THE winter of 1916-17 was the most prolonged and bitter that France has known in many years. It was a trying period to the little group of Americans assembled at the Ecole Militaire d'Aviation, eager as they were to complete their training, and to be ready, when spring should come, to share in the great offensive, which they knew would then take place on the Western front.
Aviation is a waiting game at the best of seasons.
In winter it is a series of seemingly endless delays. Well they knew that we were impostors, fair-weather fliers, who dared not accept their challenge. It is strange how vague and shadowy my remembrance is of those long weeks of inactivity, when we were dependent for employment and amusement on our own devices. Our environment was, no doubt, partly responsible for this feeling. With the exception of our Sunday afternoons of leave, when we joined the boulevardiers in town, we lived a life as remote and cloistered as that of some brotherhood of monks in an inaccessible monastery.