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The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille: Told by its Commander, by Georges Thenault
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In April 1916, the creation of the American escadrille was decided.
During the next twenty-one months this aviation squadron was to be seen over every important battlefield, with its men fighting and dying for France.
George Thenault’s fascinating history of the Lafayette Escadrille covers from its very inception to the end of the war.
Many Americans living in France at the outbreak of war in 1914 wanted to fight for the country that they saw as the founder of Liberty, and some of those men were pilots.
But with the French army only having 80 planes the Americans were initially rejected from joining the air force and instead had to sign up with the Foreign Legion.
It was only after months of persuasion that some of these intrepid Americans were given control of France’s planes and later, under Thenault’s command, they developed their own squadron.
They were immediately thrown into the thick of the fighting above the pockmarked land of the Western Front.
Thenault provides vivid descriptions of his brave pilots which included Norman Prince, the Rockwell brothers and the ace Raoul Lufbery.
Some of these pilots were rather eccentric, for example William Thaw who when in Paris bought two lions, named Whiskey and Soda, which became the escadrille’s mascots.
Flying their Nieuports, they were fighting at the very beginning of military aviation and were instrumental in pioneering new battle techniques.
Their life expectancy was not long and many who had joined at the inception of the escadrille did not make it through until the end of the war.
Thenault’s extremely personal account covers all aspects of this squadron in World War One, from their activities on the ground to their dogfights in the air. It is a truly remarkable read.
Eventually with the United States joining the war the Lafayette Escadrille was disbanded and a number of its members were inducted into the U.S. Air Service as members of 103 Aero Squadron.
George Thenault’s The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille was published in 1921. His book gained widespread American public recognition. In May 1922, he accepted an assignment that began an eleven year diplomatic service in the Embassy of France in Washington, D.C.. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1933 following successful completion of duties as Military Attache for Aeronautics at the French Embassy in Washington DC, he returned to France and continued his military services with the French Air Army. He died in 1948.
- Sales Rank: #12078 in eBooks
- Published on: 2016-08-07
- Released on: 2016-08-07
- Format: Kindle eBook
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A little masterpiece
By Paul A. Gerard
I'd actually love to have this in the French it was so very obviously originally written in - it is more a short poetical memoir than a "history" in any real sense of the word; I can often sense a rather lovely French original behind the often poor English translation (of which more below). Georges Thenault has none of the war-weary cynicism that became fashionable in the twenties and thirties, for him the war - and the sacrifice of liberty, health, sanity, and life itself in the defence of a beloved homeland is a pure and beautiful thing. While we are reading him we too can believe, even those of us older and wiser in the ways of the world.
There is really very little serious historical information - and almost no technical information whatsoever. but then this is not what the book is about. For Therault, the squadron is his boys, and this story is intensely one of the young American volunteers, seen through rose coloured eyes by someone more inclined to love than to judge.
The Lafayette Escadrille was not an outstandingly successful unit in terms of aerial victories, in fact it was mainly employed in close escort of the French bombers, involving little opportunity for easy "kills" and, from the beginning, distressingly high casualties. Few punches are pulled, for all Therault's indulgent excuses - the Americans of the Escadrille come across as irresponsible and untruthful, and in other ways very badly disciplined: as well as brave but all too often overconfident and foolhardy. For Thenault all this is excusable, even noble, but not every reader will necessarily feel so indulgent. With a few notable exceptions, who survived long enough to become the aces of the squadron, they were also very poor fliers.
Thenault especially romanticises their motives; for him these young "Anglos" are all moved by a tender love for La Belle France mirroring his own. The reader might suspect that for the most part these boys were adventure seekers rather than "patriots" for a foreign land most of them probably knew little about: their commander betrays not a hint that anything like this was involved.
There are many understated but very sad passages of regret for the death, maiming or capture of most of Thenault's favourites - but probably the most heart-rending passage of all concerns the fate of the squadron's famous lion cub mascots. When young Whiskey and Soda got too big they had to go to the zoo, of course - but both animals soon died, partly because of the trauma of becoming caged (and of course great cats were still very cruelly caged in those days), and losing the companionship of their human owners - but mainly because both were suffering from chronic lung conditions brought on by their sharing with their human friends the unhealthy conditions of life in tin huts during the terrible French winter of 1916/17.
My only "negative" comments may be pretty irrelevant for many readers. Firstly, the translation, as hinted above, IS poor. It is, I suppose just possible, although I do not believe it, that the work we have represents Therault's own English. I am quite sure, as I have said, that it is unmistakeably a translation of his French. Charitably, the translator wants to preserve the "feeling" of the original - if so then this attempt fails - the general feeling of the prose (as English) is that of a second rate 19th century version of a Jules Verne novel - the use of more idiomatic English would also have rendered Thenault's French more comprehensible - there are many passages that someone with at least "high school French" will understand much more readily than someone with no knowledge of the language at all. It is a sad fact that what is gracious in french can be clumsy and obscure when translated word for word into English.
Finally - a word about the illustrations - they seem to be digitally scanned from photogravure originals. The results are pretty uniformly dire, although some are even worse than the others. It is a great shame that more effort could not have been made to get better copies, as the photographs themselves are well chosen, and to a great extent unique (in the sense that few of them have ever been published elsewhere).
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
I am constantly amazed that Hollywood goes to so much trouble to produce ...
By J Masden
I am constantly amazed that Hollywood goes to so much trouble to produce so much crap for TV and movies when they could easily just tell true stories about real characters like the men of the Lafayette Escadrille. These were young men, full of life, idealistic, most of them wealthy and highly educated, who could have lived easy lives doing whatever they pleased, wherever they pleased. Instead, they volunteered to fight for their ideals. They didn't even wait for their own country to join that fight.
Fighting in history's bloodiest conflict did not crush their youthful spirit. They partied in Paris. They drank with pilots from the Royal Navy. They had not one but 2 pet lions (named "Whiskey" and "Soda")! They painted livestock like combat planes and staged mock battles. They spoke only French in the morning and only English in the evening, under penalty of a 10 cent fine for each word in the wrong language.
These were great men who should always be remembered for their idealism and their antics.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
An American escadrille in the Great War before America went to war
By lise pommois c/o Arthur Weldon
An excellent little book written by the CO of the Lafayette escadrille. Captain Thénault was obviously an excellent witness. Besides, he knew almost intimately the men he was writing about. The book is an excellent introduction to the history of a famous squadron constituted of 38 intrepid American volunteers who wanted to fight for democracy as well as know the thrills of flying in WWI over some of the most famous battlefields of France. After reading Georges Thenault's book, the reader will want to read some of the biographies of those famous pilots in order to understand their motivations.
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