76 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



"I would like to be at home for 

 Thanksgiving or Christmas but there is 

 absolutely no chance, as I couldn't make 

 it if 1 started tonight, which I am 

 not going to do. I hope to be home 

 by the Fourth of July, but there is 

 no telling. The Bible says, in the 

 thirteenth chapter of Revelations, "The 

 world's war would extend through a 

 period of 42 months," and that time is up 

 next February but there's no telling 

 whether that will come true or not. 



"We get the Paris edition of the New 

 York Herald, and there is not much of 

 interest in it to us all the papers from 

 the States are so old when we get them 

 that the news seems stale. I get the 

 National Bulletin, though it takes a 

 month for it to come, and is quite ir- 

 regular. The last one I got was printed 

 October 4, so you see it 

 is quite old. I am so 

 glad I have my kodak 

 with me, as I can make 

 up quite a collection of 

 pictures to bring home 

 with me. We can buy 

 films at our Canteen. 

 The Canteen is our gen- 

 eral merchandise store. 

 I never heard of a store 

 called a canteen until I 

 joined the army. The 

 English and French have 

 the same name for it. 

 They gave us some mag- 

 azines today that were 

 anywhere from one 

 month to four months 

 old, but good reading af- 

 ter all." 



C. W. H. Douglass, 

 formerly with American 

 Forestry, is now a 



member of the Aviation Corps of the American Forces. 

 From England he writes : "Many things have happened 

 to me since leaving Mineola, the main one being that 

 I'm here in England instead of Italy as I expected. It 

 seems that the English Government agreed to train a 



MAJOR B. F. WADE 



In command of a headquarters de- 

 tachment of the Twentieth Engi- 

 neers (Forest) Regiment, and the 

 last soldier to leave the sinking 

 Tuscania, torpedoed on February 5, 

 near the Irish Coast. 



r PHE tragedy of war was brought closely home to the 

 * members of the American Forestry Association 

 by the sinking of the American transport Tuscania 

 early in February. Among the military passengers on 

 board the torpedoed ship were Companies D, E and F 

 of the Sixth Battalion, Twentieth Engineers (Forest), 

 numbering about 800 officers and men and a headquar- 

 ters detachment of the regiment under command of 

 Major Benjamin F. Wade. Major Wade is one of those 

 known to have been saved. The Twentieth is a regiment 

 of lumbermen and foresters and is known as the largest 

 regiment in the world. It has been in process of organi- 

 zation for several months at American University Camp 

 in the District of Columbia. Detachments have been 

 sent across from time to time, as fast as organized and 

 equipped. It is for the benefit of the men of the Twen- 

 tieth and those of the Tenth Engineers (Forest) that the 

 Lumber and Forest Regiments' Relief Fund has been es- 

 tablished at the headquarters of the American Forestry 

 Association. 



certain number and we just happened 

 to arrive at the strategic moment. Later 

 detachments went to Italy. The cli- 

 mate here is hardly likable damp, 

 cold with fog, etc. but aside from a 

 cold or two and a touch of influenza, I've 

 been feeling fine ; am getting round and 

 fat, and most of the other boys the 

 same. 



"To get back to chronological order. 

 W T e spent six weeks (about) in an Eng- 

 lish ground school, repeating the work 

 we had done at home, and then after 

 a fortnight in machine gunnery schools 

 we were scattered in small groups among 

 the flying schools all over England. 



"I've completed my preliminary train- 

 ing on a staid and dignified old buss 

 that we used to call an "animated lawn 

 mower" and am now at an advanced 

 school for work in the 

 faster machines. Expect 

 to fly scouts, the wasp- 

 like machines that run 

 aroundatabout 130 miles 

 per hour. Great sport we 

 all agree. We work into 

 those through easier fly- 

 ing types, meanwhile 

 learning to loop, roll, 

 spin, Immelmann, stall, 

 etc. It's the most inter- 

 esting sport that ever was 

 invented, I believe. When 

 one is up a few thou- 

 sand feet the sense of 

 dizziness e x p e r ienced 

 when looking down from 

 a high building is absent 

 everything is peaceful 

 and quiet. Rows of tidy 

 houses with red tile 

 roofs and a batch of 

 chimney pots, from 

 which wisps of smoke curl about and disappear, 

 make the towns and fields look like squares on a checker 

 board. It's really very pretty. In bumpy weather you 

 don't have much attention to waste on the landscape 

 though." 



A BOUT 200 board feet of wood is used in the actual 

 -^*- construction of the average airplane. To obtain 

 this material it is ordinarily necessary to work over 

 about 1,500 feet of select lumber, which often represents 

 all that can be used for airplanes of 15,000 board feet. 



A N instance of speeding up on war contracts is shown 

 f* recently by the shipment of five 30-foot Oregon tim- 

 bers from Eugene, Oregon, to Redding, California, by 

 express. The timbers were so long that the loading and 

 unloading had to done through the end door of the car. 



THE INDEX FOR VOLUME 23 OF THE AMERICAN FORESTRY MAGAZINE IS NOW READY 

 AND WILL BE SENT TO ANY OF OUR MEMBERS ON REQUEST. 



