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national hero. When I handed the newspaper back to the barber I saw that he was weeping. He had to pause to wipe his eyes from time to time while he cut my hair. The French took the war more seriously than we did. No Americans had yet been killed.

That notice on the bulletin board said nothing about training me to be a pilot.  The words "detached service" implied that I would not even be transferred to the signal corps. I would remain an artillery officer, albeit a flying one. I could make a fair guess what the general nature of my duty would be. I had never had any special craving to fly, but I went to the adjutant at once and asked him to enroll me as an applicant. I had two reasons for doing that. One was Murphy. I had no evidence that he had tried to do me any harm since we had joined C battery together.  The commander, Captain Woodward, seemed to like me well enough. But I felt that enmity between two if its officers would not be good for the morale of the battery. I had another, stronger reason for wanting to get out. I felt quite gloomy about the prospects of the First Field Artillery Brigade.  In an earlier letter I wrote of the trouble we had with getting supplies. The brigade was run by officers of the regular army who did not seem interested in making use of anything we had learned at Saumur.  My impression was that they were training the men to fight another Spanish-American war, not the one we were about to take part in. Of my regular army superiors the one I knew best was Lieutenant-Colonel Sands. I did not doubt his courage and I admired his horsemanship, but I had no confidence in his judgment. In that brigade I did not want to be responsible for the welfare of enlisted men. I did not wish to command even a platoon.

Let me hasten to add that I took too pessimistic a view of the