with the pilots of all these many kinds of aircraft. They
were arriving and departing by every train, for G. D. E. is the depot
for old pilots from the front, transferring from one branch of
aviation to another, as well as for new ones fresh from the schools.
In our talks with them, we became convinced that the air service is
forming its traditions and developing a new type of mind. It even has
an odor, as peculiar to itself as the smell of the sea to a ship.
There are those who say that it is only a compound of burnt castor oil
and gasoline. One might, with no more truth, call the odor of a ship a
mixture of tar and stale cooking. But let it pass. It will be all
things to all men; I can sense it as I write, for it gets into one's
clothing, one's hair, one's very blood.

We were as happy during those days at G. D. E. as any one has the
right to be. Our whole duty was to fly, and never was the voice of
Duty heard more gladly. It was hard to keep in mind the stern purpose
behind this seeming indulgence. At times I remembered Drew's warning
that we were military pilots and had no right to forget the
seriousness of the work before us. But he himself often forgot it for
days together. War on the earth may be reasonable and natural, but in
the air it seems the most senseless folly. How is an airman, who has
just learned a new meaning for the joy of life, to reconcile himself
to the insane business of killing a fellow aviator who may have just
learned it too? This was a question which we sometimes put to
ourselves in purely Arcadian moments. We answered it, of course.

I was sitting at our two-legged table, writing up my _carnet de vol_.
Suzanne, the maid of all work at the Bonne Rencontre, was sweeping a
passageway along the center of the room, telling me, as she worked,
about her family. She was ticking off the names of her brothers and
sisters, when Drew put his head through the doorway.

"Il y a Pierre," said Suzanne.

"We're posted," said J. B.

"Et Helene," she continued.

I shall never know the names of the others.

V

OUR FIRST PATROL

We got down from the train late in the afternoon at a village which
reminded us, at first glance, of a boom town in the Far West. Crude
shelters of corrugated iron and rough pine boards faced each other
down the length of one long street. They looked sadly out of place in
that landscape. They did not have the cheery,