Our squadron consisted of nine Americans, C. C. Robinson, H. A. Miller, F. S. McClurg, A. A. Allen, E. B. Garnett, H. K. Boysen, H. A. Smeeton, A. Taylor, and myself; and nine Britishers, Paul H. Raney, J. R. Park, C. Nelmes, C. R. Moore, T. L. Atkinson, F. C. Conry, A. Muir, E. A. L. F. Smith, and A. C. Jones.
Within a few weeks after our arrival in England all of us had won our "wings"—the insignia worn on the left breast by every pilot on the western front.
We were all sent to a place in France known as the Pool Pilots' Mess. Here men gather from all the training squadrons in Canada and England and await assignments to the particular squadron of which they are to become members.
The Pool Pilots' Mess is situated a few miles back of the lines. Whenever a pilot is shot down or killed the Pool Pilots' Mess is notified to send another to take his place.
There are so many casualties every day in the R. F. C. at one point of the front or another that the demand for new pilots is quite active, but when a fellow is itching to get into the fight as badly as I and my friends were I must confess that we got a little impatient, although we realized that every time a new man was called it meant that some one else had, in all probability, been killed, wounded, or captured.
One morning an order came in for a scout pilot, and one of my friends was assigned. I can tell you the rest of us were as envious of him as if it were the last chance any of us were ever going to have to get to the front. As it was, however, hardly more than three hours had elapsed before another wire was received at the Mess and I was ordered to follow my friend. I afterward learned that as soon as he arrived at the squadron he had prevailed upon the commanding officer of the squadron to wire for me.
At the Pool Pilots' Mess it was the custom of the officers to wear "shorts"—breeches that are about eight inches long, like the Boy Scouts wear, leaving a space of about eight inches of open country between the top of the puttees and the end of the "shorts." The Australians wore them in Salonica and at the Dardanelles.
When the order came in for me, I had these "shorts" on, and I didn't have time to change into other clothes. Indeed, I was in such a sweat to get to the front that if I had been in my pajamas I think I would have gone that way. As it was, it was raining and I threw an overcoat over me, jumped into the machine, and we made record time to the aerodrome to which I had been ordered to report.
As I alighted from the automobile my overcoat blew open and displayed my manly form attired in "shorts" instead of in the regulation flying breeches, and the sight aroused considerable commotion in camp.
"Must be a Yankee!" I overheard one officer say to another as I approached. "No one but a Yank would have the cheek to show up that way, you know!"