense of shame prevents one from making a very sad display.
“Huston is no worse than some of the rest of us, only he hasn't a sense of shame.”
“Well, he has the courage to be a coward, and that is more than you have, son, or I either.”
Our fellow pilots of the Lafayette Corps were lounging outside the barracks on our arrival. They gave us a welcome which did much to remove our feelings of strangeness; but we knew that they were only mildly interested in the news from the schools and were glad when they let us drop into the background of conversation. By a happy chance mention was made of a recent newspaper article of some of the exploits of the Escadrille, written evidently by a very imaginative journalist; and from this the talk passed to the reputation of the Squadron in America, and the almost fabulous deeds credited to it by some newspaper correspondents. One pilot said that he had kept record of the number of German machines actually reported as having been brought down by members of the Corps. I don't remember the number he gave, but it was an astonishing total. The daily average was so high, that, granting it to be correct, America might safely have abandoned her far-reaching aerial programme. Long before her first pursuit squadron could be ready for service, the last of the imperial German air-fleet would, to quote from the article, have “crashed in smouldering ruin on the war-devastated plains of northern France.”
In this connection I can't forbear quoting from another, one of the brightest pages in the journalistic history of the legendary Escadrille Lafayette. It is an account of a sortie said to have taken place on the receipt of news of America's declaration of war.