Fighting the Flying Circus Chapter 5 - Jimmy Meissner Strips his Wings FROM the entries in my diary of this April period one would get rather an unfavorable opinion of that quarter of France in which our Squadron was located. None of the pilots or enlisted men of our American flying squadrons will be easily enraptured in the days to come with descriptions of the romance of this part of La Belle France. The villages are dismal and dirty. Every householder rejoices in the size and stench of his manure heap, which always decorates the entire area in front of his house.
Sidewalks there are none.
The streets slop with mud of the clinging variety, and even in the larger cities themselves the American finds but little to interest him. An overwhelming love for his own country is the most enduring souvenir the American soldier in France gained from his visits to these towns of the Vosges and the Meuse. To add to our irritation, we felt that every day we lost by bad weather was injuring American aviation in the eyes of our Allies. The British and the French had had three years and more of air fighting and the veterans of these squadrons looked upon the American pilots with something of amusement and something of polite contempt. They had believed in the story of our twenty thousand aeroplanes which had been promised by April.