First to Fly

by Charles Bracelen Flood

  “He was with Kiffin Rockwell in the Foreign Legion. Seems, according to Kiffin, that Pavelka saved Kiffin’s life when the Legion was attacking up in the north end of the line, somewhere near Arras . . . Kiffin Rockwell had been very desperately wounded, and Pavelka carried him from the field, where he surely would have died, to a dressing station. And all the while, Pavelka was wounded too! So you see, we have a damned good man with us. Needless to say, he and Kiffin are most awfully good friends.”

  When the call came for pilots to go to the Army of the Orient, Paul Pavelka promptly volunteered. Thus, by the age of twenty-seven, he had become experienced at volunteering. First he had served in the prewar United States Navy. Then he had joined the French Foreign Legion of his free will, and engaged in desperate fighting during which he was wounded. Paul then transferred to the French 170th Infantry Regiment, in which he experienced additional intense combat.

  After fighting in the Champagne region, he arrived at Alice Weeks’s house, where Paul Rockwell proceeded to take care of him. Then he entered aviation and ended up in the Lafayette Escadrille, joining the unit in August of 1916 in time to engage in dogfights above Verdun. Subsequently based at Cachy in the Somme campaign, he and Adjutant Alfred de Laage of the Escadrille volunteered for missions flown at night to intercept German bombers. In all, Pavelka flew twenty-one of these pioneering missions, including one in which the small electric bulb by which he could see his compass and other panel instruments went out. This forced him to fly for hours in total darkness while being fired at by Allied antiaircraft gunners mistaking him for a lone German raider, until dawn came.

  Accepted for service in the Army of the Orient, by February of 1917 he arrived at the Greek port of Salonika, and within four days was at an inland air base from which he immediately began flying a Nieuport two-seater five hours a day over enemy lines. He said this in a letter to a friend:

  “I am awfully glad I came to the Orient. It is just what I desired in the line of war. One hundred and eighty kilometres [112 miles] from nowhere, plenty of rough work, and some advancing to keep up the enthusiasm of everyone concerned.”

  Pavelka thrived in his new surroundings, but many soldiers in the Army of the Orient did not. At the end of July he wrote this:

  “It has been very hot here these past few days. So hot that a good many of our boys are being sent to France, as they are not able to stand the [often 120-degree] heat. Malaria reigns supreme. We see many men who are ‘dango’ from the heat; some become dangerous, and others quite amusing. Leaves are being accorded, and there are about ten thousand permissionnaires [men on leave] on their way to sunny France—or rather shady France, for God knows no one would want more sun than there is here in Macedonia.”

  Fourteen days later, Pavelka was in a nighttime automobile accident in which his driver was crossing a narrow bridge above a boulder-filled ravine without using his headlights. The driver lost control, and the car fell to the rocks below. Pavelka went through the car window, and emerged with cuts on his face, two fractures of the jaw, and two dislocated knees. Within two weeks he resumed flying missions. Pavelka seemed indestructible.

  On November 11, he paid a social call on a man whom he had known in the Legion. This veteran had served at some point in a cavalry regiment, and that day was supervising the arrival of some fresh horses, one of which, a mare, was swiftly convincing an audience of soldiers that she was “impossible to ride.” Pavelka, having spent time as a cowboy in Montana, asked if he could try to ride this troublesome mount. With permission granted and a crowd gathering to watch “the Yankee bronco-buster,” a stable-sergeant led out the mare and held her reins tightly until Pavelka settled on her back.

  Once horse and man were in action, the horse bucked and reared for a time, with Pavelka successfully hanging on. Then the frustrated mare changed tactics. She flung herself to the ground and rolled back and forth on top of Pavelka. As some men brought her under control and led her away, others rushed to Pavelka, who lay in the dust with blood coming out of his mouth.

  Paul Pavelka died the next day, and was buried the following day in a cemetery at Salonika on the coast. The funeral services were conducted by a British Army chaplain, and an English-speaking French clergyman spoke of the “brave and valuable services” Pavelka had rendered to France, as well as paying tribute to the friendship between France and the United States. The American consul and a guard of honor from a French infantry regiment were present, and one man noted that “all the aviators of the Salonika sector were there.”

  Predictably, there would be different versions and interpretations of how, when, and why Bert Hall ended up on the Eastern Front. All may have been true. It seems that during the autumn of 1916 a number of the pilots, led by Norman Prince, apparently began to complain among themselves about Bert Hall, and decided to run him out of the squadron. According to this account they saw him as a roughneck, not fit for the company of gentlemen like themselves. He was characterized as a liar (often true), as having forged checks made out to other pilots (probably true), and as frequently using prostitutes. In particular, they felt strongly that he had won so much money from them in their constant card games that he had to be cheating.

  Regarding the accusation of cheating, the evidence favors Bert Hall. He didn’t cheat, because he didn’t need to. During the prewar years, when his rich squadron mates were using their parents’ money to play casual poker in their college clubs and fraternity houses, he had been reading the poker faces of hardened professional gamblers from all over Europe. Bert Hall knew the exact odds of whether he held a better hand than the other man did, and he certainly knew when a man was bluffing. As for Bert’s attitude about money, he had this to say:

  “Aviators in groups on any of the battlefields have an odd time of it. We play poker, dice, roulette, and if anyone wins all the money, as someone usually does, it doesn’t matter greatly. You go around and borrow what you want and nobody keeps any account of it, since we know this thing is going to last a good while and there will be nobody left to worry about debts when it’s all over.”

  When Kiffin Rockwell was killed, his brother Paul, who had great influence with officers of many ranks, was outraged when Bert, instead of attending Kiffin’s funeral, allegedly went to Paris to peddle the story of Kiffin’s death to the resident American reporters. One study of the Escadrille pilots concluded that this real or imagined slight “was all that Paul Rockwell needed to begin his lifelong smear” of Hall.

  As for whether Bert Hall was worthy of being in the company of the other Escadrille pilots, he was on excellent terms with Raoul Lufbery as well as with Bill Thaw. Thaw, who had fought beside him in ground combat with the Legion, said of him, “He was genial, charming, and probably the biggest liar in the Legion . . . always telling us that he had been both a lawman and a bank robber in the western frontier.” In a diary entry Hall mentioned the warm hospitality extended to him over a weekend in Paris by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Slade, Mrs. Slade being Bill Thaw’s sister, who lived in Paris with her husband. Dedicating his book “En l’Air!,” he paid tribute to “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Slade, Who have been Father and Mother to us all—may they live forever.” Despite Paul Rockwell’s later “lifelong smear” of him, another study of the Escadrille concluded that Paul’s brother Kiffin “both admired and respected Hall.”

  There is photographic evidence as well: In a picture of nine of the pilots including the seven “Founders” taken in the squadron’s early days at Luxeuil in May of 1916, Bert Hall and Bill Thaw, the squadron’s de facto American leader, are standing beside each other smiling, with their arms linked. No one ever criticized Hall for his behavior when he was fighting side by side with Thaw in the Foreign Legion, and his citations for bravery speak for themselves. His first citation, combining the award of the coveted ­Médaille Militaire—the highest award for valor given to an enlisted man—and also the Croix de Guerre with palm, said this:

&nbs
p; “After having served in the infantry, been twice wounded, transferred to aviation . . . has very rapidly become a pilot of the first class and very outstanding gunner. Very intelligent, energetic, and most audacious . . . Has fulfilled demanding missions of great peril and danger over German lines on many occasions.”

  Another citation described him this way: “Clever, energetic, and courageous pilot, full of spirit. Daily attacking enemy planes at very short distance.” Nonetheless, the story persists that he was asked to leave the squadron, a story buttressed by a diary entry in which Hall says, “I think the Lafayette Escadrille is glad to get rid of me. I don’t blame ’em.”

  On November 1, 1916, Hall transferred to a nearby French squadron whose commander was a Captain Jean d’Harcourt, whom Bert already knew. Emil Marshall, a nonflying member of the Escadrille, said that as Hall left, he shook his fist at several of the pilots and shouted, “You’ll hear from me yet!” He flew successfully with the new squadron for several weeks before he received an extraordinary assignment.

  In his “En l’Air!” Hall introduced this new experience in a way that leaves open the possibility that he flew in two areas of the Eastern Front: “Early in December, 1916, the French Government received an urgent request from the military in Russia and Romania for some French aviators. They were needed on the east front to show the Russians how we were playing the game, and also to put heart into their fliers.”

  Next, Hall noted in his diary that “I have orders to report to the under secretary of war in Paris on the morning of December 16th. I don’t know what the hell I’ve done now. Captain d’Harcourt says he thinks it’s a special mission and not because of some misdemeanor.” Hall reported as ordered, and in his next day’s diary entry wrote, “The War Office had me up on the carpet for hours, not giving me hell, but rather telling me what good work I am doing and then telling me how to act in Russia. I am supposed to help the Russians pep up their flying and also report back to Paris what is going on.” In a later entry Hall said, “Somehow, I don’t believe that the War Office expects me to come back from this blooming mission.”

  It is at this point that records and chronology mingle and become vague. Bert was told not to keep a diary, and promptly started using a new “dot-and-dash” code in making his diary entries. His earlier statement that he was to “report back to Paris what is going on,” in addition to his ominous feeling about “this blooming mission,” coincided with a growing feeling among the Allies on the Western Front. They feared that Russia would soon experience a revolution that might take it out of the war and enable the Germans to move many divisions from the Eastern Front to strengthen their position on the Western Front. It might well be that “Paris” was considerably more interested in political than military intelligence. That raised the question of whether Bert Hall was capable of strolling his way through Russia as a spy, a French officer who wore civilian clothes and carried a false French passport as well as his real American one. If unmasked at various checkpoints or during random searches by bands of revolutionary militia, he probably would be shot on the spot.

  Once in Russia, for a time he was evidently able to send uncensored mail straight through to Paris. In his diary note of January 26, 1917, from “North-Russian Aviation Base, Litovsk,” he wrote, “I hope my messages back to France have some value. Christ knows I am writing everything I can think of. Had letters from the Lafayette today. They are making the war as usual and expect to move soon.” He also flew some missions he said would have been considered routine on the “French front” but which brought him high Russian medals and a presentation to the Grand Duke Alexander, who Hall said “asked me questions for two hours.”

  “We had dinner and it was the first high-class food I have had since I came to this bloody country. The old rule holds good everywhere. If you want to get on in style, hobnob with the upper classes.

  “The Grand Duke A. is the only man I have met so far in Russia who seems to understand that four years of major warfare require a social adjustment behind the lines. He said that if Russia came out of the war and withstood the Revolution (which all the nobles seem to expect after the war is over) it would be because the Tsar and his ministers saw fit to bring about some reforms, regulated the prices of humble necessities and made sure that the under-classes were not only fed, but treated like human beings. I thought this was quite a speech, coming from a Russian Grand Duke.”

  Bert soon went on to Romania, as part of a 1,600-man French Army force of advisors and technicians that was struggling to supply and train the badly battered, inept, deficient, and spiritless Romanian Army. The French were determined to keep Romania in the war, to protect Russia’s southern flank, but many high-ranking Romanian officers resented what they considered to be usurpation of their authority.

  Out of the 1,600 men of the French Military Mission, as it was called, only six—Bert and five French pilots—were assigned to train Romanian pilots. They faced an overwhelming task. In the course of a month, the nearly useless Romanian Air Force had gone from having forty-four planes and less than a hundred pilots to receiving 322 aircraft sent from France, but many of those planes were obsolete and had been deemed unfit to fly against the Germans. Hall and his French colleagues set to work, running a small flying school. His specialty was training the Romanian pilots in target shooting from a plane. He left few recorded remarks about that, but found ghastly conditions in war-shattered Romania:

  “Thousands of Romanians are dead and tens of thousands are dying from typhus and other epidemics brought on by famine . . . More than 300,000 people are crowded into Jassy, a city designed to accommodate about 60,000. There is little or no food. Doctors and nurses are scarce and thousands are dying.”

  He described the suffering in Jassy:

  “The cold was intense. There was no wood or coal for heat, and the temperature was about twenty-five degrees above zero. Doctors went through the wards where the wounded lay three to a bed, prodding the men with long goads. If the wounded man grunted he was kept for further treatment; if no grunt was forthcoming, he was buried.”

  When some of the French pilots went to observe the situation in Russia, Bert went with them. Apparently the morale there had deteriorated since his earlier visit.

  “In the Russian aviation things could not have been worse. I found that the men would fly only when they felt like it. They almost never passed over behind the German lines. The average Russian aviator aims to fly six hours per month. His pay is two hundred rubles and after his six hours he takes a good long rest.

  “When I started in to really do some flying they thought I was a patriot and a fool. In fact, they didn’t make any bones about telling me so. They let the German machines do as they pleased.

  “Socially the Russian aviator is a good fellow. They can all play a good game of poker and put away a lot of drinks . . . But as fighters they are nil. No patriotism, no enthusiasm, and not too much courage. About all they did in the aviation corps was drink champagne, play poker and ‘66,’ a German game. They are never in a hurry and don’t worry. The Russian has no idea of what war in the air means. They are well equipped, having all of the latest types of fighting machines. But the Russians are not air fighters.” He added, apparently of all Russians, “They are not patriotic and care nothing for Russia.”

  Nonetheless, Bert thought that he might be able to instill some of the “pep” that had been talked about at French Army Headquarters in Paris by finding and fighting a German plane. The opportunity soon came.

  “I saw him come over our line at about 1,500 feet altitude and I went after him. I suppose that he thought I was a Russian as he did not pay any attention to me. I proceeded to shoot him down. When I returned I was very much surprised to find that my comrades did not approve of what I had done. They said: ‘We have been here a long time and the Germans have never bothered us. Now they will get mad and come and drop bombs on us and may kill some of us.’
”

  Bert Hall was in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), then the capital of Russia, when the Revolution came. He claimed that the tsar himself awarded him the Cross of St. George, and “only four days later he lost his job.” He described the chaos that ensued:

  “You can imagine what went on in a city of 3,000,000, during a time like that, with no law and order. All the convicts were liberated, but some of them went back to prison for protection. The people were taking everything they could get their hands on; most of the stores were closed. It was very difficult to get anything to eat and [due to skyrocketing inflation] rubles were like pennies. Everyone was arrested about twice daily.”

  Bert decided that it was time to get back to Paris. He first tried to leave via neutral Sweden, but was turned back at Tornio, in Finland. He returned to Petrograd, where various revolutionary factions were killing each other in the streets, and decided to take the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia to Vladivostok, then go on across the Pacific to the United States before returning to France. According to Hall, before he left he had three meetings with the revolutionary figure Leon Trotsky. At the last of these Trotsky offered him ten thousand dollars and a big diamond ring for his American passport—an offer he said he refused.