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Show BOYS FROM AMERICA ARE CHILLY IN ITALY Youn& Men in Aviation Camp Strangely Affected by Climatic Conditions. FUEL ALSO IS SCARCE Cold, However, Has Not Crippled Imagination of the Student Flyers. AMERICAN SEAPLANE TRAINING CAMP, central Italy, April 3 0 (Correspondence (Correspon-dence of the Associated Press). Italy's coal shortage has been a severe blow to this camp, the second aviation camp for Americans on the peninsula Wben the camp was built by the Italian , Ji in midwinter, right on the edge of JF)t clcep inland lake, no provision was -V made' for heat. The Italians put up two fine regulation barracks, with concrete floors, wood and concrete walls and picturesque pic-turesque red brick roofs, and In these the Americans live or, rather, they sleep there at night because there is no other place to go. The Italian instructors were surprised when the Americans began to complain about the cold, as, generally speaking, the United States is regarded as much colder, than Italy. But one of the curious cu-rious climatic effects on all Americans is the sensation of cold in so-called sunny Italy. Making Best of It. Most of the American students here came down from . Paris, having for the most part enlisted in the aviation corps fresh from the American Red Cross or other ambulance and motor corps. ' As they "have had experience on the front, they are used to making the best of a bad job, and instead of complaining especially about the cold, they merely keep on the jump during the day and at night before going to sleep they put on all their flying clothes, then pile five or six blankets on a bed and "glide in under the hay," as an Iowa country boy expressed it. The cold, however, has not had the effect ef-fect of preventing them from writing long letters home. None of them has yet caught the writer's cramp, according to the officer who has the duty of censoring censor-ing their mail. It is also a painful but necessary duty to inform their home folks that the cold hasn't crippled their imaginative imag-inative powers. - The man who reads their mail says they relate the most thrilling kinds of adventures with Austrian airmen. If all the fights they tell about having while flying came off, there wouldn't be any enemy airmen left. Novel Explanation. They have not yet been permitted to . tfpk any of the enemy, for two rea-l.yjns: rea-l.yjns: First, they arc not permitted to fly more than eighteen miles from the lake, and if. they do so they will be reprint repri-nt manded. The second reason is that there Ktre no Austrian airmen in these parts. "he liaJirin s.-;iul.in-' men stationed aTW the Adriatic const attend to that little' job. Once, and only once, have Austrians flown across Italy, and that was In an old Zeppelin that bombarded Maples in early March. "The folks at home know we are over here, and we have got to give them something to keep them interested," laughingly explained a youth from an eastern state. "We have got to give them an Idea that the job isn't half so dangerous as they think it is, so we always al-ways win those fights." Good at Love Letters. It also appears that the aviators are also good hands at love letters. "If the girls at home knew how desperate des-perate are the efforts made by the Italian Ital-ian girls here to win an American husband; hus-band; if they knew the wiles exercised by some of the American girls In Italy to accomplish the same end, they would surely be jealous," said one of the officers, of-ficers, i "But if these selfsame girls at home knew how desperately their sweethgarts over here fight shy of these foreign girls, they would be comforted. It's a good thing, too, for a fellow with too many Rirls on his mind is apt to have acol--dents. Somehow, they always prefer to travel in parties, wherever they go, if it's only for a walk across country or along the mountain roads, and it's a hard job to lasso a fellow unless he's alone." The Italian language is also a handicap handi-cap in this respect, as well as In others. For this reason the Italian navy department depart-ment has provided instructors who speak English. |