THE FRANCO-AMERICAN CORPS
It was on a cool, starlit evening,
early in September, 1916, that I first met Drew of
Massachusetts, and actually began my adventures as
a prospective member of the Escadrille Américaine.
We had sailed from New York by the same boat, had
made our applications for enlistment in the Foreign
Legion on the same day, without being aware of each
other’s existence; and in Paris, while waiting
for our papers, we had gone, every evening, for dinner,
to the same large and gloomy-looking restaurant in
the neighborhood of the Seine.
As for the restaurant, we frequented
it, not assuredly because of the quality of the food.
We might have dined better and more cheaply elsewhere.
But there was an air of vanished splendor, of faded
magnificence, about the place which, in the capital
of a warring nation, appealed to both of us.
Every evening the tables were laid with spotless linen
and shining silver. The wineglasses caught the
light from the tarnished chandeliers in little points
of color. At the dinner-hour, a half-dozen ancient
serving-men silently took their places about the room.
There was not a sound to be heard except the occasional
far-off honk of a motor or the subdued clatter of dishes
from the kitchens. The serving-men, even the tables
and the empty chairs, seemed to be listening, to be
waiting for the guests who never came. Rarely
were there more than a dozen diners-out during the
course of an evening. There was something mysterious
in these elaborate preparations, and something rather
fine about them as well; but one thought, not without
a touch of sadness, of the old days when there had
been laughter and lights and music, sparkling wines
and brilliant talk, and how those merrymakers had
gone, many of them, long ago to the wars.
As it happened on this evening, Drew
and I were sitting at adjoining tables. Our common
citizenship was our introduction, and after five minutes
of talk, we learned of our common purpose in coming
to France. I suppose that we must have eaten
after making this latter discovery. I vaguely
remember seeing our old waiter hobbling down a long
vista of empty tables on his way to and from the kitchens.
But if we thought of our food at all, it must have
been in a purely mechanical way.
Drew can talk by Jove,
how the man can talk! and he has the faculty
of throwing the glamour of romance over the most commonplace
adventures. Indeed, the difficulty which I am
going to have in writing this narrative is largely
due to this romantic influence of his. I might
have succeeded in writing a plain tale, for I have
kept my diary faithfully, from day to day, and can
set down our adventures, such as they are, pretty
much as they occurred. But Drew has bewitched
me. He does not realize it, but he is a weaver
of spells, and I am so enmeshed in his moonshine that
I doubt if I shall be able to write of our experiences
as they must appear to those of our comrades in the
Franco-American Corps who remember them only through
the medium of the revealing light of day.
Not one of these men, I am sure, would
confess to so strange an immediate cause for joining
the aviation service, as that related to me by Drew,
as we sat over our coffee and cigarettes, on the evening
of our first meeting. He had come to France, he
said, with the intention of joining the Legion
Étrangère as an infantryman. But he changed
his mind, a few days after his arrival in Paris, upon
meeting Jackson of the American Aviation Squadron,
who was on leave after a service of six months at
the front. It was all because of the manner in
which Jackson looked at a Turkish rug. He told
him of his adventures in the most matter-of-fact way.
No heroics, nothing of that sort. He had not
a glimmer of imagination, he said. But he had
a way of looking at the floor which was “irresistible,”
which “fascinated him with the sense of height.”
He saw towns, villages, networks of trenches, columns
of toy troops moving up ribbons of road all
in the patterns of a Turkish rug. And the next
day, he was at the headquarters of the Franco-American
Corps, in the Champs Elysees, making application for
membership.
It is strange that we should both
have come to France with so little of accurate knowledge
of the corps, of the possibilities for enlistment,
and of the nature of the requirements for the service.
Our knowledge of it, up to the time of sailing, had
been confined to a few brief references in the press.
It was perhaps necessary that its existence should
not be officially recognized in America, or its furtherance
encouraged. But it seemed to us at that time,
that there must have been actual discouragement on
the part of the Government at Washington. However
that may be, we wondered if others had followed clues
so vague or a call so dimly heard.
This led to a discussion of our individual
aptitudes for the service, and we made many comforting
discoveries about each other. It is permissible
to reveal them now, for the particular encouragement
of others who, like ourselves at that time, may be
conscious of deficiencies, and who may think that
they have none of the qualities essential to the successful
aviator. Drew had never been farther from the
ground than the top of the Woolworth building.
I had once taken a trip in a captive balloon.
Drew knew nothing of motors, and had no more knowledge
of mechanics than would enable him to wind a watch
without breaking the mainspring. My ignorance
in this respect was a fair match for his.
We were further handicapped for the
French service by our lack of the language. Indeed,
this seemed to be the most serious obstacle in the
way to success. With a good general knowledge
of the language it seemed probable that we might be
able to overcome our other deficiencies. Without
it, we could see no way to mastering the mechanical
knowledge which we supposed must be required as a
foundation for the training of a military pilot.
In this connection, it may be well to say that we
have both been handicapped from the beginning.
We have had to learn, through actual experience in
the air, and at risk to life and limb, what many of
our comrades, both French and American, knew before
they had ever climbed into an aeroplane. But
it is equally true that scores of men become very excellent
pilots with little or no knowledge of the mechanics
of the business.
In so far as Drew and I were concerned,
these were matters for the future. It was enough
for us at the moment that our applications had been
approved, our papers signed, and that to-morrow we
were leaving for the Ecole d’Aviation Militaire
to begin our training. And so, after a long evening
of pleasant talk and pleasanter anticipation of coming
events, we left our restaurant and walked together
through the silent streets to the Place de la Concorde.
The great windy square was almost deserted. The
monuments to the lost provinces bulked large in the
dim lamplight. Two disabled soldiers hobbled across
the bridge and disappeared in the deep shade of the
avenue. Their service had been rendered, their
sacrifices made, months ago. They could look about
them now with a peculiar sense of isolation, and with,
perhaps, a feeling of the futility of the effort they
had made. Our adventures were all before us.
Our hearts were light and our hopes high. As we
stood by the obelisk, talking over plans for the morrow,
we heard, high overhead, the faint hum of motors,
and saw two lights, one green, one red, moving rapidly
across the sky. A moment later the long, slender
finger of a searchlight probed among little heaps of
cloud, then, sweeping in a wide arc, revealed in striking
outline the shape of a huge biplane circling over
the sleeping city. It was one of the night guard
of Paris.
On the following morning, we were
at the Gare des Invalides with our
luggage, a long half-hour before train-time. The
luggage was absurdly bulky. Drew had two enormous
suitcases and a bag, and I a steamer trunk and a family-size
portmanteau. We looked so much the typical American
tourists that we felt ashamed of ourselves, not because
of our nationality, but because we revealed so plainly,
to all the world military, our non-military antecedents.
We bore the hallmark of fifty years of neutral aloofness,
of fifty years of indifference to the business of
national defense. What makes the situation amusing
as a retrospect is the fact that we were traveling
on third-class military passes, as befitted our rank
as élève-pilotes and soldiers of the deuxième
classe.
To our great discomfiture, a couple
of poilus volunteered their services in putting
our belongings aboard the train. Then we crowded
into a third-class carriage filled with soldiers permissionnaires,
blesses, reformes, men from all corners
of France and her colonies. Their uniforms were
faded and weather-stained with long service.
The stocks of their rifles were worn smooth and bright
with constant usage, and their packs fairly stowed
themselves upon their backs.
Drew and I felt uncomfortable in our
smart civilian clothing. We looked too soft,
too clean, too spick-and-span. We did not feel
that we belonged there. But in a whispered conversation
we comforted ourselves with the assurance that if
ever America took her rightful stand with the Allies,
in six months after the event, hundreds of thousands
of American boys would be lugging packs and rifles
with the same familiarity of use as these French poilus.
They would become equally good soldiers, and soon
would have the same community of experience, of dangers
and hardships shared in common, which make men comrades
and brothers in fact as well as in theory.
By the time we had reached our destination
we had persuaded ourselves into a much more comfortable
frame of mind. There we piled into a cab, and
soon we were rattling over the cobblestones, down a
long, sunlit avenue in the direction of B .
It was late of a mild afternoon when we reached the
summit of a high plateau and saw before us the barracks
and hangars of the Ecole d’Aviation.
There was not a breath of air stirring. The sun
was just sinking behind a bank of crimson cloud.
The earth was already in shadow, but high overhead
the light was caught and reflected from the wings
of scores of avions which shone like polished
bronze and silver. We saw the long lines of Bleriot
monoplanes, like huge dragon-flies, and as pretty a
sight in the air as heart could wish. Farther
to the left, we recognized Farman biplanes, floating
battleships in comparison with the Bleriots, and twin-motor
Caudrons, much more graceful and alert of movement.
But, most wonderful of all to us then,
we saw a strange, new avion, a biplane,
small, trim, with a body like a fish. To see it
in flight was to be convinced for all time that man
has mastered the air, and has outdone the birds in
their own element. Never was swallow more consciously
joyous in swift flight, never eagle so bold to take
the heights or so quick to reach them. Drew and
I gazed in silent wonder, our bodies jammed tightly
into the cab-window, and our heads craned upward.
We did not come back to earth until our ancient, earth-creeping
conveyance brought up with a jerk, and we found ourselves
in front of a gate marked “Ecole d’Aviation
Militaire de B .”
After we had paid the cabman, we stood
in the road, with our mountain of luggage heaped about
us, waiting for something to happen. A moment
later a window in the administration building was thrown
open and we were greeted with a loud and not over-musical
chorus of
“Oh, say, can you see
by the dawn’s early light ”
It all came from one throat, belonging
to a chap in leathers, who came down the drive to
give us welcome.
“Spotted you toute suite”
he said. “You can tell Americans at six
hundred yards by their hats. How’s things
in the States? Do you think we’re coming
in?”
We gave him the latest budget of home
news, whereupon he offered to take us over to the
barracks. When he saw our luggage he grinned.
“Some equipment, believe me!
Attendez un peu while I commandeer a battalion
of Annamites to help us carry it, and we’ll
be on our way.”
The Annamites, from Indo-China,
who are quartered at the camp for guard and fatigue
duty, came back with him about twenty strong, and we
started in a long procession to the barracks.
Later, we took a vindictive pleasure in witnessing
the beluggaged arrival of other Americans, for in
nine cases out of ten they came as absurdly over-equipped
as did we.
Our barracks, one of many built on
the same pattern, was a long, low wooden building,
weather-stained without and whitewashed within.
It had accommodation for about forty beds. One
end of the room was very manifestly American.
There was a phonograph on the table, baseball equipment
piled in one corner, and the walls were covered with
cartoons and pictures clipped from American periodicals.
The other end was as evidently French, in the frugality
and the neatness of its furnishings. The American
end of the room looked more homelike, but the French
end more military. Near the center, where the
two nations joined, there was a very harmonious blending
of these characteristics.
Drew and I were delighted with all
this. We were glad that we were not to live in
an exclusively American barracks, for we wanted to
learn French; but more than this, we wanted to live
with Frenchmen on terms of barrack-room familiarity.
By the time we had given in our papers
at the captain’s office and had passed the hasty
preliminary examination of the medical officer, it
was quite dark. Flying for the day was over, and
lights gleamed cheerily from the barrack-room windows.
As we came down the principal street of the camp,
we heard the strains of “Waiting for the Robert
E. Lee,” to a gramophone accompaniment, issuing
from the chambre des Americains.
“See them shuffle along,
Oh, ma honey babe,
Hear that music and song.”
It gave us the home feeling at once.
Frenchmen and Americans were singing together, the
Frenchmen in very quaint English, but hitting off
the syncopated time as though they had been born and
brought up to it as we Americans have.
Over in one corner, a very informal
class in French-English pronunciation was at work.
Apparently, this was tongue-twisters’ night.
“Heureux” was the challenge from
the French side, and “Hooroo” the
nearest approach to a pronunciation on the part of
the Americans, with many more or less remote variations
on this theme. An American, realizing how difficult
it is for a Frenchman to get his tongue between his
teeth, counter-challenged with “Father, you are
withered with age.” The result, as might
have been expected, was a series of hissing sounds
of z, whereupon there was an answering howl
of derision from all the Americans. Up and down
the length of the room there were little groups of
two and three, chatting together in combinations of
Franco-American which must have caused all deceased
professors of modern languages to spin like midges
in their graves. And throughout all this before-supper
merriment, one could catch the feeling of good-comradeship
which, so far as my experience goes, is always prevalent
whenever Frenchmen and Americans are gathered together.
At the ordinaire, at supper-time,
we saw all of the élève-pilotes of the school,
with the exception of the non-commissioned officers,
who have their own mess. To Drew and me, but newly
come from remote America, it was a most interesting
gathering. There were about one hundred and twenty-five
in all, including eighteen Americans. The large
majority of the Frenchmen had already been at the front
in other branches of army service. There were
artillerymen, infantrymen, marines, in
training for the naval air-service, cavalrymen,
all wearing the uniforms of the arm to which they
originally belonged. No one was dressed in a
uniform which distinguished him as an aviator; and
upon making inquiry, I found that there is no official
dress for this branch of the service. During
his period of training in aviation, and even after
receiving his military brevet, a pilot continues to
wear the dress of his former service, plus the wings
on the collar, and the star-and-wings insignia on
his right breast. This custom does not make for
the fine uniform appearance of the men of the British
Royal Flying Corps, but it gives a picturesqueness
of effect which is, perhaps, ample recompense.
As for the Americans, they follow individual tastes,
as we learned later. Some of them, with an eye
to color, salute the sun in the red trousers and black
tunic of the artilleryman. Others choose more
sober shades, various French blues, with the thin
orange aviation stripe running down the seams of the
trousers. All this in reference to the dress uniform.
At the camp most of the men wear leathers, or a combination
of leathers and the gray-blue uniform of the French
poilu, which is issued to all Americans at
the time of their enlistment.
We had a very excellent supper of
soup, followed by a savory roast of meat, with mashed
potatoes and lentils. Afterward, cheese and beer.
I was slightly discomfited physically on learning
that the beef was horse-meat, but Drew convinced me
that it was absurd to let old scruples militate against
a healthy appetite. In 1870 the citizens of France
ate ragout de chat with relish. Furthermore,
the roast was of so delicious a flavor and so closely
resembled the finest cuts of beef, that it was easy
to persuade one’s self that it was beef, after
all.
After the meal, to our great surprise,
every one cleaned his dishes with huge pieces of bread.
Such waste seemed criminal in a country beleaguered
by submarines, in its third year of war, and largely
dependent for its food-supply on the farm labor of
women and children. We should not have been surprised
if it had been only the Americans who indulged in
this wasteful dish-cleansing process; but the Frenchmen
did it, too. When I remarked upon this to one
of my American comrades, a Frenchman, sitting opposite,
said:
“Pardon, monsieur, but I must
tell you what we Frenchmen are. We are very economical
when it is for ourselves, for our own families and
purses, that we are saving. But when it is the
Government which pays the bill, we do not care.
We do not have to pay directly and so we waste, we
throw away. We are so careful at home, all of
our lives, that this is a little pleasure for us.”
I have had this same observation made
to me by so many Frenchmen since that time, that I
believe there must be a good deal of truth in it.
After supper, all of the Americans
adjourned for coffee to Ciret’s, a little cafe
in the village which nestles among the hills not far
from the camp. The cafe itself was like any one
of thousands of French provincial restaurants.
There was a great dingy common room, with a sanded
brick floor, and faded streamers of tricolor paper
festooned in curious patterns from the smoky ceiling.
The kitchen was clean, and filled with the appetizing
odor of good cooking. Beyond it was another,
inner room, “toujours reservee a mes Americains,”
as M. Ciret, the fat, genial patron continually
asserted. Here we gathered around a large circular
table, pipes and cigarettes were lighted, and, while
the others talked, Drew and I listened and gathered
impressions.
For a time the conversation did not
become general, and we gathered up odds and ends of
it from all sides. Then it turned to the reasons
which had prompted various members of the group to
come to France, the topic, above all others, which
Drew and I most wanted to hear discussed. It
seemed to me, as I listened, that we Americans closely
resemble the British in our sensitive fear of any display
of fine personal feeling. We will never learn
to examine our emotions with anything but suspicion.
If we are prompted to a course of action by generous
impulses, we are anxious that others shall not be let
into the secret. And so it was that of all the
reasons given for offering their services to France,
the first and most important was the last to be acknowledged,
and even then it was admitted by some with a reluctance
nearly akin to shame. There was no man there who
was not ready and willing to give his life, if necessary,
for the Allied cause, because he believed in it; but
the admission could hardly have been dragged from
him by wild horses.
But the adventure of the life, the
peculiar fascination of it that was a thing
which might be discussed without reserve, and the men
talked of it with a willingness which was most gratifying
to Drew and me, curious as we were about the life
we were entering. They were all in the flush
of their first enthusiasms. They were daily enlarging
their conceptions of distance and height and speed.
They talked a new language and were developing a new
cast of mind. They were like children who had
grown up over night, whose horizons had been immeasurably
broadened in the twinkling of an eye. They were
still keenly conscious of the change which was upon
them, for they were but fledgling aviators. They
were just finding their wings. But as I listened,
I thought of the time which must come soon, when the
air, as the sea, will be filled with stately ships,
and how the air-service will develop its own peculiar
type of men, and build up about them its own laws
and its own traditions.
As we walked back through the straggling
village street to the camp, I tried to convey to Drew
something of the new vision which had come to me during
the evening. I was aglow with enthusiasm and hoped
to strike an answering spark from him. But all
that I was thinking and feeling then he had thought
and felt long before. I am sure that he had already
experienced, in imagination, every thrill, every keen
joy, and every sudden sickening fear which the life
might have in store for him. For this reason
I forgave him for his rather bored manner of answering
to my mood, and the more willingly because he was full
of talk about a strange illusion which he had had
at the restaurant. During a moment of silence,
he had heard a clatter of hoof-beats in the village
street. (I had heard them too. Some one rode by
furiously.) Well, Drew said that he almost jumped from
his seat, expecting M. Ciret to throw open the door
and shout, “The British are coming!” He
actually believed for a second or two that it was the
year 1775, and that he was sitting in one of the old
roadside inns of Massachusetts. The illusion
was perfect, he said.
Now, why etc., etc.
At another time I should have been much interested;
but in the presence of new and splendid realities I
could not summon any enthusiasm for illusions.
Nevertheless, I should have had to listen to him indefinitely,
had it not been for an event which cut short all conversation
and ended our first day at the Ecole d’Aviation
in a truly spectacular manner.
Suddenly we heard the roar of motors
just over the barracks, and, at the same time, the
siren sounded the alarm in a series of prolonged,
wailing shrieks. Some belated pilot was still
in the air. We rushed out to the field just as
the flares were being lighted and placed on the ground
in the shape of an immense T, with the cross-bar facing
in the direction from which the wind was coming.
By this time the hum of motors was heard at a great
distance, but gradually it increased in volume and
soon the light of the flares revealed the machine circling
rapidly over the piste. I was so much absorbed
in watching it manoeuvre for a landing that I did
not see the crowd scattering to safe distances.
I heard many voices shouting frantic warnings, and
so ran for it, but, in my excitement, directly within
the line of descent of the machine. I heard the
wind screaming through the wires, a terrifying sound
to the novice, and glancing hurriedly over my shoulder,
I saw what appeared to be a monster of gigantic proportions,
almost upon me. It passed within three metres
of my head and landed just beyond.
When at last I got to sleep, after
a day filled with interesting incidents, Paul Revere
pursued me relentlessly through the mazes of a weird
and horrible dream. I was on foot, and shod with
lead-soled boots. He was in a huge, twin-motor
Caudron and flying at a terrific pace, only a few
metres from the ground. I can see him now, as
he leaned far out over the hood of his machine, an
aviator’s helmet set atilt over his powdered
wig, and his eyes glowing like coals through his goggles.
He was waving two lighted torches and shouting, “The
British are coming! The British are coming!”
in a voice strangely like Drew’s.