Lindbergh

by A. Scott Berg

  Lindbergh knew only where he was meant to be and that he had been flying for an hour and a day. He reached into his flying-suit pocket for a handkerchief and was surprised to find, among his knife, pencils, and flashlight, the St. Christopher medal. This could not be a hallucination, for he could feel the silver disk showing a saint and child; but he had no idea where it came from. Within minutes, he looked down and saw a dark object swimming through the water. It was a porpoise, the first sign of life he had seen since Newfoundland. The next hour brought a gull.

  Drawing on all his reserves to remain awake, Lindbergh remembered he was carrying smelling salts in his first-aid kit. He opened one of the capsules of aromatic ammonia, thinking it would revive him; but he smelled nothing and his eyes would not tear. He floated onward until another vision captured his attention—several small boats looking like dots on a giant canvas. It took another moment before his mind comprehended the significance of the sight. There was no denying that there were fishermen below, who must have shipped out from a nearby harbor. Lindbergh approached one of the boats and saw a man’s head poke through a porthole. Within fifty feet of the water and circling the boat, Lindbergh closed the throttle and leaned out his window, shouting, “WHICH WAY IS IRELAND!”

  He passed the ship several times but got no response. The men below were no doubt as puzzled by the sight of him as he was of them, for Lindbergh figured he had at least another two and a half hours before reaching land. Flying through a brief rain, he saw another image on the horizon—only this time it seemed more fixed than his other visions. He discerned a jagged coastline, fjords giving way to green fields. He placed a map on his knees; and, looking back and forth between the crude earth outside and the fine lines on his lap, he saw how they corresponded. He had arrived at Dingle Bay on the southwestern coast of Ireland.

  Lindbergh was sure this was no mirage. He spiraled down toward a village alive with people running into the streets, looking up, and waving. According to his chart, he was only six segments away from Paris, six hours, six hundred miles. After twenty-eight hours of perilous flight, he was less than three miles off course.

  The sun began its descent for the second time since he had left Roosevelt Field. His flight path grazing the southern tip of Ireland, he put the greenery of county Kerry behind him. Revived, only the third act of his flight remained.

  Across America, day was breaking, bringing reports from overseas. The steamer Hilversum had spotted the Spirit of St. Louis hours earlier, five hundred miles from the Irish coast; the steam collier Nogi had seen a low-flying gray plane near Valencia. In western Pennsylvania, Jimmy Stewart raced to his father’s store at dawn to move his model plane to the southern tip of Ireland, only to have his optimism confirmed by a radio bulletin later in the day.

  Almost everybody felt bullish that morning. Wall Street had been prospering for months; and during that half day of business, stocks had their heaviest Saturday trading in a year and a half. Wright Aeronautical was the most impressive gainer, opening at 29 3/4 and closing up 5 3/4 points. Throughout Lindbergh’s flight, the exchanges in Amsterdam and Berlin had interrupted their quotations to provide updates. At midnight in Tokyo, thousands of people flocked to the streets. Lloyd’s of London at last began issuing odds, 10 to 3 against Lindbergh’s making Paris.

  The newspapers in France used their boldest typeface for the special editions that afternoon. Although still bemoaning the disappearance of Nungesser and Coli, France set about welcoming Lindbergh as it felt America would have greeted the French pilots. Once it appeared that he would not arrive in daylight, the government ordered the air-route illuminated, lighting the airfields between Cherbourg and Le Bourget.

  Since dawn in New York, people descended upon newsstands, turning into mobs as each edition of the city’s dozen different newspapers was dropped off. The New York Times received over ten thousand calls that day.

  “As I write this, you are flying over the wide ocean,” wrote Juno Lindbergh Butler—C.A.’s sister—unaware of Charles’s progress. “I do not like to think of it but can think of nothing else. When you receive this the ‘world will be yours.’ It is at your feet now and you cannot imagine how proud we are of you, both for your bravery and because you have kept a level head and a strong heart, with all the adulation that has been heaped upon you.” Despite the bad blood that had spilled between the Lindberghs and Charles’s mother, Aunt Juno had to grant that part of that day’s glory should go to her. “It takes a brave mother to wish her boy goodbye and Godspeed on such a journey with the calm confidence she displayed,” she wrote. Meantime, Evangeline sat in her small frame house in Detroit with “Brother,” police protection at the front and rear gates, her telephone off the hook.

  Under a pleasant sky and over St. George’s Channel—one of the lesser gulfs into which the Atlantic dissolves—Lindbergh felt that the “great difficulties of the flight” were behind him. Having burned close to seventeen hundred pounds of fuel, the plane felt unburdened. He had nothing more than the equivalent of a roundtrip between St. Louis and Chicago to complete. Then, without warning, the entire plane shook, as the engine jerked against its mounting.

  After twenty-nine hours of the steady rhythm of the Wright Whirlwind, it coughed erratically. As Lindbergh prepared for a forced landing, he considered that it was his hubris that was bringing him down—“Have I grown too confident, too arrogant, before my flight is done?” He realized that the problem was nothing more than his nose tank, the forwardmost of his five, running dry. He had only to turn some valves before gasoline was once again nourishing the thirsty motor.

  Counting his pencil marks, Lindbergh reckoned his life was no longer at stake. Even if England or France were fogged in, he had enough gasoline to return to Ireland. Having caught his second wind, he considered flying over Paris, dipping his wings, and continuing on to Rome. Reason prevailed. When he passed over Plymouth, he could not help thinking of the Mayflower, which needed two months to reach America; this pilgrim had skirted by Plymouth Rock only thirty hours earlier. Just as the sun was setting, he crossed the English Channel to France, the very coast from where Nungesser and Coli were last sighted.

  Looking down on Cherbourg, he took a moment to congratulate himself, realizing that he was at last over “the country of my destination” and that he had made the first nonstop airplane flight between the continents of America and Europe. Crossing the Baie de la Seine to the Normandy coast, with Le Havre off to his left, Lindbergh reached Deauville. He had flown thirty-five hundred miles, breaking the world’s distance record for a nonstop airplane flight.

  At the mouth of the Seine, Lindbergh celebrated by reaching for food for the first time since he sat in the hangar at Curtiss Field. He vised the stick with his knees and reached under his wicker chair for the paper bag, from which he pulled one of the five wrapped sandwiches. He unscrewed the cap of his canteen and realized that he could at last drink all the water he wanted. The sandwich satisfied his hunger, but it had no taste. Swallowing was an effort, each bite requiring a mouthful of water. That was all he chose to eat. He stuffed the wrapping back into the bag, not wanting “the litter from a sandwich to symbolize my first contact with France.”

  A few bright lights flashed in the distance, air beacons marking the approach to Paris. To gain greater perspective, Lindbergh climbed to four thousand feet. From that height the ground assumed the appearance of the galaxy above. Lights became more frequent as the country grew less rural; towns appeared as constellations; and bright clusters of cities shone through the clear night air. Ahead in the distance appeared a glow that brightened into something akin to the aurora borealis—“a patch of starlit earth under a starlit—sky—the lamps of Paris—straight lines of lights, curving lines of lights, squares of lights, black spaces in between.” He circled once above the Eiffel Tower—which displayed vertical sprays of lights as shooting stars, spelling out “CITROEN“—then headed northeast.

  Although he had found Paris, Lindbergh could
not locate Le Bourget. At the place he expected the landing field he discovered a black patch that was large enough for that purpose; but its perimetral lighting made no sense. Where an airport should be outlined by regularly spaced lights, this was surrounded by an erratic pattern: one corner of the field appeared to be washed with floodlights; and there seemed to be another string of lights stretching all the way to Paris. He flew another few miles in search of the airport; but after five minutes into rural darkness, he returned to the long strand of lights and spiraled lower. With each glance out the window of his banking plane, more of the airfield revealed itself. Those tens of thousands of surrounding lights, he realized, were the headlamps of automobiles stuck in traffic.

  Several times he circled the field, surrendering altitude, surveying the approaching ground. He fastened his safety belt, checked his instrument panel, got a look at the wind sock, and figured where to bring his plane down. He came in close enough to see the texture of the sod, then climbed to a thousand feet for his final approach.

  He circled around into the wind, began pulling back on the stick, closing the throttle, cutting his speed, approaching the field until the wheels touched ground, bounced gently and returned to earth, at which time the tail skid touched down. The plane kept rolling into an easy turn, coming to a momentary stop in a dark section right in the middle of Le Bourget. It was 10:24 P.M. Paris time—thirty-three and one-half hours since takeoff. Lindbergh taxied toward the floodlights. Then looking out his window, he was thunderstruck.

  The 150,000 people at the airfield stood everywhere—on tops of cars, on tops of the airport buildings, and mostly on the ground behind a fence guarded by the Le Bourget field police, special units of Paris agents, and two companies of soldiers with fixed bayonets. American Ambassador to France Myron T. Herrick was escorted to the overcrowded pavilion at one end of the field for a formal reception of the aviator.

  When Lindbergh brought the Spirit of St. Louis into the glow of lights on the field, he saw a human tidal wave. “The movement of humanity swept over soldiers and by policemen and there was the wild sight of thousands of men and women rushing madly across half a mile of the not too even ground,” reported The New York Times’s ace foreign correspondent Edwin L. James. “Soldiers and police tried for one small moment to stem the tide, then they joined it, rushing as madly as anyone else toward the aviator and his plane.”

  Seventy-three-year-old Ambassador Herrick, who had been around public events most of his life, swore he had never seen anything like it—“not the pandemonium the newspapers always tell about at political conventions, but the real thing…. Soldiers and police were swept away, the stout fence was demolished, and the crowd surged toward the airplane.” The first to reach Lindbergh were Le Bourget workmen, who cried, “Cette fois, ça va!” (“This time, it’s done!”)

  Numerous quotations have been attributed to Lindbergh upon seeing faces pushing their heads inside the Spirit of St. Louis—such statements as “I’m Charles Lindbergh” and “Well, I made it”—which he forever denied making. In truth, all he said was, “Are there any mechanics here?”

  In the hysterical din, his words meant nothing. Even if somebody had replied in English, Lindbergh probably would not have been able to hear, for the noise of his engine still whirred in his ears, drowning out all sound except the ominous cracking of wood and ripping of fabric. Before he had got the door of his plane open, the first great wave of humanity had crashed over him, keeping him from even putting a foot on the ground. Arms grabbed him, rendering him helpless as he floated over the sea of heads.

  After several minutes, he was able to stand on the earth for the first time, and he got caught in the riptide of the masses. A few quick-thinking Frenchmen ran to his rescue. One pulled off Lindbergh’s helmet and put it on an American reporter who happened to be standing next to him. In that same instant, a French civil flier named George Delage threw his coat over Lindbergh’s shoulders and ran off to get his car while his friend, military pilot Michel Détroyat, pushed Lindbergh to the periphery of the crowd. In the confusion, the mob descended upon the man wearing the helmet, while Détroyat and Lindbergh were able to duck into Delage’s Renault.

  They drove him to a hangar on the side of the field, where, in its small waiting room, they offered him food and medical attention. They kept most of the lights out, to avoid attracting attention. France was his, they said. Lindbergh’s only concern was for his plane, to which he wished to return. Delage and Détroyat made him understand the inadvisability of such a move. He asked about immigration and customs, which got a laugh; and he asked about Nungesser and Coli, which elicited sad expressions.

  Détroyat left and returned minutes later with Major Pierre Weiss of the Bombardment Group of the Thirty-fourth A. F. Regiment. Weiss could not believe Delage and Détroyat had been harboring the hero because, he explained, “Lindbergh has just been carried triumphantly to the official reception committee.” The four men piled into Delage’s Renault and drove across the field, where they waited in Weiss’s office; Weiss left to bring Myron Herrick to the actual owner of the hero’s helmet.

  It was after midnight when Herrick, with his son and daughter-in-law, reached Weiss’s darkened office. Lindbergh offered his letters of introduction, which were unnecessary. Herrick said, “Young man, I am going to take you home with me and look after you.” Lindbergh drew closer and explained that he still could not hear very well. Herrick repeated his offer, which Lindbergh accepted, though he said he hoped to visit his plane before leaving the field. Again, the obvious arguments against such an attempt were aired. But Lindbergh had been worrying about the cracking and ripping noises he had heard as the crowd had seized him, and he said there were a few items he wished to retrieve.

  They drove to the hangar where the Spirit of St. Louis had been parked. Lindbergh was shocked to see the crowd had ripped off pieces of the actual plane as souvenirs; a lubrication fitting and the clipboard with his log of the flight were gone. Further inspection revealed, however, that no serious harm had been done. The plane would spend the night under military guard.

  Herrick intended to drive Lindbergh into Paris, but through a misunderstanding, Lindbergh, Weiss, Détroyat, and Delage all found themselves packed again into the Renault, detouring several miles over backroads to the west before heading south into the city. They drove through the Saint Ouen gate toward the Place de l’Opéra—where crowds had been dancing in the streets for hours—then straight up the Boulevard Haussmann.

  Lindbergh’s guides had selected the tomb of the Unknown Soldier as his first stop in Paris. They all got out and stood in silence in the middle of the Étoile, under the Arc de Triomphe. Lindbergh swayed slightly, his legs buckling. They returned to the car and drove to the chancery in the Rue de Chail-lot, which they thought was the Ambassador’s residence. The police redirected them to No. 2, avenue d’Iéna—one block up a steep hill from the Seine.

  Ambassador Herrick had telephoned ahead to his staff to prepare a room and food for their late-night visitor. The French aviators left Lindbergh in the care of Herrick’s butler, who served a platter of chicken and side dishes, which Lindbergh declined in favor of an egg and some bouillon. He excused himself to bathe.

  Traffic kept the Ambassador from reaching his home until three o’clock that morning. He found his visitor sitting on the edge of a bed in a guestroom, wearing a robe and slippers and a pair of Herrick’s pajamas. The street in front of the house had filled with newspapermen, and Herrick suggested that Lindbergh grant them a brief audience. Lindbergh explained that his backers in St. Louis had contracted with The New York Times for him to give them an exclusive interview, and that he could not violate those terms. Herrick’s son, Parmely, went downstairs to the salon, where some reporters were already waiting, to find the Times’s representative, Carlyle MacDonald. As diplomatic as his father, Parmely suggested to MacDonald that “this thing seemed too big an affair to be made the exclusive news of any one paper”; and he asked hi
m to consent to Lindbergh’s meeting all the reporters. MacDonald agreed, and the corps of pressmen cheered before being shown upstairs.

  Lindbergh’s room was blue and gold, with a soft light glowing. He stood to greet his callers, and they insisted he be seated. He grinned and said, “It’s almost as easy to stand up as it is to sit down.” The journalists peppered him with questions, all of which he answered in few words. After seven or eight minutes, Herrick suggested that any further questions would be an undue strain on Lindbergh—who had by then been awake for sixty-three hours. The newspapermen withdrew. Lindbergh shook Ambassador Herrick’s hand and said there was no need to awaken him in the morning, as he was “sure to be up and ready at nine o’clock.”

  At 4:15 A.M., Lindbergh got into one of the narrow twin beds in his room, a delicate but sturdy Louis XVI replica, with a carved headboard, frame, and footboard in beige and teal. Two meters in length, it was barely long enough for the weary pilot.

  As soon as the journalists left, Ambassador Herrick cabled Evangeline Lindbergh in Detroit. “WARMEST CONGRATULATIONS STOP,” he said. “YOUR INCOMPARABLE SON HAS HONORED ME BY BEING MY GUEST STOP HE IS IN FINE CONDITION AND SLEEPING SWEETLY UNDER UNCLE SAMS ROOF.”

  PART TWO

  7

  ONLY A MAN

  “I was astonished at the effect my successful landing in France had on

  the nations of the world. To me, it was like a match lighting a bonfire.”