I had been particularly fortunate in my assignment of an instructor. Sergeant Winston held the record for flying time in the army with about thirty-three hundred hours. He was an excellent pilot and knew how to instruct if he wanted to. When my turn came he asked me how much flying time I had had and after I told him about three hundred and twenty-five hours he turned the controls over to me with orders to take the ship around and land it. I had some difficulty in flying with my right hand. The wartime ships which I was accustomed to were built to be flown with the left, but after the Armistice it was decided to change the throttle over to the other side on the theory that the right hand was the natural one to fly with. After three landings, however, Sergeant Winston got out of the cockpit and told me to fly around for thirty minutes and try to get used to right handed piloting. When we were not flying we were gathered around the stage house watching the progress of our classmates and learning how to turn the propellers over in starting the engine without placing ourselves in a position to be struck in case it kicked backwards. To a pilot, the propeller is the most dangerous part of his plane, and is a constant source of worry to him when his ship is on the ground among people who vie with each other in seeing how close they can stand to the whirring blade while the motor is still running. Then there is usually a contest to see who can be first to move it up and down after it stops turning over. A cadet is usually given about ten hours of dual instruction before he is allowed to solo. The instructor first takes him up and after flying around for a few minutes, allows the student to take hold of the controls to get an approximate idea of the amount and direction of movement necessary for gentle banks and turns. Then the instructor throws his hands up in the air in full view of the student--the signal that he has turned over entire control of the ship. The cadet is given the opportunity suddenly to realize that flying is not a simple operation of pulling the stick back to go up and pushing it forward to come down, but that an instinctive and synchronized movement of all controls is necessary even to keep the machine in level flight.