United States Military Academy West Point - Howitzer Yearbook (West Point, NY)

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happened to fall out of the ship, so why be en- cumbered with excess baggage? And on tin- last day the ship in w h i c h Hawthorne was flying had a forced landing a few miles from the field. In a short time a crowd of curious natives had gathered and they assumed that the handsome Bill was the pilot and that the real pilot. clad in grease stained unionalls, was just a me- chanician. Cameras clicked and 15 ill told the as- sembled throng how it felt to be an aviator. There is no doubt about it — these Kaydet drill breeches are snappy raiment. The last night at Mitchell Field was a fitting climax for a most enjoyable week. A hop was ar- ranged — and such a hop ! Most of lis had drags available and femmes were furnished for any of the others who desired to have them. Several din- ner parties took place near the field prior to the hop and early in the evening Kaydets and feinmes, officers and ladies, and boodle-hunting stags as- sembled at Mitchell Field ' s Cullum Hall. Deco- rations were in harmony with the occasion, the floor was perfect, the orchestra was enough to have made a one-legged octogenarian do the Charleston. and the morale was so high that it was out of sight. During the course of the evening a mountain of hoodie was brought in and the stags went into ac- tion with loud shouts of boyish glee. Everyone had a good time — even Red Reeder. At one o ' clock the festivities came to an end. much to everyone ' s regret, and we returned to our boudoirs to talk over the events of the day and. perchance, to sleep. On Friday. June 26th, the first six companies took off at Mitchell Field in a squadron of Liberty — er — trucks. That trip should have been a warn- ing to us later on in the year when a bus trip was proposed, because from that time on transportation of troops by automobiles was synonymous with breakdowns and trouble. One truck after another contracted a severe case of the heebie-jeebies and we almost had to resort to brute force and military manpower to reach our destination. At Fort Totten there was a short wait until the arrival of the tried and true Absolom Baird, which was bringing the last six companies in from Fort Wright. Sewing circles h a v e long been maligned and generally low-rated because of their output of jabber about this and that, but they simply could not be compared to the reunion of the two halves of the class. Anecdotes of the trip flew back and forth and lost nothing in the flying. Reeder and Kane, our ow n Weber and Fields, took post on the roof of the boat and made up for all the days that they had been kept apart, much to the delight of an appreciative audience. The trip home will be long remembered by those Kaydets who sat on board the trusty — and rusty — Baird as she ploughed back toward West Point. It took us the same time to get over the joys oi reunion that it took us to get out of sight of Fort Totten. The sense of adventure which we mustered up at the beginning of our trip had faded days before. The added morale which had been inspired by a certain jolly pair who ran alongside our trucks (Mi the road from Mitchell Field in an official ear and showered us with candy and pretzels (catch your breath for the rest of this sentence ) was dead. Someone l aughed out loud after we passed Flushing Bay and was almost mobbed. Someone started to sing, and another joined in two was tin- limit reached in the re cruiting of that party. A weight lifting contest was started up forward, but a majority of the sufferers could not have lilted their eye lids. All seemed lost, as Hickman says at bridge, except honors. J y II

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Carter, ably assisted by Lt. Monteith, liad spent several weeks teaching us the mechanics of the brute, but that was about the limit of our experi- ence. Some few individuals, of course, had made one or more hops before and they favored us with high-hat discourses on My Flying Experience. But, as a whole, we were meeting something en- tirely new and thousands of questions were buz- zing, to and fro, hither and yon, through our minds. How will it feel to fly? , I wonder if I ' ll be scared? , Do you hit very hard when you come down? and others, ad infinitum. This business of flying through the air is most intriguing. There is nothing quite so thrilling as feeling yourself carried through space by a rela- tively small bit of mechanism, suspended between sky and earth by some unseen and nearly miracu- lous force. The breath taking rush across the field in the midst of a chaos of noise — roaring motor, screaming wires, banging landing gear. Faster. faster, and with a final gentle bump the ground drops away. You have no sensation of rising. The plane is fixed in space and it is the ground which drops, rises, and whirls. You clear the trees and buildings, the roar of the motor becomes a steady drone, the scream of the wires changes to a sooth- ing hum. and you are foxed into a sense of complete security. In a short time you learn to accom- modate yourself to the disturbing banks on the turns and you gaze down at the wide spread land- scape with an indescribable feeling of intense superiority. And just when you feel your cockiest things be- gin to happen. First, the bottom drops out of everything. A cautious peep over the side informs you that the ground is rushing toward you at a terrific speed. You get an uncomfortable feeling in the solar plexus and you wonder if parachutes really work as well as they are supposed to, and whether you had better jump now or wait a minute or two. But, as you watch, the ground begins to revolve slowly and, as it disappears back of the tail of the plane, you become aware of a tremen- dous pressure which threatens to force you through tlie bottom of the fuselage. The pressure increases and you slowly begin to realize that something out of the ordinary is happening. You glance up quickly — and see the ground directly overhead! Then a swooping dive and the plane flattens out again after its loop. You start to heave a sigh of relief, and while you are opening jour mouth the plane ' s nose goes up a trifle, the right wing drops with sickening speed — and you find your- self standing on your head again, with the ground back where the sky should be. Flying is truly a wonderful experience, and stunting is the sport of the gods. The first ex- perience is physically painful, but after that your pleasure increases with every flop and swoop of the plane. But enough of flying. It is entirely a matter of personal experience and cannot be described. Our mornings at Mitchell Field were divided into four periods, one of which was devoted to flying and the other three to lectures and inspec- tions of shops and equipment. Every minute was crowded with interest and in a short time we all became enthusiastic airmen. It was about this time that Walt Young was strapped into a parachute for the first time, and he couldn ' t understand why anybody should want to have the seat cushion strapped on to his person. He argued that there was no reason to believe, that you were going to land in a sitting position if you IL— « hundred ninety-eight

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But were we down-hearted? Echo lies — we were. But not for long. True, an organized movement to debark at BlackwelTs Island was frustrated only because the conspirators slept past the zero hour. But that was in East River. Once we had Battery Park on our right. Governor ' s Island on our left, and a turning movement to the North in prospect our thoughts turned again home. Home! Perish the thought we say after we get back and settled; but a day on the briny deep on a Mine Planter makes even West Point seem like Paradise. Once we were back in the familiar Hudson we could be sure that we should one day be back in barracks. The speed of the Baird in still water with a specific gravity of 1.05 (which latter has nothing to do with the problem but our Ordnance course makes such additions to a simple problem seem necessary and proper) is six knots. Rate of current: five miles an hour. Tide always against us. Get nut your Plebe Algebra and dope out the velocity with which we approached our objective. Looking into the water made one dizzy with a sense of speed; looking at the shore reminded one of West Point sammy. Some knowing observer pointed out landmarks as we went along and everyone regarded them at his leisure. Another with a map called out the names of the sections of the populated district on the Jersey side at hourly intervals: Jersey City. Hoboki n. Weehawken, Union, West New York. Guttenburg. Woodcliff, Fairview, Grantwood, Edgewater. Fort Lee. and so on until he tired long before we were out of sight of New York Bay. Along about dark we had reached the upper end of Harlem River, a point two miles across country from Hell Gate, fifteen miles away by boat. From then until midnight we were definitely nearing home. Too sick to think of the passing of time at the rate of an hour a mile, we gave way to piping the sight of South Dock and that long, long hill yet to climb. I say actually piping them, as a man pipes his return from furlough and then denies it to his dying day. The worst of the past forgotten because present misery so far over- shadowed them, the best of the past loomed into view in our memories. Thus we glided on through the darkness witli only the hope that the supper waiting for us would still be warm when we reached there next morning. But as we drew nearer and nearer to our rock- bound highland home our thoughts turned to a different channel. In less than twelve months we would come down the river again, never to return as Cadets. For some fifty weeks we would drill and study and do all the other things that fill our days at the Academy, and then would come the re- ward for which we had been waiting for so long — Graduation. Pag. two hundred