My love is with you all. Be content that you are in America. Coal may be high—but it is better than no coal. People in France don’t eat butter. Lump sugar is jewelry. Ever your son, DINSMORE. _Villa St. Jean, January 13, 1918._ DEAR FAMILY: I forgot to say that I have five days’ _permission_ as a reward for raising the school record in aero marksmanship from twenty-two per cent to twenty-seven and a half per cent. It is the first thing which is actual cause for believing that I may be a successful fighting pilot. Many men can fly and many can shoot very well, but the combination of the two is the rare thing which much increases one’s opportunity for service and chance for survival in the struggle for existence over the lines. The test is made on a sleeve the size of the body of the smallest aeroplane. This sleeve is dragged behind another aeroplane traveling at sixty or seventy miles per hour. The plane I drove had a speed of 100 to 120 miles per hour, and the machine gun is fired from it, and mechanically arranged to shoot through the propeller. You approach the sleeve from various directions, making snap judgments as to target and shooter’s deflection, which I explained in another letter, and then fire six or eight shots at a time at a range varying from 600 to 75 feet. The centering of the bullets is important. You have a hundred shots. Your son, DINSMORE. _Plessis Belleville, France, January 17, 1918._ DEAR BOB: