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May 9, 1974

Dear Wanda, Jessica and Ted:

In an earlier letter I mentioned the [[underline]] carnet de vols [[/underline]], or flight record, that was given to me by the French 40th squadron when I left it. The entries are all written by hand. The writer must have been the squadron clerk, a little cross-eyed man whose uniform was always too big for him.  The French army, I understood issued pants in just three sizes.  If I ever knew his name I have forgotten it.  He spent most of his time at a desk in the office, but he was out on the field, notebook in hand, to record every takeoff and landing.  Thanks to him I can even now tell you the date and hour of each flight I made from the Ferme d'Alger; the pilot's name and the purpose of the mission.  Most of those flights have faded completely from my memory.  I have only his written entires to remind me that they ever took place.

American squadrons went to less trouble about their bookkeeping. I have no record of any of my flights with the 88th, except the three for which I was cited.  Most of them likewise have faded from memory and are sunk without trace.  I have written only of the few that I happened to remember. Oddly, I remember well pilots in both squadrons with whom I cannot remember flying although I am sure I did. Around the end of August we moved about 15 miles northeastward, to a battered little village named Goussaincourt. It had an airfield that had been in use by the Germans in July.  The only flight I can remember making from Gousssaincourt was the one with Fletcher McCordic, mentioned in an earlier letter.  Undoubtedly there were others. It was at Goussaincourt also that we gave our little seminar to a delegation of infantrymen from the 77th division.  We hoped to teach them to recognize our planes as friendly, to understand our signals and to refrain from shooting at us.

In my file is an order from Littauer dated September 9th, 1918, directing four of us to go to Neuilly-sur-Seine, "on business connnected with the aviation service". The other three were Boykin, our squadron medic; Vrooman, the engineer officer, and Victor Heilbrunn, a pilot.  Boykin and Vrooman may have legitimate business at Neuilly, but Heilbrunn and I never got there.  Our order was another disguised three-day leave. To get to Neuilly you went first to Paris.  I have doucmentary record of some of my activities there.  One item ^[[is]] a stub of a ticket to the Opera Comique for the evening of September 10th. It was the first performance of Carmen