Dinsmore Ely

    Your Son.

    Ecole d’Aviation Tours, France,
    October 4, 1917.

Dear Bob:

Your letter arrived about three days ago. I am mighty glad to hear that you are going to Lake Forest to school.

You will make good; you have to make good because your name is Ely – and we are here to prove that the Elys make good. You will be away from home a good deal and I think that will do you a great deal of good. But when you do go home, make the most of it; it is your duty to be with mother and father as much as you can; they need you and it is the one way you can repay them directly. There is another thing, confide in mother and father; just because they are older, don’t you think for a moment that they do not understand children. They will not blame you if you tell them things which you think may be wrong, and your conscience will blame you if you do not tell them. And they will show you the best way out of trouble; father can give more of a sermon in three minutes than any minister I ever heard could preach in an hour – and it will not make you feel foolish either. That’s at home.

At school you will have no trouble making friends. It is worth your while to make acquaintances with everyone, there is good in all of them. But the best of them are none too good to be your friends. Most of the boys swear and smoke and tell vulgar stories and a few may try liquor; they do it because men do it and they want to be men. Men do it usually because they started when they were boys.

Vulgar stories will keep you from becoming a strong man; once in a while you cannot help listening to them; never remember one, never tell one under any condition, and people will learn to know you as a boy with a clean mind. Liquor will keep you from having a happy home; never touch it. Smoking will keep you from being as strong and healthy as God meant you to be. Everybody who smokes will say it doesn’t hurt them, but when they want to make a team they quit smoking. Nobody can keep you from smoking but nobody can stop you either. Many good business men will not hire boys who smoke. Swear if you must, smoke if you want to after you are a man, but for goodness sake, do not do it in order to be a man or because other boys do it. If you cannot be a man without it, you can’t be a man with it. And an Ely doesn’t do things because other people do them. And you’re an Ely.

    Amen.

You should be over here and see France. It’s the greatest farming and fruit country I ever saw – Wisconsin included. I went for a long walk today and I was eating all the time. I’d come to a vineyard with white grapes – just finished them and along came purple grapes. I’d just finished the purple grapes when I came to a place where walnut trees were on each side of the road and the walnuts were being blown down faster than one could pick ’em up – just as the walnuts were gone, I came to the apples and then the raspberries and blackberries and peaches and chestnuts. I was full by that time. At one place there was a village dug out of the chalk side of the cliff; strange doors and passages and dark rooms as old as America and wells a hundred feet deep; wine presses and wine cellars and stables – all cut from the rocks.

We still have our good scraps. Yesterday there was one with eleven men in it. We knocked over seven beds and one man, whose head was cut, got blood on five of them. It’s our only real exercise and we enjoy it.

The other night three Frenchmen stood out in front of the barracks keeping us awake. George Mosely ran out in his nightshirt and tumbled one over, and the other two ran away. Ten minutes later, four men who had been drinking came along and put a man in the rain barrel full of water.

Some of us have been put up in the next class. Soon we have spirals and voyages. Two weeks from now I’ll get my license as an air pilot if I have luck. Then come acrobatics.

Write me a letter telling about your school life. Write often. Nothing is better practice in English, composition, spelling, and penmanship, than letter writing; and your being away from home will make you understand how much your lovin’ brother wants your letters.

    Always an Ely,
    Dins.

    October 9, 1917.

Dear Family:

I decided on the spur of the moment to go to Paris. The equinox has come, and we bid fair to have a week of bad weather. So I borrowed a French uniform from “Stuff” Spencer and am now waiting for the train. I have the privilege of being in the city forty-eight hours. While there I shall go to the Hôtel Cécilia to get many things from my trunk – things that I need here. I shall probably eat and sleep at my marraine’s home. I just needed a change, and as this is not likely to interfere with flying, I feel all right about it; neither will it detract from my week’s permission after my brevet. Yesterday I was reprimanded for having United States buttons on my clothes and told to take them off. It is getting cold enough now to use my heavy suit that I got at Field’s, so I shall have some gold buttons put on it, and blossom out. No use talking, leather goods are pretty high priced. The stock shoe furnished by the U. S. Army costs $9.50, the high field boots, such as aviators are wearing, cost $35.00 to $40.00; officers’ belts cost $8.00 to $10.00. You see, we will have to come across. Have not heard concerning my shoes yet, but hope they may have arrived at the club. The “Tech” Club, by the way, has been closed in favor of a University Club, which evolves from it.

Well, I must be off, will probably not write again till my return.

    Yours truly,
    Dinsmore.

    October 15, 1917.

Dear Bob:

Sometimes we go two or three weeks without enough happening to write about – but yesterday something occurred. They told me to take my altitude test, and put me into the machine. In the altitude test the object is to climb to a height of twenty-six hundred meters (eighty-five hundred feet) and stay there for an hour. Well, I started with a good motor and a joyous heart, for the weather had been bad for six days and I felt like a horse that needs a run. The plane climbed wonderfully. There were quite a few clouds in the sky, but I saw blue spots to go up through as I circled high over the school. In the first fifteen minutes I had climbed fifteen hundred meters, but once up there I found that the holes in the sky had disappeared and there was nothing for it but to go right up through the clouds. The low-hanging cloudlets began to whisk by and the mist gathered on my glasses. Never having played around in the clouds much, I didn’t know what was coming. Well, the mist grew thicker and thicker, and looking down I found the ground fading away like pictures on a movie screen when the lights turn on. I began to wonder what I’d do without any ground under me. I soon found out when the ground disappeared entirely. Have you been in a fog so thick that you couldn’t see your hand before your face, and you sort of hesitate to step any farther for fear of falling off the edge of something or running into something? Then imagine going through such a fog at eighty miles per hour.

When I had been out of sight of ground for less than a minute something strange seemed to be happening. There was a feeling of unsteadiness, and I thought maybe I was tipping a little. I tried to level up the plane, and found I couldn’t tell whether it was tipped to right or left. The controls went flabby, and then the bottom dropped out. You understand I couldn’t see twenty feet – but I was falling – faster – faster. The wires and struts of the machine began to whistle and sing and the wind roared by my ears. I began to think very fast. No one has ever fallen far enough to know what that speed is, and lived to tell about it, unless he was in an aeroplane. There was no doubt about it, I was falling – falling like a lost star. I was frightened, in a way, but there was so much excitement – too much to think about to be panic-stricken. It was awful and thrilling. You wonder what happened? Why, I tell it slowly. That is how I wondered what was going to happen. The seconds seemed like minutes. I began to reason about it. Was it all over? Had I made my last mistake when I entered those clouds? Had all my training and education for twenty-three years been leading up to this fall? It seemed unreasonable and unjust. Still, there I was, falling as in a dream. Well, I didn’t need my engine, I was going fast enough without it, so I cut it off, but that’s all the good it did. I couldn’t see my propeller, and yet I plunged downward. That’s right, I must be falling downward. Ah! a bright idea. Downward, therefore toward the earth.

Then I recalled the fact that the lowest clouds were eighteen hundred meters above the earth, and I was still in them. I must come out of them before striking, so I waited. My head felt light; my eyes watered behind the glasses. I remember watching the loose lid on the map box waving and tilting back and forth; then suddenly I became aware of a shadow, a dark spot, a body, and there, ’way off at the end of my wing, was a map of the world coming at me. I headed for it and then slowly let the machine come to its flying position and it was over. I was flying serenely above the earth, with a surprising lack of concern. I had fallen a thousand feet. That was the first one – the thrilling, fearful one.

But I hadn’t made my altitude, so I tried again, and fell the same. Many times I tried. Once I saw the sun through the mist, and it was under my wing instead of over it. I was then falling upside down. I do not know the capers that that machine cut up there during the hour and a half of my repeated endeavor to go up through that strata of cloud, but no acrobatic was left unaccomplished, I am sure. Spirals, barrel turns, nose dives, reversements – all unknown to me. I pressed on one side, then on the other. I hung by the belt and pressed forward and backward. Again I would fall into the open. Again I climbed into the clouds, but it was all useless and vain. I could not keep my balance without the world or the sun to go by. Then my motor began to miss, so I decided to go down. Well, if a person has undergone all the dangers and surprises that the air has to offer without being able to see what he is doing, he feels perfectly at home doing anything when he has a clear outlook. I had proved that the machine couldn’t hurt itself by falling a thousand feet and as I was still some seven thousand feet high, I decided to experiment, so I did spirals right and left, wing slips, nose dives and tail slips, reversements and stalls, vertical banks and crossed controls – everything, in fact, that I had ever seen done with the machine. They were all simple, without terror, and quite safe. I failed in my altitude, but I learned enough about the handling of that machine to make up for a dozen failures. I’ll try my altitude again on a clear day. I am glad I had the experience, for it gave me great confidence. I did three hours of flying yesterday.

The most dangerous thing that happened was one time when I fell in the clouds and the fall seemed longer than usual before the clear air was reached. Suddenly I realized that my glasses were covered with snow, so I took them off and found I had fallen two hundred meters below the clouds while blinded by my glasses. Just to show how nicely balanced a good machine is, I let go of the control about two minutes, while cleaning my glasses, and steered entirely with my feet. My, but flying is a wonderful game. If I come through, I’ll give you one royal ride in heaven before I give up aviation.

    Dins.

    Château du Bois, La Ferté-Imbault, France,
    October 15 to 27, 1917.

Dear Mother:

The god of good fortune is still guarding your son, and touching his life with experience and romance. I am a guest at an old French château – but I must start at the beginning. For the past few days I have been too busy to write. After the altitude test, which I completed the following day, I took two petits voyages, which were pleasant and uneventful, save for the second when I arrived at the school after dark and made my landing by the light of a bonfire. It was a good landing, and gave me more confidence. The next man after me crashed to the ground so loudly that it was heard a quarter of a mile. The next morning I started upon my first triangle, which is a trip of over two hundred kilometers from Tours to Châteaudun, thence to Pontlevoy, and back again to Tours. My motor gave trouble before starting, but ran well for a time. When I had gone over three-fourths of the way the motor began to miss, and I landed in a field. Four out of the ten spark plugs had gone bad. They had given me only two spark plugs and no wrench. I borrowed a wrench from a passing motor car, and managed to clean the plugs and start up again, but as no one was there to hold the motor I could not let it warm up and it did not catch well, so I only rose twenty feet. A short turn and side landing was the only thing that kept me from landing in a stone quarry. I taxied back to the field and tried again. By that time the motor was warm and picked up pretty well. I ascended to seven hundred meters, and proceeded confidently on my way, and there is where I “done” made my mistake. For a little time I was lost. Then I found my landmarks and continued. The wind had become quite high, and it took some time for me to come back against it to my course. In fact, it took an hour. Then I continued forty-five degrees into the wind for half an hour. I should have arrived long ago and I was a little worried. The engine began to miss again. The country was spotted with woods and lakes and there were few good landing places. By now I knew I was totally lost and would have to descend, anyway, to find my way. I had no more come to this decision than the engine became hopeless, and I aimed for a field right near a little town under me; but the wind was so strong that I misjudged and overshot my landing and had to turn on my motor again. It caught but poorly, and barely raised me above a hedge of trees and telegraph wires. I had hardly speed to stay up and found myself over a wood, skimming the tree tops by no more than a meter. The slow speed made the controls very difficult, and the currents from the woods tossed me about like a cork on a choppy sea. The wind was blowing thirty miles per hour. For half a mile I staggered over and between the tree tops till I came to a little triangle of field. I made a vertical bank twenty feet from the ground and landed into the wind. It was a good landing, but the trouble was when I touched the ground I was going at thirty miles per hour, and there was a row of trees twenty feet in front of me. I hit between two trees, and when I crawled out, the wings, running gear, and braces and wires were piled around on the ground and trees, and I wasn’t even scratched. A crowd gathered to collect souvenirs, and I telegraphed and telephoned to the school to come and pick up the pieces. There was nothing to do but wait, so I went out to a bridge and talked French with a little boy.

Soon a motor car drove up, and out stepped a young French chap. He asked if I was the guy and I says “Yes,” and he “’lowed” that he was just back from Verdun for his permission and asked if I would come out and have supper and stay overnight, so we got in the car and went out to a beautiful château. I met the family and apologized for my clothes, which they said were fine for war times. Then the children came in and played until supper.

They were all charming – no formality or constraint. They all spoke English, more or less, and the dinner was jolly, with difficulties of understanding. The eldest son of the family had lost his life when a bombing plane burned over Verdun last year. That gave them and me a special bond of sympathy. The other son, of about twenty-two, is a sergeant in the First Dragoons. The eldest daughter, of about twenty-eight, mother of all the little children, sat beside me. Her husband is a captain in the First Dragoons. She was very entertaining and spoke English quite well. The other member was the little daughter, about fifteen. Later I learned that M. Duval is a viscount, of the old blood of France.

After dinner we went into the petit salon. They entertained me by showing me innumerable photographs. M. Duval is a camera enthusiast, and does all his own developing and printing. He takes these double pictures on plates, and you look at them through a stereoscope. They have traveled very extensively. They have hunted big game and small game in mountain, forest, and plain, and the pictures tell the story like an Elmendorf lecture. Meanwhile, they all contributed interesting remarks in broken English, and so we got better acquainted. Mme. Duval showed me her postcard collection of French châteaux. The Duvals owned more than twenty through Touraine and Normandy, they and their direct relatives by marriage. We all went up the old stairway together and bid each other good night in the upper hall. They asked what I wanted for my breakfast in bed, but I came down bright and early and joined them at a seven o’clock breakfast. We looked at some more pictures and then went rabbit hunting in the drizzling rain. They gave me an American repeating gun. M. Duval assigned us to our positions, not far from the château, and we waited. Three or four men set about to drive the rabbits. Off among the trees I saw the strangest looking rabbit. I pulled up, about the fire, when it struck me there was something wrong, so I looked again. There were two of the creatures gliding around from one rabbit hole to another. Their color was cream yellow. After a little guessing, I concluded they must be ferrets, so I let them live. Suddenly a man called “Oh-ee,” and a rabbit humped past right by my feet. I took a pot shot, but it had me scared and I almost hit my foot, it was so close. Two more went by and didn’t mind my shooting at them. They were so close it seemed a pity to shoot them, yet that didn’t quite explain my missing. Well, you know what an old hand I am at rabbit shooting. I was just a little out of practice, having fired a shotgun, once when I was twelve years old. The blessing was that no one was there to see. Then I got one at a good distance, and found that it was much easier to hit them at a hundred feet than twenty-five. My average began to go up, and the first fifteen shots I had three rabbits. Then we changed positions, and I found that the son had eleven. I don’t think he had fired more than ten shots. At thirty shots I had twelve rabbits, and I felt a little more respectable. It was a pipe after you got used to it. Then we took a walk about the place and went in to lunch. All the food they had was from their own place: meat, wild and tame; fish from the river near by; and chestnuts, mashed like potatoes and baked. These latter are called les marrons. There were also sweet cakes, salads, mixed and dressed by M. Duval, and – wonder of wonders – American apple pie! I ate three pieces, and they had it for every meal while I was there. I understand why menus are written in French and old novels rave on French cuisines. Never did I eat such delicious food. Every dish is served separately as a work of art. The service was fine old china, with cracks all through it. The knives, forks, and spoons were gold plated, and the daughter would get up from the table and serve the bread if the maid didn’t happen to be in the room. Everyone eats the food as he gets it hot, and one person may be a course behind the others without causing inconvenience.

My word, how I enjoyed every minute of it! It would have been a lark any time, but it was a humming, white-feathered buzzard of a time to one who has been eating in a mess for a month.

Well, that afternoon we hunted some more, and I drove the Renault down to see if the plane was still where it had fallen. That evening the mechanics came with a truck to fetch it, but it was too late, and they had to stay at the château all night. Then their machine broke, and they had to telephone for another. Well, I did not get away until after lunch, so we hunted some more and played tennis. They all came down to the gate to see me off, and truly they made me feel that they were as sorry to see me go as I was to go – and that was “some sorry.”

I’ve tried to finish this letter and send it off, but like all the great things man attempts, it is never finished.

When I left the Château du Bois, they gave me their address in Paris, where they will go in a fortnight; their address at Pau, where they go the last of December, and where I shall probably go at the same time; and the address of their cousins who have a villa a short way from Bordeaux (the place where I shall probably be perfected on the Nieuport). That opens up considerable opportunity to make some friends that are really worth while.

Gee! when things happen here they happen in bunches. I have enough more to tell to make another letter longer than this. Since I started this letter I have finished the school at Tours, gotten my brevet, and now I am down at Blois seeing a couple of the best châteaux.

I am collecting post cards to beat the band. They will make a wonderful library for my architectural design, as well as a foundation for a little series of travelogues I am going to give the family, and while I think of it I am growing more convinced that when you are young is the time to see the world, especially for the architect. When the war is finished you can figure it will take me a year or more to get home. The education of travel is so far superior to that of school (not “Tech”) that there is no comparison.

    Love to all,
    Dins.

    Paris, November 4, 1917.

Dear Mother:

You see I am in Paris and am staying at the house of my marraine. I wrote you a letter in Châteaudun which was lost through my fault. I wrote father a letter a week ago and carried it till yesterday without mailing. The other letter I mailed, which you should receive, left Tours over two weeks ago. This all goes to prove I am getting careless in my letter writing, for goodness knows there has been so much to write about that I scarcely know where to begin. In the first place, I am a pilot – no longer an élève pilot. My brevet is gained and I am recommended for a Nieuport – that is a fighting machine – all of which is as it should be. They overlooked my smash-up, as it was the fault of the motor.

Having finished at Tours, I went for a day’s sight-seeing to Blois. There I saw the grand old historic château of Catherine de’ Medici, and the beautiful architectural dream, the château of Chambord. It was a pleasant day, starting at six in the morning and ending with a five-mile walk between twelve and two-thirty last night. Then by a little flower-tossing, I got them to extend my permission so as not to include the day at Blois, and left for Paris. I came to my marraine at eight-thirty in the evening of Saturday, October 29, and she gave me a room. They have entertained me most generously ever since. I told you of her family in another letter. The daughter, who married a captain, looks for all the world like Marie Antoinette and keeps up an unending flirtation with her husband with refined French coquetry, which is a delight to watch. The two children of the other daughter are jolly little youngsters. We have an hour’s romp in the evening, and they have become my shadows. I have been doing Paris, as one might say. I have visited Napoleon’s tomb, the Palais de Justice, Sainte Chapelle, the jewel of Gothic architecture, Notre Dame de Paris, Sacred Heart, the Madeleine, and numerous other well-known sights of Paris. I have seen a French vaudeville, a French cinema opera, an afternoon musical of the first order, and four operas: Madame Butterfly, Werther, Sapho, Cavalleria Rusticana, and a little opéra comique. Never have things come my way stronger to make for a pleasant time. Outside of my clothes, my expenses for the week will not exceed twenty-five dollars, such is the manner of French courtesy.

You should see your son. Never has an Ely come so near being a dandy. Picture a modish khaki uniform of French cut and the best cloth, with a high collar, gold buttons, gold wings on the collar, a khaki cap with a gold crescent of the Foreign Legion on it, a Sam Brown belt and high leather boots of a well-kept mahogany brown, and over all, a very distinctive and refined Burbury coat and gray gloves. The effect is worth two hundred and fifty francs for the suit, one hundred and sixty-five francs for boots, one hundred and forty francs for overcoat, thirty-five francs for belt; everything is of the best and will serve as my officer’s outfit In the U. S. Army with a few minor changes. I felt I had better have the wherewithal to dress well when I was entertained, and I have not regretted it.

Yesterday I met two Chicago ladies. Some time after Christmas one of them might call at father’s office to say that she saw me.

The other day when walking from the flying school to the station in leaving for Paris, Frazier Hale, of Cherry Street, passed me in a machine. He yelled, and I did, and that was all. There will probably be a growing frequency of such meetings as time passes. In war news we hear of ignominious defeat in the Italian sector and good work in the French sector. Your war news is more reliable than ours, no doubt. I shall follow father’s advice as to study of the map. The first book on aeronautics arrived last Saturday and seemed satisfactory, though I have not taken time to read more than the introduction. I have plenty of general reading material at my disposal now in the way of history, aeronautical study, and novels by classic and modern writers.