by Phil Keith
As Dickson continued to pooh-pooh the idea, Kisling rallied behind Bullard, arguing that he knew his man better than Dickson did and insisting that he could make good on becoming a pilot. Bullard pointed out to Dickson that he was in France, after all, not Mississippi. Dickson said he would wager $2000 that Bullard would not make it as an aviator. White backed Kisling and Bullard and the trio made plans to formalize the bet.
The four friends met again the next day and Bullard laid $2000 on the table (loaned to him by Kisling and White). Dickson, not wanting to face the stigma of backing down, opened his checkbook and covered the bet. The challenge was on.
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Good for his word, Commandant Ferrolino contacted a Colonel Honore Girod, then Inspector General of all French aviation schools, and secured for Bullard a slot in gunnery school and a transfer to aviation. Bullard reported to his initial flight training base at Caz-au-Lac on October 5, 1916. He was in aviation, but only as a gunner trainee, not nearly enough to win the wager. He had yet to figure out how he was going to make the leap to pilot.
Then, as if on cue, a bit of providential lightning struck: on his first full day of training, Bullard ran into an old acquaintance from the Foreign Legion, Edmond Genet. A fellow American who had also transferred from the infantry into aviation, Genet informed Bullard that there was a special squadron, called the Lafayette Escadrille, that consisted solely of American pilots—and they were being paid much more money than regular French pilots. Could this be the connection Bullard needed? With Genet5 in tow, he went to see the commanding officer of the gunnery school to request a change in status. The gunnery commander agreed to bump Bullard’s petition up the chain of command, back to Colonel Girod. In the meantime, Bullard continued his gunnery training.
On November 15, his request was approved, and he secured a set of orders to begin pilot training at the aviation school at Tours.
Corporal Bullard was viewed no differently than any other flight student, black or white. His treatment among his peers was the same as any other man, with one notable exception: his rank. The French Air Service was not inclined, for reasons of Gallic pride, to offer commissions to any of the American pilots. That would not come until later, when the Americans had demonstrated their worth in the air. Even Norman Prince, who helped start the Lafayette Escadrille and had dual citizenship, was not an officer. All the American pilots were initially made “sergeants,” with one exception. Gene Bullard, for reasons unknown, but probably related to his race, remained a corporal.
Designation as a pilot in the French Air Service had no hard-and-fast curriculum and really didn’t have a specified timeframe in those very early days. There were a succession of hoops to jump through and a trainee would get his aviator’s badge only when the instructors and the commanding officer of the training squadron believed the man was ready, or at least a greater threat to the Huns than to his fellow cadets.
Bullard passed through his flight training in an average amount of time; that is, the six months between late November 1916 and May 1917. He began with the aptly named “Penguin.” This French flight-training craft, like its namesake, could not fly. It was essentially an aircraft engine attached to the frame of a biplane without wings. The student used this contraption to practice taxiing and ground maneuvers. When he had demonstrated he could putter around the aerodrome successfully, without crashing into something or flipping the Penguin over (which happened when too much torque was applied to the engine), he would then graduate to training in an aircraft with actual wings.
The French used both an early Bleriot model and the Caudron G-3 biplane for advanced flight training. Both of these aircraft were contraptions made from the proverbial “baling wire, fabric, glue, and sturdy sticks.” The engines were loud, cranky, and often spit oil and thick black smoke over their student pilots.
The legendary aviation pioneer and aerial ace Rear Admiral Edwin “Ted” Parsons, who trained at Tours about the same time as Eugene Bullard, said this about his days in flight training: “After the Bleriot and the Caudron G-3, nothing with wings could ever cause any misgivings in my heart. When a buzzard [student pilot] tamed these two ships, if he was still alive and not a nervous wreck, he could fly anything.”6
Bullard successfully wrestled with these wretched flying machines during the unusually frigid winter of 1916-17. Since all of the training planes at that time were single-seat aircraft, instructors could not accompany their charges on their aerial practices. First flights, therefore, were strictly limited to straight-and-level forays down the runway and three feet off the ground. Once these timid attempts were mastered, the instructors added more and more skills until the rookie pilots could actually make turns in the air, fly as high as two thousand feet, find other aerodromes as far as seventy miles from home, and return safely. After mastering these advanced skills, gunnery practice was added to the regimen.
Sometimes student pilots were lucky enough to come under the personal tutelage of veteran combat pilots. Bullard was extremely fortunate to attract the attention of Jean Navarre, one of France’s first air aces. It was Navarre who actually sought out Bullard, having seen him box in a bout in Montmartre before the war. The two soon became pals and Navarre took Bullard all around the Paris “beau monde” scene. Navarre was grounded, recuperating from wounds to the head and body suffered in a bad aerial scrap in June 1916, over Verdun. He was happy to “adopt” Bullard and to teach him all the tricks he knew.7
As the terrible winter finally broke into spring, Bullard passed his final flight tests and was duly made Pilot Number 6950 in the French Air Service on May 5, 1917. His designation came with a six-day pass, and Bullard could not wait to get to Paris. Sporting a new sky blue French pilot’s tunic, gold aviator’s wings affixed to the collar, he strolled into Henri’s Bar.
The rendezvous was a setup arranged by his friends Kisling and White. The two pals had invited Jeff Dickson to join them for drinks, but Dickson had no idea that Bullard would be attending, thinking he was still off training somewhere. When the newly minted airman strolled in, Dickson nearly fell on the floor. After recovering his senses he realized his wallet was about to be $2,000 lighter. Dickson was stunned, but still a good sport and a straight shooter: he paid off immediately and the foursome went out for a prolonged—and expensive—night on the town. Bullard, who had never had this much money at one time in his life, was proud to pick up the tab.
Word concerning Eugene Bullard’s unique accomplishment got around Paris quickly. He was interviewed by his old Lyon acquaintance, Will Irwin, as well as reporters for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Articles about the “First Black Fighter Pilot” popped up all over Paris...but news of this singular accomplishment was totally ignored back in America.
In becoming a pursuit (fighter) pilot in May 1917, there is absolutely no doubt that Eugene Bullard was the first American to be so designated, but he was not the only black military pilot in WWI. Perhaps the first black military pilot, although not a fighter pilot, was Ottoman Empire naval lieutenant Ahmet Ali Celikten (1883-1969). Celikten’s father was a Turk and his mother a Nigerian. He received his flight training and completed it in November 1916, six months before Bullard; but, his flying in the war, for the Central Powers no less, was restricted to naval missions and flight observation. After WWI, Celikten stayed in the (new) Turkish Navy, retiring as a captain in 1949.
William Robinson Clarke, from Kingston, Jamaica (1895-1981) served as a mechanic in the Royal Flying Corps starting in 1915. In 1916, still rated as a sergeant, he started pilot training and received his pilot’s badge on April 26, 1917. He was assigned to a reconnaissance squadron and flew missions over the Western Front until he was shot down and seriously wounded on July 28, 1917. After his convalescence he was returned to duty as a mechanic and never flew again.
Pierre Rejon (1895-1920) from Martinique became France’s first black military pilot in December 1917, seven mon
ths after Bullard’s designation. An exceptional student, he was studying engineering in Paris when the war broke out. Like Bullard, when he first volunteered, he was sent to the infantry, in his case the 33rd Regiment. In 1915 he was promoted to sous-lieutenant, and then, in 1917, posted to aviation training at his own request. Between his rating as a fighter pilot and the end of the war, Rejon was shot down three times but paid back the Germans plus one, shooting down four (and damaging eleven others). At the end of the war he was awarded both the French and Belgian Crosses. He left the Air Service immediately after the war and unfortunately died in an aircraft accident in French Guyana shortly thereafter.
Domenico Mondelli (Wolde Selassie) (1886-1974) was born in Eritrea and flew for Italy in WWI. He was granted his pilot’s license on February 20, 1914, and began immediately flying reconnaissance planes in the 7th Recon Squadron, Royal Italian Army. A year later, he was in command of the 7th Bombing Squadron but finished the war as a lieutenant colonel and commander of the 242 Infantry. His service was long and distinguished, retiring as a three-star general in 1968.
Along with Bullard, these were the remarkable first black men to become combat pilots, and all flew in WWI, twenty years before the equally remarkable “Red Tails,” the famed Tuskegee Airmen, of WWII.
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1 The North African regiments left behind in Algeria and Morocco consisted mostly of Austrians and Germans; therefore, a loyalty risk. The French high command thought it prudent to leave them in place.
2 A French Air Force rank equal to the US Army’s rank of major.
3 When America finally entered the war, Dickson, still in Paris, volunteered for the Signal Corps. He served as a sergeant in a photo section for the balance of the conflict. After the war, he remained in Paris, promoting fights. He did very well, eventually buying the Palais des Sports in Paris. He nurtured many excellent fighters including the heavyweight champion Primo Carnera. He also promoted hockey, bull fighting, wrestling, bike races, and figure skating. He was reportedly once romantically involved with the skating superstar Sonja Henie. When World War II broke out, he volunteered for the Army Air Corps and was commissioned as a captain in intelligence. The bomber crew he was flying with on July 14, 1943, was shot down near Paris and Capt. Dickson perished in the crash.
4 White, like Jeff Dickson, would sign on with the American Army as it landed in France. He served in an infantry unit, with distinction, and was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. After the war his fame as a muralist soared, and although he worked mostly in France, he was commissioned to produce murals for the state capitols of Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Utah. He became a commander of the Légion d’Honneur and an officer of the Académie Française.
5 Genet was actually in the US Navy in 1915, and when he shipped out to France that year, to volunteer for the French, he technically became a “deserter” from the navy. He nonetheless finished his pilot training and when America declared war, he volunteered to transfer to the American Air Service, which he did, joining the American Escadrille (soon redesignated the Lafayette Escadrille) in April 1917. He was shot down and killed by antiaircraft fire on April 17, just days after his transfer. Although other Americans had already died in action, Genet was officially the first American KIA after the US declared war. His status vis-à-vis the US Navy and the US Air Service was simply ignored and he was buried with honor.
6 Edwin C. Parsons, I Flew With the Lafayette Escadrille (New York: Arno Press, New York, 1972), 67.
7 Navarre would become one of France’s leading aces of the war, with twelve confirmed victories and fifteen unconfirmed kills. He was aggressive but also reportedly reckless and undisciplined. He died at age twenty-three, in 1919, while practicing a flight intended to fly through the Arc de Triomphe.
ACT III
The Pilot
7
CAPTAINS OF THE SKIES
On April 6, 1917, a month before Eugene Bullard received his wings, America had finally plunged full force into World War I. Once the United States was in it, tens of thousands of African Americans would serve. Several hundred would, for the first time, receive officer’s commissions, but none would serve in nonsegregated units and not a single black officer was accepted for flight training nor were any blacks, of any rank, included in the ranks of any American flight unit.
The only press Bullard received in his home country during the war was a very brief piece in The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP: “Eugene Bullard of Columbus, Georgia, twenty-two years of age, volunteered in the French Foreign Legion in 1914. He was twice wounded at Verdun and has the Croix de Guerre, a much coveted decoration for bravery. After six months in the hospital he was enlisted in the Aviation-Corps.”1
News, generally, of Americans in France was strictly controlled for security reasons, but that aside, the very mention of a black man of extremely limited education mastering the skills necessary to be designated a combat pilot, even under a foreign flag, was just too much for the American Expeditionary Force or the War Department to support. Serious arguments were still being waged in the press in the United States about whether Negroes even had the requisite intellectual skills to master the art of flying, such was the tenor of the times.
All this was meaningless to Bullard, however, as he had more immediate concerns. First among them was completing the advanced flight training necessary to be sent to a front-line squadron, and second was surviving the subsequent aerial combat if and when he was assigned.
After his exuberant week in Paris, Bullard was sent to a succession of “finishing schools” for aviation. At Avord, he learned acrobatic flying, which he found difficult but nonetheless great fun. He also made more friends and was even given some leadership responsibility, though he was still a corporal. Among the pilots, rank didn’t mean very much. It was skill in the air that counted—and how many “kills” you obtained. Most of the pilots, as already noted, were mere sergeants anyway. Commissioning pilots would only happen for Americans when they began forming their own squadrons within the actual US Army Air Corps later in 1917. The highest rank Bullard would ever attain during his lifetime would be sergeant, and that would not come until another war.
At Avord, he became good friends and bunk mates with James Norman Hall, future co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty, but at that time Hall was a former correspondent for Atlantic Monthly. He described barracks life among the young pilots:
There is a fine crew in this school, men from all colleges and men who don’t know the name of a college. For instance, there are about a half dozen from Harvard, as many from Yale, some from Dartmouth, a few from Amherst, Williams, etc. We have a couple of ex-All-Americans, a Vanderbilt cup racing driver, men sticky with money in the same barracks with others who worked their way over on ships. This democracy is a fine thing in the army and makes better men of all hands. For instance, the corporal of our room is an American, as black as the ace of spades [Bullard], but a mighty white fellow at that. The next two bunks to his are occupied by Princeton men of old Southern families. They talk more like a darky than he does and are best of friends with him. This black brother has been in the Foreign Legion, wounded four times, covered with medals for his bravery in the trenches, and now uses his experiences and knowledge of French for the benefit of our room—Result: the inspecting lieutenant said we had the best looking room in the barrack.2
The last stage of advanced flight training was held at Plessis Belleville Field, near Paris, and that’s where Bullard was transferred in late July. At that base he would master the finer points of formation flying and responding to the various hand commands and airplane formation signals required for multiaircraft maneuvers. (There were still no radios for transmitting communications—they would not come for another decade.)
By early August, Bullard believed that he was finally ready, in every respect, for assignment to a front-line squadron. He was not t
he finest of the pilots, and he knew that, especially when he compared himself to the most acclaimed, like his friend Navarre; but he also knew he was better than others. A number of the novice aviators kept getting lost or had more than their fair share of mishaps or even crashes—but not Bullard.
However, when those with lesser records of accomplishment or less time in training began bypassing him and moving up to the front, he began to get suspicious. Was there someone with a negative view of him—someone who was holding him back, behind the scenes? Indeed there was, and his name was Dr. Edmund Gros, a figure of great importance in aviation in the early days of the war, and an American who had powerful connections and an abiding prejudice against blacks.
Dr. Gros, born and raised in the Bay Area of California, received his initial medical education at Cooper Medical College in San Francisco followed by advanced instruction at the École de Médicine in Paris. Electing to stay in France, he helped to establish the American Hospital in Paris. Dr. Gros did contribute to the war effort in several positive ways. First, he was instrumental in starting an ambulance corps, populated mostly by Americans, including, at one juncture, Ernest Hemingway. Secondly, he took a leading role in getting young American men into the air as pilots and observers for both the French and the American armed services. He also collected private contributions from wealthy Americans living in Paris to be paid out monthly, as supplemental income, to the American pilots flying for the Lafayette Flying Corps and the Lafayette Escadrille. This would include, begrudgingly, a brand-new American pilot who happened to be black.
When the Americans finally committed to the war in April 1917, Gros was commissioned a major in the US Army, and later promoted to lieutenant colonel. During all this time he continued his valuable work at the American Hospital. His prejudice, however, which was well-known, placed a permanent asterisk on his record. Sad to say, in this regard, he was no different in attitude than the US War Department, the US Army, or the American Air Service.