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to get broken in on a quiet sector.  I don't recall how we made contact, but on the 4th of July I had lunch in Toul with a friend from Carthage.  He was Hubert Turner, and he had been an athletic hero at Vanderbilt.  After graduation from law school in 1916 he had come home to Carthage to practize, and had coached our school team that fall.  After the war he married the daughter and sole heiress of the wealthiest man at Carthage.  I am not sneering about it, for I liked both of them.  It was probably a handicap to Turner in politics, however, for some years later he was badly beaten when he ran against a poor boy named Albert Gore for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator.

When we met in Toul Turner was first sergeant in an infantry company.  I don' recall where we ate, but I believe I had to arrange for service in a private room.  The American army in those days was quite fussy about commissioned officers eating in public with enlisted men.  The French army was more democratic.

Another sergeant of the 82nd division made the headlines three months later.  I never knew him and saw him just once, when he spoke briefly and modestly at Peabody College in the summer of 1919.  His name was Alvin York.

On July 7th our squadron moved about 125 miles westward to a livelier front.  The pilots naturally flew their planes to the new station.  Each took as his passenger a mechanic instead of an observer.  In case of a forced landing the mechanic was likely to be more help.  The disadvantage was that on such a move, flying over strange territory, some of the pilots always lost their way.  They had to land at strange fields to get directions.  Now and then one would stray across the lines, but there was little danger that he would land inadvertently on a German field.  The German anti-aircraft, as soon as he came within range, could be counted on to let him know that he was headed in the wrong direction.  In ordinary flying, the pilots were accustomed to depend on their observers for navigation.

Since Littauer went in his plane, his Cadillac on that trip was loaded with observers including me.  The squadron had as I recall four other passenger cars.  One was a Dodge (made then by Dodge Brothers, not yet affiliated with Chrysler), one was a Fiat (a bigger car then than now), and we had two model T Fords.  Our destination was an airfield about 40 miles east of Paris, near a hamlet called Francheville.