WAR

an American, Charles J. Biddle, of Andalusia, Pennsylvania, was a man who
could not wait for the United States to end her shivering on the brink. He
entered the war by way of the French Foreign Legion, the conventional way for
men who were not French nationals to fight without relinquishing their home
country citizenship. Notified that he had been accepted, he was required to
report for a physical examination at a recruiting office near the Invalides in Paris.
The office was one of those shabby, slightly sour bureaux where France's petit
jonctionnaires nest in their coils of red tape, living out their drab, devoted lives
in an extravagantly quaint setting that made one think of nothing so much as a
Daumier lithograph. Awaiting his turn, Biddle fidgeted on a hard, official bench.
One man ahead of him was being examined for the infantry of the Foreign
Legion. He was very nervous and inadvertently signed his own name to the
papers. He had had his documents all made out with an alias and then got
excited at the last minute. The officer in charge smiled and glozed over the
inadvertent exposure, which was nothing new in the Legion.
Biddle was sent to Avord, one of the larger air training establishments in
France. The flying school at Avord was operated on the principle of the "Bleriot
school." The students learned to fly in single-seat machines, going up at no time