An incident illustrating this occurred between a couple of air officers, a Colonel who was in charge of American Balloons at the Front, and a Lieutenant, a Balloon Observer. This superior officer was a full-blooded German, born in Berlin. He spoke a German-American language that was mostly German. His name was Lieutenant Colonel John Paegelow. Paegelow was a Regular, and a regular fellow. We all liked him very much for he was very jovial and good natured. Anyway, his loyalty was unquestionable for he was about the worst Hun-Hater among us. However, he had the Prussian idea of discipline and he took it out on the balloonatics whenever he felt they needed it. At Château-Thierry the balloons were under orders to remain in ascension day and night, and the personnel of the balloon companies had become noticeably fatigued from this prolonged vigilance; the balloon observers, especially, were worn out and naturally cross and irritable. It was a rainy night and Paegelow was standing on the ground holding the telephone in communication with the balloon observer two thousand feet above. This observer had been up for fourteen consecutive hours and was about all in, and the rain had made it a desolate and disagreeable night, adding considerable more woe to the occasion. “Colonel,” the young observer telephoned, in a very disgusted voice. “Vat?” alertly answered Paegelow, thinking the lad had spied something. “It’s pitch dark up here, I can’t see a damn thing and it’s raining to beat Hell up here,” spoke the observer. “Iss dot up dare all de trouble you got?” said Paegelow, indicating his overruling of the demurrer. “Well, what are you going to do about it?” demanded the exasperated Lieutenant. Paegelow hesitated a second, then replied, “Vell, vill you shut up and go on and vork. It iss pitch dark down here, und I can’t see a damn ting down here either, und it iss raining to beat ’ell down here too.” When we started to work with new Infantry and Artillery units some were pleased and others did not want to have anything to do with us. It was at Château-Thierry that such lack of liaison became a serious matter and at the same time was the basis for several amusing incidents. The line units were prone to blame the Air Service for everything that went wrong. The reason was that they considered an airplane so experimental and uncertain in itself that that fact alone would preclude any argument as to the proper placing of blame for every failure. One of the hardest things we had to contend with was impressing upon the line units the fact that the Corps Observation and the Corps Air Service Commander had absolutely nothing to do with the Pursuit and Attack planes; that all these came directly under the French Army Commander.