National Chicle Chewing Gum card of Major Raoul Lufbery, an American Ace who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille. Credited with 18 victories, he was killed on May 19, 1918.
Maj. Raoul LufberyReverse:No. 22Maj. Raoul LufberyEarly in the Great War, Raoul Lufbery, the great American Ace, enlisted as a mechanic in the French Foreign Legion. Later he transferred to the Escadrille Lafayette. Flying and fighting to avenge the death of a friend, he was a model of coolness and courage. He was officially credited with 18 victories. On May 19, 1918, his machine fell to the ground a mass of flames. Raoul Lufbery was dead.This is a series of 48 cardsSky BirdsNational Chicle CompanyCambridge, Mass., U.S.A.Makers of Quality Chewing GumCopr. 1933
"The sole consolation of those antagonistic weeks was the young American airman, to whom I shall always be grateful for the sunny imperturbability which never seemed in the least shaken by my irritable impatience, my moods of black depression. Almost every day for a month or so he 'blew in' to the flat like a rush of wind from the wings of his own 'plane, and extravagantly insisted upon taking me to the Savoy Grill and numerous theatres—which were at least a pleasant contrast to the back of the Western Front—in the intervals of escorting Gaiety girls to less obvious but doubtless more enthralling entertainments. He also, with characteristic generosity, presented me with innumerable meat coupons, which by that time had become far more precious than all the winking diamonds in the empty luxury shops of deserted Bond Street."
Vera Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), and left the French front to care for her mother. England she found difficult, writing of 'those miserable weeks' after her return to a country 'where no one discussed anything but the price of butter and the incompetence' of domestic help. The German offensives of March and April, Michael and Georgette, immediately followed her departure from France. The United Kingdom's food shortages, not of the severity of those of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and elsewhere, worsened as British shipping began transporting American soldiers to Europe rather than food. Gaiety Girls originated in musical comedies at the Gaiety Theatre in London in the 1890s, but here the term is used more loosely.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, page 432, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
1918-05-06, 1918, May, food shortage, ration, ration card, airman, American airman, theater, theatre, US soldier, American soldier, Raoul Lufbery
