This is not to say that these 38 American volunteer pilots all liked one another or that they always got along together. They often did not. Regardless of their basic motivations, most of them were also driven, at least to some extent, by an ambitious desire for fame and glory. This sometimes brought the more tightly strung of these testosterone-laden alpha males into opposition with one another. As with almost any group, there were personality conflicts and opposing cliques—and not surprisingly, their widely disparate social statuses often put them at further odds with one another. These clashes, along with the petty jealousies and bruised egos, come through loud and clear in letters these men wrote at the time.
Similarly, the assumption should not be made that all of the American pilots in the Lafayette Escadrille were equally courageous and effective in combat. They were not. As a unit, this squadron was more or less average, at least in terms of the measure generally used to judge a fighter squadron: destroying enemy aircraft. Establishing official confirmation for aerial victories in World War I was, at best, an inexact science, and official documents and previously published accounts are often in conflict; however, research conducted by respected World War I aviation historians Dennis Connell and Frank W. Bailey indicates that the 38 Americans who flew for the Lafayette Escadrille officially downed a total of only 33 enemy aircraft over its 22-month period of existence. Sixteen of these belonged to one pilot, the escadrille’s shining star and highly regarded ace, Raoul Lufbery. No other member downed more than four enemy aircraft while flying with the squadron (although some later scored additional victories with other squadrons and even became aces), and a whopping 25 of them—well over half of the squadron’s roster—scored no victories at all.
None of this should be construed as a criticism of the men of the Lafayette Escadrille. On the contrary, all of the above was more or less typical of an “average” World War I flying squadron. It was not unusual for squadron members to sometimes feud with one another. Nor was it unusual for a fighter pilot to down no enemy airplanes: in fact, most pilots in the First World War failed to score a single confirmed victory. Shooting down enemy aircraft was a far more dangerous, gut-wrenchingly terrifying, and technically difficult thing to do than most people today can adequately appreciate. As squadron member James McConnell—who failed to score a single victory during his 10 months of active service—put it, “but God in Boston it’s a hard job.” It took equal measures of skill, courage, and luck to find an enemy airplane, maneuver into a favorable position, and then shoot accurately enough to bring it down—all while the highly skilled opposing enemy airman was doing his best to accomplish precisely the same thing. Most average pilots were simply lacking in at least one of these three essential factors, so only a handful of World War I fighter pilots—like Lufbery—achieved any degree of success.
Still, there was much more to successfully flying in World War I than simply shooting down enemy airplanes. The majority of the men who flew for the Lafayette Escadrille rose to the occasion, conquered their fears, and dutifully flew their daily patrols. In so doing, they earned the respect of their peers as combat airmen—even in the absence of any recorded kills. Those remaining few squadron members who, on the other hand, established practically no record at all and flew only a few missions were silently condemned by their fellow airmen as slackers, incompetents, or something worse.
All things considered, the Lafayette Escadrille, with its many metaphorical ups and downs, was a successful and effective—if not outstanding—fighter squadron. Its historical significance comes, instead, from the American volunteer pilots that manned it and the ideals they represented.
Just as the men of the Lafayette Escadrille differed from one another during the war years, not all fared equally well after leaving the squadron. A quarter of the 38 men who served with the squadron either wrote or were the subject of books about their experiences. One became an internationally acclaimed author, and a few went on to successful military or business careers. However, the majority lived their post-Lafayette lives in relative obscurity. Two died in military aircraft accidents and another in a freak non-flying accident, soon after leaving the squadron. One later died of probable suicide and two were convicted of crimes that earned them prison time. Only a relative few succeeded in living to a ripe old age. Whether their collective problems were due to the extreme physical and mental stresses they suffered during the war—or to the hard-driving, heavy-drinking, chain-smoking lifestyle so typical of such men of that era—is anyone’s guess. However, the average lifespan of the 27 American pilots who survived the war was only about 60 years, and barely half of them lived past that age.
Such are the plain facts that define the men of the Lafayette Escadrille. They were a heterogeneous group of young adventurers—some of them more courageous, dedicated, and skilled than others—who found themselves together in the same place at a unique and deadly crossroads in history. Worthy or not, they all played a role: each belonged to history’s first predominantly American fighter squadron and was therefore subject to the rewards that came with it, along with the hardships. Their renown has faded but little from the days when they streaked across the skies above war-torn France, flying open-cockpit biplanes bearing the image of an American Indian warrior. They and the squadron to which they belonged will forever live in history.
PROLOGUE
BLOOD IN THE SOIL
“… that rare privilege of dying well.”
It was a sunny October day when I stood in an Alsatian cornfield, looking down on a tiny piece of earth that had once been hallowed by American blood. It had been a long journey getting to this place: a tiring overnight flight to Paris; a gauntlet of passport and customs checkpoints; and then, the complicated maze of roads and heavy morning traffic surrounding Paris, through which I had to navigate in my little gazole-powered rental car. Eventually, I broke free and began speeding my way southeastward, across the picturesque countryside of rural France.
A couple of hours later, as I wound my way through the beautiful Vosges Mountains of Eastern France, I rolled into the commune of Roderen. The quaint little village sits in the Haut-Rhin department of Alsace, near where France, Germany, and Switzerland converge. As I passed through the town and into the countryside, the narrow paved road gradually deteriorated to a dirt cow path, where I was finally obliged to park the car. From there, I continued on foot—loaded down with camera equipment and a folder full of documentation—into the wilderness, such as it exists in modern France.
I proceeded across the fields and pastures, carefully stepping through electrical livestock fences, over cow paddies, and well clear of a sinister-looking mob of milk cows. Finally, after consulting the documents I carried with me—a nearly century-old, hand-drawn map copied from a dusty archival collection, a Google Earth aerial view printout, and a handful of World War I-era photo reprints—I knew I had arrived at my destination. Even without the maps and photos, I could feel it. Here, 98 years ago, on the ground in front of me, a courageous 24-year-old American fighter pilot had crashed to his death. His life ended at this lonely spot after he had traveled all the way from his home in North Carolina, to fight for the cause of France in the Great War. His name was Kiffin Yates Rockwell.
An image of the long-since-removed wreckage of his Nieuport 17 open-cockpit biplane, which dived vertically into the earth on September 23, 1916, was recorded in an old photograph I carried with me. The impact had been so great that no part of the crumpled airplane protruded more than a few inches above the ground. The engine had embedded several feet into the earth and the pilot’s lifeless remains—still present when the photograph was taken—lay crushed beside the wreckage. The state of his broken body was immaterial, however, as his spirit had exited it long before it hit the ground: high in the sky above this place, a German airman had sent a machine gun slug through young Rockwell’s chest, killing him instantly.
On the day I was there, the unmarked crash site was hidden in a field of corn. Pushing my way through a half
-dozen rows to the point of impact, I made a curious discovery. There, where I had determined that Rockwell and his plane had plunged into the earth, was a mysteriously odd clearing in the midst of a forest of ten-foot-high cornstalks. Why did nothing grow there, of all places? There were no other similar clearings in sight. Was it simply a quirk of nature, or did a patriotic farmer—aware of the tragic event that had occurred there—avoid planting seeds into such hallowed ground? Or was the tiny area devoid of growth for another reason? Could it be that the mixture of gasoline, oil, and blood that trickled from the crash into the ground that day poisoned the earth such that nothing would ever grow there again? It is a mystery that still intrigues me.
* * *
Thus began my pilgrimage across France, treading in the footsteps of the men who flew, fought, and died while serving with the legendary Franco-American volunteer aviation squadron known as the Lafayette Escadrille. There were more long-hidden secrets for me to discover in the days to come.
Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise,
Nor to be mentioned in another breath
Than their blue-coated comrades, whose great days
It was their pride to share—aye, share even to the death!
Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks
(Seeing that they came for honor, not for gain),
Who opening to them your glorious ranks
Gave them that grand occasion to excel—
That chance to live the life most free from stain
And that rare privilege of dying well.*
* Verse three of Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France, from Poems by Alan Seeger (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916). Seeger was another of those American volunteers who, like Kiffin Rockwell, had the “rare privilege of dying well.” He was killed on July 4, 1916, fighting on the Western Front with the French Foreign Legion. He was the uncle of the late American folk singer, Pete Seeger.
CHAPTER 1
AN ALL-AMERICAN IDEA TAKES SHAPE
“I do not feel that I am fighting for France alone, but for the cause of all humanity, the greatest of all causes… I pay my debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau.”
On August 7, 1914, two brothers from North Carolina boarded the SS St. Paul in New York, bound for Europe. Neither of the two, aged 21 and 25, had ever before left the shores of North America nor was either of them a professional soldier. Yet, they were on their way to France to fight in a war that was just beginning, and one in which they had no obligation to fight. Within three weeks they were wearing the uniform of the 2nd Regiment of the Légion étrangère française, as soldiers in the French Foreign Legion.
They were not alone. Dozens of other Americans—some already living or visiting in France and others making their way across the Atlantic in various ways—had the same idea. Rich and poor, young and old, educated and illiterate, they congregated in Paris, and on August 25, 1914, the highly diverse group of enthusiastic American volunteers marched as a unit through its streets and boulevards. Waving an American flag past throngs of cheering Parisians and completely caught up in the moment, they were on their way to fight another country’s war. For all of them, it was a life-changing decision—and for nearly half, including one of the young brothers from North Carolina, a life-ending one.
A World War Begins
History’s first “world war”—remembered now as simply the Great War or World War I—began in August 1914. It was triggered by the June 28, 1914, assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo. This murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip precipitated a series of political ultimatums, declarations, and behind-the-scenes maneuvering throughout the highly politically charged continent. By the end of the first week in August, most of Europe was at war.
The complex political situation that led to this global conflict is well beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say, however, that the First World War was a cataclysmal event involving the mobilization of at least 70 million men and women and causing the deaths of some 18 million people. This conflagration, unlike anything ever seen before, radically altered the political and social makeup of the entire world, set the stage for yet another world war, and reconfigured the future of all humanity.
The First World War started as a strictly European conflict, involving the Central Powers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, pitted against the Triple Entente: France, Britain, and the Russian Empire. In time, however, numerous other countries from Europe and elsewhere around the world were drawn into it. It began as a war of mobility but soon became an entrenched stalemate. The primary combat zone, known as the “Western Front,” became a mostly static line of trenches that extended southeastward from the North Sea across Belgium and France, all the way to the border of neutral Switzerland.
Another country, besides Switzerland, dedicated to maintaining its neutrality, as the great nations of Europe began systematically destroying one other, was the United States of America. President Woodrow Wilson was intent on keeping it that way. A few days after hostilities began, he expressed a “solemn word of warning” to the American people. In an August 19, 1914, address to Congress, he cautioned that “the United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men’s souls.” He further implored Americans to remain “impartial in thought as well as action” and to “put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.”
A Call to Arms
Wilson’s policy of neutrality was not universally accepted. A few Americans decided, for reasons of their own, to ignore their president’s warning and take sides in the war. A case in point was one of the young North Carolinian brothers, Paul A. Rockwell, who was working as a newspaper reporter in Atlanta, Georgia. On August 3, 1914—two days before the war’s first major battle, the German assault on Liège, he wrote a letter to the French Consul in New Orleans, stating:
I desire to offer my services to the French government in case of actual warfare between France and Germany…. I am twenty-five years old, of French descent, and have had military training at the Virginia Military Institute. I am very anxious to see military service, and had rather fight under the French flag than any other, as I greatly admire your nation.
In truth, Rockwell’s French heritage was distant, at best, and he never attended VMI; nonetheless, he and his younger brother, Kiffin, who had written a similar letter—and who actually had briefly attended VMI, did not bother to wait for a reply. Within four days, they were on their way to Europe and, by the end of the month, marching with the French Foreign Legion—earning the exorbitant equivalent of one penny per day. One of the two would never return to North Carolina but instead remain eternally buried in the French soil he had been so eager to defend.
North Carolinians Kiffin Rockwell (sitting) and his brother Paul were among the first to volunteer to fight for France in 1914. Both were wounded while serving with the Foreign Legion. Paul was invalided out, while Kiffin escaped the ground war by transferring into aviation. Here, they are pictured during Kiffin’s convalescence leave in Paris, July 1915. (Washington and Lee University Archives)
The Rockwell brothers were just two of hundreds of Americans who had similar ideas. It was not just that they wanted to fight for a cause in which they believed: they wanted to be where the action was, to be a part of history in the making. These were men who lived large and who would stop at nothing in their quest for adventure. Most had grown up listening to their grandfathers and other veterans of the US Civil War tell of the glorious battles in which they had participated, and of how they had fought with honor and gallantry. Now, these members of this younger generation wanted their own war, so they could experience these things for themselves.
Not all of these men were partial to France. They flocked to all the warring countries, vol
unteering to serve the nation of their heritage or with which their family had some ties—be it France, England, or even Germany. Others chose to join the cause they felt was most just. Since France, a traditional American ally going all the way back to the Revolutionary War, was about to take the brunt of the Teutonic onslaught, many fair-minded young Americans enthusiastically took up her cause. Kiffin Rockwell explained his own decision to volunteer to serve France by stating simply, “I pay my debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau,” in reference to the two French nobleman who had come to the aid of the United States during its darkest days of the Revolutionary War. Ted Parsons, another of these young Americans who would eventually become a member of the Lafayette Escadrille, was somewhat less high-minded in his assessment of these men’s motivations. He wrote in his classic and highly entertaining 1937 book The Great Adventure that “some sought adventure, others revenge, while a pitiful few actually sacrificed themselves in the spirit of purest idealism.” Another volunteer, an ex-boxer named Eugene Bullard, enlisted in the Legion for reasons that were not nearly as clear, stating that, “it must have been more curiosity than intelligence.” Bullard eventually wangled his way into the French Air Service and, though he never served with the Lafayette Escadrille, went on to become history’s first African-American combat pilot.
Americans Serving in France
There were serious legal implications for Americans who volunteered to fight in the army of a foreign nation. The most important of these was the potential loss of citizenship. A group of these men, already in Paris, sought out US Ambassador Myron T. Herrick to get his opinion on this matter. Herrick dutifully explained the illegality of neutral Americans serving in the French Army, but then he slammed his fist down on the table and said, “That is the law boys; but if I was young and in your shoes, by God I know mighty well what I’d do!” With a “hurrah!” the young Americans ran out of his office and signed up for the Foreign Legion. At least in this branch, they were not required to swear an oath of allegiance to France, thus decreasing their likelihood of having their citizenship revoked. This highly diverse mercenary branch of the French army, made up almost exclusively of foreign nationals, was famed for its fierceness in battle and its esprit de corps, but it was also infamous as a refuge for criminals, troublemakers, and other outcasts. Now, it would add to its ranks a much different classification of fighter: the curious and idealistic young American.
The Lafayette Escadrille: A Photo History of the First American Fighter Squadron Page 2