Dinsmore Ely

We are in the war zone now, about thirty-two miles from the Front. We can see the flare of artillery in the sky and hear the guns on a clear night. Today we took a walk to a village seven miles away, and crossed a road where many trains of trucks were passing with supplies. That begins to sound exciting, doesn’t it? In each village the houses are marked with the numbers of men and horses they can accommodate. I should be excited, but I’m not, because I’ll not see the Front for another month.

    Your ever lovin’ brother,
    Dins.

    January 19, 1918.

Dear Family:

Today I received twenty-five letters dating from November 1 to December 1…

A little tin box containing sugar, candy, and candied pineapple came day before yesterday. I ate it nearly all by myself, though I share all other things. The big can of candy sent by Mr. Buchanan has set open to the barracks for three days and has been a great pleasure to all of us. A knitted sweater from a Boston girl whose father was a “Tech” man, came, and I have all the warm things I could wish for and all the money I can use for three or four months. I may go to Nice on my next permission, with some of my Christmas money. Father’s check No. 7499 for 250 francs came. Thank you for all these things. Those five pictures of the cabin touch a chord of their own.

We are near the Front now – twenty-five miles. Last night we saw the great searchlights playing and the star shells floating at the end of their fiery arcs. But the country here is fertile and well cared for, and the only signs of war are a few scattered graves of unknown victims of the battle of the Marne. We take long walks when not at work – work being the business of waiting for a chance to fly. There were seven machines broken yesterday and no one hurt; expenses for the day must have been thirty thousand dollars. It is a rich man’s game. I had four rides. The machines are better here.

Today I got half a cup of water, so I washed my teeth. Next Sunday I shall shave. I cleaned my boots from a puddle in the road. Water is scarcer than wine, but I am still teetotaling. I am tired tonight.

    Good night,
    Your Son.

    January 20, 1918.

Ma chère Famille:

Yesterday I made an appointment with the town barber to have him cut my hair at 5:15 P.M. I was quite prompt but found him unprepared. He lived off a little court yard which was connected by a close to the main alley of the borough. In crossing the threshold of the kitchen I entered the tonsorial parlor. His work bench was next to the family range, and a moth-eaten mirror reflected pox-marked people. The madame set the chair in the middle of the room and brought the scissors and comb from the other room. The twelve-year old offspring was arrested in the midst of rolling a cigarette when his father commanded him to hold the lamp. So the little fellow stood transfixed with the half-rolled cigarette in one hand and the family lamp in the other. Every time the father hesitated, the boy tried to set down the lamp and finish the cigarette, but the father would jump to it again and keep the boy from making any headway. Believe it, the boy kept his father hard at it. Sometimes the lamp nearly lost its balance, but the cigarette kept level, so I took to watching the cigarette. He never would have succeeded in rolling it if the father hadn’t had to go to the shed to get the clippers. As it was, he returned before the boy could light up. Meanwhile, the old dame, who needed a shave more than I did a hair cut, was preparing to feed the animals. Once when she was leaning over me to get a dipper of water out of the pail under the barber’s table, she lost her balance and fell into my lap. But she didn’t spill the water and the old man didn’t miss a clip. She would stop her work from time to time and come over with folded arms to see how the hair was coming off. The professor didn’t cut any off the top. When I suggested that he cut just a little I think it hurt his feelings, because he changed my hair from a “Broadway-comb-back” to a “Sing-Sing-sanitary” in about ten strokes. But it was the quickest hair cut I ever had and he didn’t tell me I needed a shampoo, so I gave him eight cents instead of six.

    Your Son.

    January 31, 1918.

Dear Bob:

It has been wonderfully clear for the past three nights, and in the light of a big London raid, the French have been expecting a raid on Paris. Last night I went to bed early. Thump – thump – boom – boom – boom; I rolled over to sleep on the other side. Boom – boom – bang – bang – bang; my ears felt funny and I turned over on my back and looked at the ceiling. Bang – crash – crash – thunder; something must be wrong. I sat up in bed, to see figures passing the moonlit windows and voices whispering between the continuous detonations which jarred the night air. Someone lit a light, and a hiss went up from the barracks. One heard the words “Boche” and “bomb” oft repeated. I yawned and pulled on the other sock. We could hear the hum of motors as we crowded out of the barracks doors, scantily clad.

The air was crisp and clear. The moon was just rising. It was twelve-thirty, and there were stars in millions. Now the crashes came just over our heads. First, over to the east, just behind a clump of trees not half a mile away we would see a couple of sudden flares; then came the crash of the report, followed by the receding war song of the shells as they went up through the darkness; then would come the bright glare which would blind the sight and scare away the stars, leaving the sky black; and finally, as we would blink and begin to see the stars venturing forth again, the great crash of the shell on high would reach us. Then we would discuss how close they may have come to the place and whether the falling shells would come near us. But the hum of the planes came and went in the direction of Paris without our seeing them, for only the explosion of shells marked their course across the sky. We are thirty miles from Paris. For fifteen minutes we watched the explosions of the anti-aircraft shells. Then suddenly there were low grumblings, booming with increasing rapidity of succession. The groups of lights signaling in the Paris Guard formation flashed off and on, changing location with great rapidity. Then came the returning hum of the motors, the line of shells flaring in the sky, a series of red-rocket signals, and the raid was over.

Today I had my first rides in the Spad. It is the most wonderful machine going. It has an eight-cylinder motor, and is built like a bulldog. It is the finest thing in aeroplanes, and I certainly hope I get one at the Front.

The first copy of Life came yesterday. Say, you couldn’t have given me a present that would cause us all more pleasure. I read every word of it, and now it is going the rounds. Thank you for it ever so much.

Well, we have an appel (roll-call) and I must stop. Love to you all. Write me when you can.

    Your ever lovin’ brother,
    Dins.

    February 10, 1918.

Dear Family:

The first week here was restless, the second nerve-wrecking, and now I have relaxed and settled down to pleasant, contented routine which varies according to the weather. When it rains or is foggy, I come over alone to a little wine shop in a near-by village; its name is Tagny-le-Sec. Here I have chocolate, toast, and butter for petit déjeuner (little breakfast). Then I write and read and draw according to my whim till lunch time. If the sky has not cleared in the afternoon, I go for a walk and up to the barracks where I lie down and read until supper. After supper a bunch of us go to a wine shop and talk until roll-call at nine o’clock.

When the weather is favorable, we stand out on the field eight hours a day waiting our turn to fly; that is a strain. Usually we fly a half hour a day, but at times, one may go three or four days without a flight, but no matter how long you wait, a single half hour in the air satisfies all desire for action, excitement, and exercise for the time being. That is one of the strange things about aviation. Though a man is strapped in his seat and moves no part of his body more than three inches, an hour in the air will keep him in excellent physical condition, provided he is nervously fitted for the work. And the mind and eyes are equally fatigued. Absolute concentration is necessary. The more I see of the game, the more I believe that nine-tenths of the accidents and deaths are due to the inability of the pilot to concentrate or to recognize that concentration is necessary.

We are using the best and fastest fighting plane now, the Spad, Guynemer’s plane. In starting, one must immediately throw every nerve into stress to keep the machine in its given course; not doing so means a quick turn, a crushing of the running gear, and a broken wing. This is an inexcusable accident with a trained pilot; yet it happens about once a day because someone is only three-fourths on the job. In gaining speed, the machine must be brought to its line of flight, the danger here being to tip it too far forward and break the propeller on the ground. This is easy to prevent, and so is inexcusable, yet it happens once a week because someone forgets himself. There is danger in leaving the ground too soon, and danger in mounting too quickly.

About one pilot a month is killed at the Front by attempting to mount too quickly while close to the ground. At a height of twenty feet, one must be all alert for sharp heat waves that are liable to get under one wing. When one comes to make the first turn, there is danger of too great a bank allowing the head-on wind to get under the high wing and slide you down, yet this almost never happens because by the time the pilot is up there he is all present. All this time he must have been alert for arriving and departing machines which are dangerous, not only because of collision, but because of the turbulent current of air they leave in their wake. One machine passing through the wake of another acts like a wild goose frightened by a passing bullet.

As the pilot gains height and distance from the field he may begin to relax and get his geographical bearings, and it is well for him to do so, for the strain he was under in those first thirty seconds would exhaust him in fifteen minutes. He can then glance over his gauges and listen to his motor. When he gets to a thousand or fifteen hundred meters he can lean back, throttle down his motor, and count the clouds with a freedom from worry which the motorist never knows. At the Front of course it is different. There the pilot must make a complete study of the whole horizon every thirty seconds to be sure of his safety from enemy planes, meanwhile changing his course and height continually to evade the anti-aircraft shells. Most pilots are brought down at the Front by surprise, which again is due to lack of concentration.

Having had a pleasant flight and enjoyed the beauties of nature, it is time to drift down to the home roost. You locate the hangars, cut your engine down low, and strike your peaking angle. The good old machine purrs like a kitten, the clouds whisk by, you breathe a sigh of relief and wonder if dinner will be any better than lunch. Well, anyway, it was a good ride. And just there is where “dat dar grimacin’ skeleton pusson begins to rattle dem bones.” Maybe you have let the plane flatten out its peaking angle a little and lost your velocity. Maybe the engine was turning over a good speed because of your descent when you last noticed it. Maybe the evening air has quieted down somewhat and it was safe enough to drift along and settle as long as you had altitude. But now that you are fifty meters from the ground and the piece two or three hundred meters away and you have come to horizontal flight a little and your plane is slowly losing its speed of descent and your engine is still throttled down too slow to even roll you along the ground – and the sunset is beautiful – like a hole in the sidewalk, your plane gives a sudden lurch, you jump all over and find your controls “mushy” – you slip sideways, the ground coming at you – you jerk open the throttle – the motor, cold from the descent, chokes a bit – you can see the grass blades red in the sun – then she catches! God bless that motor – she booms! There is a moment of clenched teeth while the plane wavers in its slide, and then she bounds forward, skimming the ground, gaining speed just in time to clear those deadly telegraph wires. With eyes set on the horizon, you let her sink, and every nerve tense, she pulls her tail down, touches the ground in a three-point landing like a gull on the wave. She rolls up and stops; you take a breath and feel the color come back to your cheeks. Slowly you raise your glasses to your forehead and undo your belt. Slowly you raise yourself out and drop to the ground. Pensively you wander back into the group of aviators who watched you land.

“Some landing like a duck,” says an American.

“Très bien,” says the monitor. But you go over and lean against a tent pole silent, and without a smile. You know what your comrades do not know – that “a fool there was,” and he lives by a fool’s luck. And you swear an oath to yourself and the dear old world that you’ll never be caught like that again.

Most everyone has the experience sooner or later and almost everyone lives to be a wiser and more prudent man, not excluding

    Your son,
    Dins.

    February 13, 1918.

Dear Family:

We are right here among the pines. Great forests of splendid Norways stretch away over the rolling sandy country, broken only by the clearing around some old manor château with its radiating vistas and its towers standing white amidst the green. Would you think that France with its dense population and old culture would be covered with great forests, almost primeval in the abandon of their growth? Throw in a few lakes and it would be Wisconsin.

Yesterday I cut the noonday roll-call and succeeded in losing myself as an excuse. As I swung along the road, I could feel the spirit of the blazed trail humming in the pine boughs; and my breath came deep. Here was a clearing with the logs fallen and the smallest branches cut and tied in neat sheaves – there, off to the right, was a hill which mounted above the tree tops. I climbed to the top and saw the stretch of woods on all sides with here and there a rock-strewn, barren stretch of sand. Going down the other side, a pheasant clapped up from under foot and made me start. As my eyes glanced along the trail ahead of my wandering feet, I saw many deer tracks. They say that since the war, wolves are not infrequent; and have we not heard of wolves in the streets of Paris not many decades ago? Now and then a rabbit bobbed out of sight. It soothed me and yet made me homesick. Out there in the open woods with the gentle spirit of the mighty pines, I could not help despairing at the question, “What good is war?”

Today we had an accident. A machine had mounted to fifty meters when it stopped climbing and started to lose speed. It turned to come back to the piece, but slipped sideways and fell in “vrille,” and crashed headlong to the ground. The tail broke backward and the motor gave a final groan, as in a death struggle. Men covered their eyes. It was a quarter of a mile away. All started to run, and I was first there. The pilot, a little Frenchman with whom I had been exchanging French, had crawled out on top of the wreck. He sat shut in by the wreckage. There was a whimper on his face. I climbed up on the wreckage and held him in my arms. He called me by name and then managed to tell me that his arm was broken. Well, you can imagine how relieved I was. I handed him out to the others who had arrived by this time. The doctor came up and cut the clothes away from his arm. There was no bruise nor blood, and as he began to regain his color, we tried to divert his mind. About the first thing he asked for was a piece of the propeller for a souvenir. Well, we put him on a stretcher and into the captain’s car and went to the hospital in a little town, Senlis, some two miles away. He seemed to prefer me to all his French friends. The hospital was a nice old Catholic institution, with old Sisters and young Red Cross nurses. We left him contented and resigned to his lot of another two or three months before reaching the Front.

The village in which we found the hospital has been heavily shelled in the early days of the war. Every third or fourth house was a monumental ruin to the price of war, but by some happy chance the two beautiful cathedrals of the town had been spared, yet the ruins seemed very old and the vines which formerly climbed the walls now fell about the broken stones and trailed through the blind windows, giving the whole an aged aspect; and between these ruins were the untouched abodes of unconscious inhabitants.

    Truly your
    Son.

Dear Family:

A letter clipping describes that part of France which is shrouded in the historic pages of knights and kings; that part which has pleased me so much when written by another, makes me think of the poorer classes who have lived and died in the environment of their birthplaces without ambition, that those knights and kings might carve their deeds of blood on shields of gold.

In this great war, these poorer classes, peasants still, are the poilus who keep the trench mud from driving them mad by that pint of the red French wine, and they sit about me now in a little old wine shop whose many-colored bottles, oft refilled, are as numerous in shapes and styles as the decades they have served. The walls are spotted and stained, and the ceilings smoked, but the delicate moldings in the stone tell of a day when this was the thriving hostelry of the village. Now the poorly dressed, worn-out veterans of the Great War bend over the scarred tables and confer or wrangle as to how their work, so hard begun, will end.

    Dinsmore.

    February 18, 1918.

Dear Family:

I am told that the American captain at this school is looking for me to offer me a second lieutenancy in the U. S. Army. I must decide immediately, and I am tempted to toss a coin.