World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
We have a good time wandering about the quaint, narrow streets, where
strange people peer out of small, low windows, and undersized doors. The
houses are so old that different materials and workmanship of a dozen
repairs give their façades a mottled appearance of many centuries, which
suggest a strange collection of antiques within. This is carried out by
glimpses through windows whose shutters are hanging aslant or thrown
open. Within are seen old four-poster beds with canopies and feather
mattresses which are round and swelled up as if inflated. Wrinkled old
women with queer caps squint as they peer out, while their hands rest in
embroidery. Elsewhere, little low passageways open into crammed little
courts, with uneven tile floors, scrub trees, and a half-open circular
stone staircase. Natural flowers and grass grow from the moss-covered
tile roofs.
Washing hangs from front windows, and people come out to empty their
wash water and their refuse in the street gutter. Cats abound. I hope
the sights and experiences of war will not wipe out all these quaint and
pleasant sights which make Europe what it is.
YOUR SON.
DEAR FAMILY:
Things are speeding up. I’m out of the hospital. Came to the school
Friday. Found I had about the best bed in our barracks and was in the
smallest class with one of the best monitors—more luck. I am an hour and
a half of flying behind the other fellows, but that is not bad.
Well, the hospital did not cure my bronchitis. That, however, is nothing
but a chronic cough which will mend here better than there. What it did
cure, however, was my distaste for my fellow-countrymen; the cure was
absolute, and of greater value than my physical cure could have been.
My, but it was good to get back with the bunch again. All my old
interest in people has revived, and I am more than content.
And I have flown! Wonderful. Oh, it was great. Saturday evening I went
up for fifteen minutes as a passenger. Then Sunday morning we went up on
my first ten minute lesson. When we were a hundred meters off the ground
and had gone a quarter of a mile, the pilot gave the controls over to me
and rested his hands over the side while I drove entirely alone. It is
more simple than driving an automobile because there is no road to
watch. A glance at this side, a glance at that, to see that the wings
are level. The throttle is set full at the outset and forgotten till you
descend. There is a speedometer to watch and that is all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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