Having bubbled over with affectionate excitement for Charles Augustus Lindbergh a month before, Paris last week settled down to a steady schedule of festive welcome for its second detachment of transatlantic air guests—Heroes Byrd, Acosta, Noville, Balchen, Chamberlin and Levine. The last two arrived from Berlin via Austria and Czechoslovakia in their Bellanca ship, Columbia. The first four arrived hollow-eyed and shaken after their fog-ridden cruise, anxious night and wet landing in the America. In Paris they had difficulty mixing sleep with hospitality and with their natural inclinations to make the most of a great moment.
Commander Byrd, pale and erect in Navy whites, had to shoulder most of the honors and speechmaking. A gallant Virginian, he repeatedly explained that his comrades were more creditable than himself, and it was to them all that President Louis Delsol of the Paris Municipal Council said: "Paris, gentlemen, salutes in you the United States." But it was to Commander Byrd directly that Marshal Foch said: "It was one of the great feats in history." Commander Byrd had the presence of mind to reply: "There is no one in the world I would rather hear say that than you."
The Byrd crew supplied Parisians with types for all tastes. Some chose sleek, swart Bert Acosta who had piloted the big ship to the French coast and then collapsed with exhaustion. While Commander Byrd slept on the first night in Paris, Pilot Acosta, despite a broken collar bone, continued to pilot his comrades through an informal demonstration at Joseph Zelli's justly celebrated Montmartre night club. Lieutenant Noville, rough, ready and with gay French blood in him was perfectly at home. Blond, blocky Bernt Balchen did not come into his own until his fellow Scandinavians held a special Viking evening for him in the Quartier Latin. Newsgatherers made life hard for Hero Chamberlin by treating Hero Levine, politely yet distinctly, as a large black fly in the ointment. Mr. Levine was a civilian and owed his place in the sun to being a shrewd, adventurous moneybags. His omnipresence in a company of aeronauts was grotesque, obtrusive, they hinted. They plagued Pilot Chamberlin until he admitted that he had unwillingly taken certain orders from Mr. Levine, that he had been embarrassed by Mr. Levine's forwardness in cabling Commander Byrd about a flight home together in their two ships.
Hero Levine's standing with Frenchmen was ameliorated when he gave 100,000 francs ($4,000) for a pilots' clubhouse at Le Bourget. Hero Levine's standing with his countrymen was salvaged by onetime (1920-21) U. S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, who described the Levine flight and proposed return as a passenger (see p. 19), as a challenge "to you, to me, to everyone."