Dust jacket of I Flew With the Lafayette Escadrille by Edwin Parsons.
I Flew with the Lafayette Escadrille
"On April 20, 1916, the American Escadrille had its actual formation as a unit at the flying field of Luxeuil-les-Bains in the Vosges Mountains. It was a vision come true after nearly a year and a half of unremitting toil, delays, discouragements, disappointments and actual opposition. There were seven pilots who first got their orders and went out to form the original squadron, they were [Billy] Thaw, Bert Hall, [Elliot] Cowdin, Norman Prince, Kiffen Rockwell, [Victor] Chapman and [Jim] McConnell, of whom only Hall is still alive."
The American or later and more famously Lafayette Escadrille was manned by American airmen under French officers. Our quotation if from Edwin Parsons' history of the squadron, first published in 1937. The lives of airmen in World War I were short, often measured in weeks and months.
I Flew with the Lafayette Escadrille by Edwin C. Parsons, page 68, copyright © 1963 by Edwin C. Parsons, publisher: E. C. Seale & Company, Inc., publication date: 1963
1916-04-20, 1916, April, American Escadrille, Lafayette Escadrille, Escadrille Américaine
