Like all worth-while institutions, the American Escadrille, of which
I have the honour of being a member, was of gradual growth. When the
war began, it is doubtful whether anybody anywhere envisaged the
possibility of an American entering the French aviation service. Yet,
by the fall of 1915, scarcely more than a year later, there were six
Americans serving as full-fledged pilots, and now, in the summer of
1916, the list numbers fifteen or more, with twice that number training
for their pilot's license in the military aviation schools.
The pioneer of them all was William Thaw, of Pittsburg, who is to-day
the only American holding a commission in the French flying corps.
Lieutenant Thaw, a flyer of considerable reputation in America before
the war, had enlisted in the Foreign Legion in August, 1914. With
considerable difficulty he had himself transferred, in the early part
of 1915, into aviation, and the autumn of that year found him piloting
a Caudron biplane, and doing excellent observation work. At the same
time, Sergeants Norman Prince, of Boston, and Elliot Cowdin, of New
York--who were the first to enter the aviation service coming directly
from the United States--were at the front on Voisin planes with a
cannon mounted in the bow.
Sergeant Bert Hall, who signs from the Lone Star State and had got
himself shifted from the Foreign Legion to aviation soon after
Thaw, was flying a Nieuport fighting machine, and, a little later,
instructing less-advanced students of the air in the Avord Training
School. His particular chum in the Foreign Legion, James Bach, who
also had become an aviator, had the distressing distinction soon after
he reached the front of becoming the first American to fall into the
hands of the enemy. Going to the assistance of a companion who had
broken down in landing a spy in the German lines, Bach smashed his
machine against a tree. Both he and his French comrade were captured,
and Bach was twice court-martialed by the Germans on suspicion of being
an American _franc-tireur_--the penalty for which is death! He was
acquitted but of course still languishes in a prison camp "somewhere in
Germany." The sixth of the original sextet was Adjutant Didier Masson,
who did exhibition flying in the States until--Carranza having grown
ambitious in Mexico--he turned his talents to spotting _los Federales_
for General Obregon. When the real war broke out, Masson answered the
call of his French blood and was soon flying and fighting for the land
of his ancestors.
Of the other members of the escadrille Sergeant Givas Lufbery, American
citizen and soldier, but dweller in the world at large, was among the
earliest to wear the French airman's wings. Exhibition work with a
French pilot in the Far East prepared him efficiently for the task
of patiently unloading explosives on to German military centres from
a slow-moving Voisin which was his first mount. Upon the heels of
Lufbery came two more graduates of the Foreign Legion--Kiffin Rockwell,
of Asheville, N. C., who had been wounded at Carency; Victor Chapman,
of New York, who after recovering from his wounds became an airplane
bomb-dropper and so caught the craving to become a pilot. At about this
time one Paul Pavelka, whose birthplace was Madison, Conn., and who
from the age of fifteen had sailed the seven seas, managed to slip out
of the Foreign Legion into aviation and joined the other Americans at
Pau.
There seems to be a fascination to aviation, particularly when it is
coupled with fighting. Perhaps it's because the game is new, but more
probably because as a rule nobody knows anything about it. Whatever be
the reason, adventurous young Americans were attracted by it in rapidly
increasing numbers. Many of them, of course, never got fascinated
beyond the stage of talking about joining. Among the chaps serving with
the American ambulance field sections a good many imaginations were
stirred, and a few actually did enlist, when, toward the end of the
summer of 1915, the Ministry of War, finding that the original American
pilots had made good, grew more liberal in considering applications.
Chouteau Johnson, of New York; Lawrence Rumsey, of Buffalo; Dudley
Hill, of Peekskill, N. Y.; and Clyde Balsley, of El Paso; one after
another doffed the ambulance driver's khaki for the horizon-blue of the
French flying corps. All of them had seen plenty of action, collecting
the wounded under fire, but they were all tired of being non-combatant
spectators. More or less the same feeling actuated me, I suppose. I
had come over from Carthage, N. C., in January, 1915, and worked with
an American ambulance section in the Bois-le-Prêtre. All along I had
been convinced that the United States ought to aid in the struggle
against Germany. With that conviction, it was plainly up to me to do
more than drive an ambulance. The more I saw the splendour of the fight
the French were fighting, the more I felt like an _embusqué_--what the
British call a "shirker." So I made up my mind to go into aviation.
A special channel had been created for the reception of applications
from Americans, and my own was favourably replied to within a few days.
It took four days more to pass through all the various departments,
sign one's name to a few hundred papers, and undergo the physical
examinations. Then I was sent to the aviation depot at Dijon and fitted
out with a uniform and personal equipment. The next stop was the school
at Pau, where I was to be taught to fly. My elation at arriving there
was second only to my satisfaction at being a French soldier. It was a
vast improvement, I thought, to the American Ambulance.
Talk about forming an all-American flying unit, or escadrille, was rife
while I was at Pau. What with the pilots already breveted, and the
élèves, or pupils in the training-schools, there were quite enough of
our compatriots to man the dozen airplanes in one escadrille. Every day
somebody "had it absolutely straight" that we were to become a unit at
the front, and every other day the report turned out to be untrue. But
at last, in the month of February, our dream came true. We learned that
a captain had actually been assigned to command an American escadrille
and that the Americans at the front had been recalled and placed under
his orders. Soon afterward we élèves got another delightful thrill.