Upon the aces’ departure, the officers of the 135th shunned the chocolate bars they’d been issued and sought out white chocolate with almonds (Eddie Rickenbacker’s favorite), and they played galloping dominoes (favored by Frank Luke). They wore wristwatches with radium detailing (as did William A. Bishop), but also bandaged their dials at night to show they were wise to air raids, a suggestion during a visit from Lufbery. The cook went on drunken lemon-extract binges, claiming antecedent in the life of some ace or another, but then he was doubted and sacked.

One morning, Banjo disappeared. Mascots were sometimes kidnapped by other companies, or they died. Lee asked where she had gone, and there were shrugs all around, and so he shrugged, too. Life came with detours and body blows. He had wanted to be in Hollywood; he was in France; he could say c’est la guerre as needed. He played cards with the right kind of fatalism, he drank and passed the bottle quickly.

With many quiet hours to himself (his duties, as we will see, were to maintain the guns of one particular DH 4) he began to realize that his ambition had been a friend to him. Without it, he was rather lonely.

He courted officers. They reminded him of movie stars. In his early weeks, he sat in on their discussions at the Grass Shack, a hut with an upright piano and several card tables. He rarely seemed to volunteer anything, but somehow made known, as if by osmosis, how to slick back one’s hair, how to have one’s collar stand upright, how the cheekbones could be made to pop. Since the boundaries between enlisted men and officers were but vaguely enforced, Leland was seen at first as an interesting natural resource. His downfall was swift; it involved women.

Frenchwomen were terrifying. Everyone knew one particular thing about Frenchwomen. There was a song about it. Someone in the Grass Hut began to sing it one night, and the rest joined in:

That’s the wrong way to tickle Marie
That’s the wrong way to kiss
That was the right way back in the USA
But Marie expects bliss

It ended with shocking news:

Good bye to your Aunt Tilly
Hello, savoir faire
If you want to know the right way to tickle Marie
You’ve got to kiss her down there

The men of the 135th were as disturbed by the prospect of kissing Marie as they were fighting a skyful of Fokkers, but they sang as if the power of their voices might render them skillful. It was roundly agreed that Marie and her kin were impossible to please, that no man alive could really win any woman’s heart, love was a game of chance best played by the incredulous or the suicidal, it was bridge with traitorous partners, scoring kept by an idiot, a marked deck.

Capping the subject, one reedy lieutenant said, “The Hindenburg Line, I say, is only impenetrable.”