DESCRIBES AID RAIDS ON LONDON

The following is a letter written by a former editor of the CRIMSON, D. W. Rich '18, now in the aviation service in France, to a member of this year's Board. The letter is dated, "On active service with the American Expeditionary Force, Nov. 3, 1917."

"This is at a French aviation school now used to train Americans. There are among others here, R. Anspach '18, H. Bridgman '19, J. Lambert '20, W. L. Avery '17, Sumner Sewall '20, and W. C. Hall '14. P. N. Rhinelander '18, (Little Phil), has just left with his French brevet to go to Perfection School where he learns to drive faster machines.

"The course here takes about two months with decent weather. If you are good at it you can get through in six weeks with luck. Twenty-five flying hours are required; 50 landings; a 90-mile triangle, cross country, with two stops; several petits voyages' to neighboring hangars; an altitude test over 2000 meters for over an hour; it is the regular French 'brevet' course. We start in double control machines and after five or six flying hours are sent to solo work.

"By the time this reaches you, the school may have become more Ameri- canized, but now it differs very little from a regular French school. The French system, you know, is to teach flying and flying only. We have an occasional lecture and talks on motors, map-work, aerodynamics, but that is all. The rest of the time we are either flying or at liberty to do whatever we want. No drill or formations, except inspection once a week.

"As you may have heard, I got in the way of a bit of shell last August and had a delightful time at Neuilly (the American Ambulance Hospital) for about a month. Then I applied for sick leave to England and spent a most interesting ten days across the Channel. It was my first visit to England, so I would have had a pretty splendid time anyway; but as an added attraction it was the open season for Gothas--the moonlight nights at the end of September.

"London air raids are such notorious affairs that I was very glad to see one at close range--at least as close as the average Londoner gets. All I actually saw was nothing at all.

"The first time we were at the Gaiety seeing our first real show in months, since last winter. The Boche had been coming regularly the last three or four nights, and so everyone took it for granted that they would come this evening at about 9.15, because the Boche do everything by time table, which once established is seldom changed. The same is true at the front. If they start sending a shell in at a certain place at, say a two-minute interval, you can be perfectly sure that they will come regularly as clockwork. And once the interval is broken the firing does not start again. In the Ambulance we used to work on this basis and with almost perfect security. The irregular, apparently haphazard firing of the French always impressed us as likely to be much more disconcerting to the people at the other end.

"True to their expectation, promptly at the appointed time the Boche, or as they call the enemy in England, the Hun, put in his appearance. But all we or anybody else in the theatre knew about it was the noise of the anti-aircraft guns. From the sound the stories