On Board Whileaway,42 July 31, 1917
My Dear Mother,
Awfully sorry not to have had a second to write you before but we’ve been awfully hard worked. Also we’ve had a couple of accidents, about which I hope you won’t worry. Harry had a fall from side slipping then nose dived from about 500 feet, and two days after Truby [Trubee Davison] did the same thing from about 300 feet. Harry was absolutely unhurt, thank goodness, but Truby was not so lucky as he did something to his back. The doctors say he will be alright in about three months.43 So, as a result they have let up on us a lot, as I believe they think the fellows were a bit tired. So today we are spending this afternoon on the boat and this morning I slept all morning. Now I am feeling fine and hope to take my test for naval pilot next Monday. About eight fellows, the ones who flew last summer, passed their tests Saturday, Sunday and Monday and most of them will be going to other places to instruct.44 In about two weeks we’ll probably be separated all over the country instructing. As soon as some decent machines are made, say two months, fifteen of us are probably going abroad first to instruct there. I don’t know who will go. I hope you are having a great time, as good as I had last summer, also Al. Please give my love to all the Tafts. With love, Dave
Reg Coombe recalled:
I remember one day the phone rang up in the house and it was Washington on the wire. The news soon spread around and pretty soon all the Unit that were left were around that room waiting to hear what the news was, and the chief yeoman who was on the wire would repeat the orders as they came along: Landon, France; then a big yell; Ingalls, France, and so on.45
2
Early Days in Europe
September–December 1917
During the summer and early fall of 1917, several members of the Yale Unit received orders to proceed overseas, where the navy had begun creating an extensive system of patrol stations, flight schools, and supply bases from scratch. With aviation officers in very short supply, the Yale gang offered nearly the only available source of additional trained personnel. In fact, the navy had not yet dispatched a single flying officer to Europe for combat duty. A small force of 122 enlisted men, the First Aeronautic Detachment, reached France in early June, their exact training and mission yet to be determined. Four commissioned fliers accompanied them—Kenneth Whiting, Godfrey Chevalier, Virgil Griffin, and Grattan Dichman—with orders to oversee training of their enlisted charges. They later assumed a variety of administrative and staff positions. A few other aviators arrived during the summer, either to investigate conditions in Europe, to gather technical information, or to fill out expanding staffs in Paris and elsewhere. Until the navy’s new ground and flight schools in the United States functioned smoothly, however, pilots to conduct antisubmarine missions necessarily came from the first college groups hastily trained in the spring and summer of 1917.46
Bob Lovett and Di Gates of the Yale Unit departed first for the war zone, sailing to England in mid-August.47 Fellow unit members John Vorys and Al Sturtevant soon followed.48 A larger contingent, consisting of David Ingalls, Freddy Beach, Sam Walker, Ken Smith, Reginald Coombe, Chip McIlwaine, Henry Landon, and Ken MacLeish, received orders to travel in late September aboard the old liner Philadelphia, now pressed into service as a transport.49 They all looked forward to their new duties with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. David Ingalls began keeping a diary, what he called “this simple book,” while aboard Philadelphia, and with only a few interruptions, he continued to do so until the war ended fifteen months later.
Like so many Americans crossing the submarine-infested Atlantic in the fall of 1917, Ingalls experienced the exhilaration and occasional panic of traversing the war zone. According to cabinmate Henry “Hen” Landon, they heard many wild rumors and thrilling stories while aboard, so many that they slept in their clothes, with their .45 service Colts close by. When fellow aviator Ken Smith spotted a porpoise knifing through the waves, Landon “nearly died in [his] tracks,” expecting an explosion to send their ship to the bottom.50
Despite such fears, the crossing proved relatively peaceful. Ingalls and the others landed safely in Liverpool, the great entrepôt on the Irish Sea, and had their first real contact with a nation at war. One enlisted sailor on his way to NAS Dunkirk called Liverpool “a quaint looking old city,” nothing like those at home, lacking skyscrapers and featuring crooked streets “that could break a snake’s back.”51 Newly arrived Americans spotted women working everywhere, out in the streets and in all the stores. Then it was on to London, where Ingalls and his companions toured the metropolis and began their naval duties, sometimes with comical results. They found the wartime scene eye opening—railroad stations crowded with troops and ambulances full of casualties just back from the front. Ubiquitous wounded soldiers sported blue stripes on their sleeves that indicated they could not purchase alcohol; authorities claimed abstinence promoted convalescence. Only a few months removed from happier college days, the Americans sensed despair in the populace.52
Ingalls and the others quickly checked in at the Savoy Hotel and readied themselves to report to navy headquarters at 30 Grosvenor Gardens. This formal duty required being properly turned out, a task somewhat beyond the ken of recently minted ensigns. Ingalls and two friends appeared in the service’s new forest green aviators’ uniforms, with Sam Browne belts and swagger sticks. The others donned dress blues, yellow gloves, and swords, but they could not quite figure out how to wear the ceremonial weapons. A few sarcastic remarks from headquarters staff sent the youngsters packing with, according to Ken Smith, “our tails between our legs.”53
Embarrassed but unbowed, they visited British military facilities before continuing on to Paris. On October 9, Ingalls departed London, headed for the Continent via a Channel steamer out of Southampton. The crowded vessel carried hordes of soldiers returning to the front, nurses, and civilian officials, and accommodations could not be found. Instead, the Americans made the best of it, eventually landed at Le Havre, and attempted to negotiate customs and baggage handlers with a working vocabulary of only three or four French words. After an interminable railroad journey, they reached Paris at three o’clock in the morning, piled into a small fleet of decrepit taxicabs, and eventually washed ashore at the Grand-Hôtel.
War-torn France presented an arresting and varied tableau. George Moseley, a football star at Yale and friend of many in Ingalls’s unit, noted that “women customs officials and examiners were the first sign we had of the lack of men.” Continental timekeeping also intrigued him, with its “22 hours 40 minutes instead of 10:40,” and a visit to the barbershop proved dispiriting, “full of common French soldiers, the poilus in their blue uniforms. . . . They seemed very sad, never smiling, and lonely talking now and then.” Moseley could not escape wartime realities: “I noticed a number of women who were standing back of me (they were all in mourning, nearly all the women in France are in mourning).” Bob Lovett echoed these maudlin observations. Writing home to the convalescing Trubee Davison, he reported, “The condition of France you would be heartbroken. She is staggering with