Since my last to Father, I have had some very interesting times. First, I finished my brevet with very little excitement, made all my voyages and only got lost a little bit once. Then I saw two machines on the ground in a field, made a rather dramatic spiral and steeply banked descent amidst a crowd of villagers and got away with it; then found that the machines belonged to two monitors who were bringing them from Paris and had effected a panne de château. Being asked what I was doing, I fortunately found a spark plug on the burn and got that repaired. The rest of it was very easy, a bit of flying in the rain which stings the face a bit, but is not bad otherwise.
Since I have been on the Nieuport. There are three sizes of machines on which one is trained, starting with the larger double command and going to the smallest. At Pau, we get another even smaller, about as big as half-a-minute. Four times I went out without a ride—bad weather, crowded class and busted machines, the same old story. Then last night I had my first rides with a monitor who is rather oldish, crabbed and new at his job, a brand new aviator. As you know, when an airplane takes a turn, it does not remain horizontal but banks up: comme ça (if you can interpret that illustration—it shows signs of remarkable imaginative power)—alors, one banks to take a turn and uses the rudder only a very little because the machine turns along when banked. There is a sort of falling-out feeling the first few times until one becomes a part of the machine.
To get back to the story, this monitor does not like to bank his machine and sort of sidles round the corners, keeping it quite flat and almost slipping out to the outside of the turn. I have done many fool things in a machine and made many mistakes, but never have I been so scared in anything in my life as when riding with this monitor. A monitor is supposed to let the pupil drive as much as he is able, but this bird never let me make a move, and when we got through told me I was too brutal. I was never madder in my life and cursed nice American cuss words all the way home. There’s a fifteen kilo ride in a seatless tractor back to camp to improve a bad humor.
Well, this morning I saw some more rides impending and didn’t like it, so asked the chef de piste to put me with another monitor. He had to know why and I registered my kick, which practically said that the first monitor didn’t know his business and couldn’t drive, that I was scared to ride with him. The chef was a bit sarcastic and told me to take two rides with another monitor to show how I could make a virage. I did it the way I’ve been accustomed to, made a fairly short turn; when we got down, the monitor said “Epatant” (Am. “stunning”) or something like that to the chef. The chef had meanwhile communicated my complaint to the first monitor and he was the maddest man I ever saw. Demanded what “Ce type là” (indicating me) wanted, said the virages I had just made were dangerously banked (the monitor I was with didn’t mind, though) and then all three started arguing at once at me and I spelled all the French I knew. About that time I thought of what you had just told me in a letter about trusting in Latin, which advice and remarks I have come to agree with very much (my admiration for the French has waxed less daily), and here I realized that I had very successfully made a fool out of a man who was supposed to be my teacher, and he fully resented it.
Then, of all things, the lieutenant, without further remarks, said I was to continue with my first monitor. My heart sank into my feet. I had visions of staying in that class without rides or with only rides and fights for months; I rode no more this morning and what was my delight to find this evening that my bewhiskered pal had left on permission. I got another monitor, a fine one who put his hands on the side of the machine and let me do everything with a bit of assistance on the landing, which is different from what I’ve been doing on the Caudron. Seven rides and a finish—the twenty-three-metre tomorrow morning. I wasn’t very good, but got by.