FREQUENT visitors to this site know that we’ve been featuring Terry Gilkison’s Famous Sky Fighters feature from the pages of Sky Fighters. Gilkison had a number of these features in various pulp magazines—Clues, Thrilling Adventures, Texas Rangers, Thrilling Mystery, Thrilling Western, and Popular Western. Starting in the February 1936 issue of Lone Eagle, Gilkison started the war-air quiz feature Sky Writers. Each month there would be four questions based on the Aces and events of The Great War. If you’ve been following his Famous Sky Fighters, these questions should be a snap!

Here’s the quiz from the April 1936 issue of Lone Eagle.

If you get stumped or just want to check your answers, click here!

THIS week we have another story from one of the new flight of authors on the site this year—Andrew A. Caffrey. Caffrey, who was in the American Air Service in France during The Great War and worked for the air mail service upon his return, was a prolific author of aviation and adventure stories for both the pulps and slicks from the 1920’s through 1950. Here Caffrey tells the tale of a group of service men filling out the last months of their service stateside after the end of the war before being discharged. From the very first issue of Flying Aces October 1928 it’s Andrew A. Caffrey’s “A Fine Man—The Colonel!”

Corporal Fox didn’t think that one camp would hold HIM, Sg’t Beervat and Adjutant Lowpockets—and it didn’t. But the Colonel was a fine man.

• Download “A Fine Man—The Colonel” (October 1928, Flying Aces)

THIS week we present another of Paul Bissell’s covers for Flying Aces! Bissell is mainly known for doing the covers of Flying Aces from 1931 through 1934 when C.B. Mayshark took over duties. For the October 1931 cover Bissell renders Quentin Roosevelt’s last flight…

Quentin Roosevelt’s Last Flight

THE death of Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt on July 14th, 1918, while serving with the 95th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group, probably brought the war-in-the-air home to more Americans than any single instance.

The youngest son of former President Theodore Roosevelt, Quentin joined the Air Service a few days after America entered the Great War in 1917. He was commissioned and trained for his pilot’s wings at Mineola, and in July sailed for England. Later on ho went to Paris, where he was given a post at the Aviation Headquarters until October.

Quentin was not satisfied with an S.O.S. job and finally prevailed upon the Staff to let him get in more flying. He went to Issoudun and completed his course and later was put in charge of one of the training fields there. Still dissatisfied with his lot, he managed to get transferred to Orly, where he did considerable testing of planes. An order sending him to the Front came in June, 1918, and he joined the 95th Squadron.

On July 14th, less than a month after joining his squadron, Roosevelt went on patrol with his flight. Seven Nieuports were in the formation. They reached the line with considerable difficulty, due to the grouping of much cumulus cloud. They patrolled their area for nearly half an hour before any real action occurred. Then out of nowhere came an equal number of Fokker D-7s.

A dogfight followed at once. Nieuports and Fokkers milled in and out of a fantastic design of tracer. The battle lasted several minutes before visibility conditions compelled both sides to withdraw.

Eye-witnesses of the fight declared that two Fokkers went down, apparently out of action, but whether they crashed could not be told, because a layer of thin vapor cut off most of the view of the ground.

The Nieuports, having been shot about badly, decided to head off home. It was not until the ships were about to land that their pilots realized one of their machines was missing. Then as they landed, the terrible realization came that Quentin Roosevelt, the most beloved of the famous White House Gang, was missing.

For hours they made frantic inquiries—with no trace of young Roosevelt. Then two days later, a German two-seater came over and dropped a wreath. Along with it was an envelope containing a message that stated that Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt had been shot down in flames and buried with the highest military honors where he had fallen. The grave had been photographed and a print of the picture was enclosed. The letter also explained that the grave might be found at Chamery.

Immediately the word was cabled back to America. It was a distinct shock to everyone in the United States. Quentin Roosevelt’s death was followed by a wild surge of intense patriotism. Thousands of young men flocked to the recruiting offices demanding their acceptance in the Air Corps.

After the Armistice there was some talk of bringing his body back to this country, but the Roosevelt family decided against this, saying that it was better that his remains should lie in the soil of the country for which he had made the Great Sacrifice. Today his body lies with hundreds of other Americans in one of the great war cemeteries that are cared for by America.

Quentin Roosevelt’s Last Flight
Flying Aces, October 1931 by Paul J. Bissell

THIS week we have story of air intrigue by E.W. Chess. Elliot W. Chess was a prominent author in the pulps—his name frequently appearing on the covers to entice readers. His pulp career spanned from 1929 to 1940, but a majority of his output was in the early thirties. Equally adept at both westerns having grown up in El Paso, Texas and air war stories having served in the Royal Flying Corp in the First World War and the 7th Squadron of the Polish Air Force afterward when Russians tried to invade the country. Here, Chess tells a tale of a “Doomed Squadron” whose pilots are mysteriously disappearing one by one. . . .

Thirty-four pilots gone—one by one they screamed to their death, and not a Hun in the sky! And each one that was found had bitten off the end of his tongue . . . . What was the terrible force operating on the Doomed Sguadron?

From the pages of Eagles of the Air, it’s “The Doomed Squadron” by E.W. Chess!

• Download “The Doomed Squadron” (February 1930, Eagles of the Air)

If you haven’t check it out, Pulpflakes posted an excellent post about the life of “Elliot Chess—Fighter pilot, Author” last year.

FROM the pages of the October 1934 number of Sky Fighters:

Editor’s Note: We feel that this magazine has been exceedingly fortunate in securing Lt. Edward McCrae to conduct a technical department each month. It is Lt. Mcrae’s idea to tell us the underlying principles and facts concerning expressions and ideas of air-war terminology. Each month he will enlarge upon some particular statement in the stories of this magazine. Lt. MaCrae is qualified for this work, not only because he was a war pilot, but also because he is the editor of this fine magazine.

What Made ‘Em Fly

by Lt. Edward McCrae (Sky Fighters, October 1934)

NOW you wise young sons and daughters of a double eagle, or maybe it was a buzzard, maybe you hadn’t noticed it before but if you had looked a little carefully at all the nice pictures of the war crates on the covers of SKY FIGHTERS you might have noticed that nearly every one of them without exception had something peculiar about it. Whether you noticed it or not, they all had engines in ’em.

Yes, sir, they carried whole gasoline engines up in the air. Some of them had one and some had two and some had more than that—even back in the early days of the war.

Now if I know anything about you clucks you’re just as likely as not to come asking me why those aviators wanted to load themselves down with a lot of machinery. It would be just about like you.

So I’m going to head you off and tell you something about those powerhouses we used to take upstairs along with us. And don’t be asking me why they carried more than one of ’em. I’m going to get to that if you’ll let me. Mary, don’t you throw that spit-ball!

You Gotta Have an Engine

Maybe your papas have let you look under the hood of the old family car, in which case you might have learned the secret that a vehicle just can’t get along without an engine if it’s going to do any good running at all. Honey, it’s the same way with an airplane.

So I’m going to tell you a few simple things that won’t be too difficult for your shallow pans to remember so you will have a little inkling of why they have all different kinds of engines when it would look for the world like if they got a good one they would keep using it instead of trying to think up other designs and shapes to use.

You might have noticed that some of the engines when they were looked at from the front looked like stars with a lot of cylinders all sticking out every which way from the center. And others looked more like a common every-day automobile engine. How come it and why?

Air and Water Cooling

The answer is, my precious little dunderheads, that some of them were air-cooled and some water-cooled.

They learned that an engine that didn’t have to tote its own drink along with it weighed about three-quarters as much as another of the same horsepower that was water-cooled. And they learned also that for every pound you could reduce the weight of it you could add two pounds of useful load, or what amounts to the same thing, you could have a bigger engine and more power for the given weight.

Now the reason you could get those two extra pounds where one grew before was that when you took a pound’s weight away from the engine you could reduce the weight of the ship by another pound that was necessary to strengthen it to support the pound you took away, and you could further reduce the weight of your ship by another pound that went to strengthen the wing so it would support that extra pound of engine weight. That’s as clear as mud, isn’t it?

But unfortunately that added strength didn’t always show as engines got bigger. After they got so big, an air-cooled engine wouldn’t weigh any less than a water-cooled one for the same horse power.

So they used one or the other depending on the performance they wanted.

The Air-Foil

Now when you start trying to recognize the different kinds of engines you want to look at the front of them. That way you can see what kind of a surface, or air-foil they present to the wind. That’s the important thing for you to consider.

When you look at them that from that aspect you will see that there are only about three different general groups of designs. Of course, these differ among themselves in slight ways, but after all, even human beings in one family have slight differences.

Take a look at the figure which I have very cleverly called Figure 1. In that you will see the front view of a few of the stationary cylinder engines that are water-cooled and whose fathers got the idea of their design from our old friend the automobile engine. Now this group shows some outline forms of the engines themselves, but there is a fly in the amber. They don’t show the radiators, and a water-cooled engine has to have a radiator and that presents a big flat surface to the air to reduce your speed.

Rotary Engines

So then you have next in what for want of a better name I have called Figure 2, the rotary engines that were used during the war. Some of the names of these are Gnome Rotary, the Le Rhone Rotary, and the Clerget Rotary.

These were funny power plants. You might not believe it when I tell you, but it is a fact that the crank shaft stood still and the whole engine itself revolved around it! That sounds kind of Chinese, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. What with those cylinders whirling around at a thousand revolutions or more, they kept cool pretty well, but once in a while one of them would fly off the handle and scatter cylinders all over No-Man’s-Land.

And then they had another feature that the brass hats didn’t seem to bother about, but which we didn’t like at all. They were lubricated with castor oil!

Hot Castor Oil

Our objections to it came, not because we had to share their fuel oil, but because the engineers didn’t think castor oil was bad enough cold, they let it get hot in the motor.

And brothers and sisters, you have not smelled nothing yet until you have got a nose full of red hot castor oil. And you can smell it for miles—and that is not an exaggeration! We were afraid the Heinies could always tell we were coming by just sticking their noses up in the air and taking a deep breath. Boy, it was awful!

And then you might take a glimpse at a figure that I have designated as Figure 3, even though you can’t count up that high.

Those figures in that picture are some outlines that look almost like those rotary babies. But they aren’t. Their cylinders stick out from a common center just like the rotaries, but there is some sense in the way they act. The cylinders stay still and the crank shaft revolves just like any respectable crankshaft ought to do.

We Had ’Em Long Ago

We had them in the old days, and they had all the way from three to twenty cylinders stuck around the shaft.

Those were the babies that have turned out best since the war. But we had a lot of satisfaction out of them. A couple of these babies we liked in those days were the Salmson and the Cosmos Jupiter.

And just to prove how practical these air-cooled babies were, if you will take a glance around an air field today you will see more air-cooled radial motors than any other kind. Babies of that pattern since the war were the first to cross the North Pole, first to fly the English Channel, first to span the Atlantic, and about the first for everything of any importance.

And now that you know all about the different kinds of engines, I’ll give you that promised dope about why they had different numbers in different kinds of ships.

Why the Extra Engines?

There are two reasons they put more than one engine in a ship. One is to increase and distribute the lift and the other is to increase the factor of safety. These two reasons don’t always both appear in the one ship.

But even you pupils of mine ought to be able to see that if you have two engines and one conks you’ve still got a chance to get back safely over your home trenches, and if you’ve got three engines to do the same work there’s almost no chance at all of your having a forced landing in a mess of Krauts. I know about a Handley-Page bomber that went out and got a direct hit that reduced its whole lower wing to a mass of shreds and tatters and knocked one of its engines clear out of it, but the pilot steered it sixty miles back to his home tarmac! Which is something different from landing on your nose in the middle of a few rosettes of shrapnel.

Helps in the Lift

And then in the matter of lift, you will find the heavy bombers had more than one engine so they could lift a lot of weight. You would first think they would just build one big engine to carry it, but that wouldn’t be so good. Let me try to show you why.

Suppose it took a thousand horsepower to lift the desired bomber and its load. They could build one engine of a thousand horsepower all right, but they wouldn’t get a propeller that could use up and deliver all that power. But if they, say, built two five-hundred horsepower engines, they had two props which could use up all that power and besides they had the additional safety factor of the two motors I just spoke about. You might not remember it well, Tillie, but we had plenty of ships with more than one engine during the war.

The Germans were the first to come out with them, although the French were at work on them even before the war broke out. The first German flew with two engines in 1915.

But the French quickly matched them with the old twin-motored Caudron, and the British followed right off the bat with the twin-motored Dyott, which didn’t last a very long time, however. The Government never did put its official okay on the old Dyott, but it was not a bad heavy crate, and it had a lot of features the German Gotha later incorporated.

Then the Italians in the person of the well-known Mr. Caproni burst out across the field with a three-motored ship. It had two eighty-horsepower tractor motors and one ninety-horsepower pusher. Some ship, eh, Tony!

And toward the end of the fracas the British got real ambitious and brought out a ship with four—count them—motors. It just had engines stuck all over it.

They Went in for Numbers

But once they started going in for numbers, do you think the Germans were going to let anybody get ahead of them? No, my masters, not those boys.

We knocked down one of their big bombers in France, and we thought somebody had attached wings to the machine shop itself.

That crate had five motors sprouting out of it.

That might not be a lot of motors these days, but my children, I’ve been talking all this time about the war that was fought a long, long time ago.

And now, take my blessing, and go out and jump in your ten-motored kiddie cars and zoom out of my sight. Or else I’ll be counting motors instead of sheep in my sleep.

THIS week we have a story by a new writer to this site, Wallace R. Bamber.

Wallace Rugene Bamber was born in 1895 in Tacoma. A veteran of the First World War, serving in the A.E.F. from 1917-19, during the 20’s he lived in New York City and became a well-known writer of air fiction for pulp magazines. Later he branched out as an editor and publisher of the short-lived Far East Adventure, a fiction magazine of the Orient with a dozen issues from 1930-32, and Amazing Detective Stories with five issues published in 1931. Later he became a traveling representative of the American Fiction guild, and moved to Seattle. He was with the federal writers’ project there, and later a WPA administrative staff official. Bamber also worked for a time as editor of the Port Orchard Independent, and was active in Democratic party affairs. A newspaperman at heart, in 1944 he started publication of a weekly paper, The Bainbridge Merchant, on Bainbridge island where he was then residing, but illness forced him to curtail this venture after two issues. He passed away in November of that year.

From the February 1930 issue of the short lived Flight, we have Bamber’s “Send Him up with Saunders.”

The C.O. kept Sanders as a free lance, for more than one reason perhaps. But mainly, no doubt, because there were other observers who could do the regular air work as well or better than Sanders could, while none of them could do the special work that he did. He had one exceptional quality that all the others observers lacked—He could tell a good pilot from a poor one far sooner than the commanding officer, himself, could. When a new pilot came up to the squadron, the first thing the C.O. would say to the operations officer, was: “Send him up with Sanders.”

When a new pilot came up to the Squadron the C.O. said “Send him up with Sanders”—and Sanders never failed to know at once a good pilot from a bad one. And no one knew his method!

• Download “Send Him Up with Sanders” (February 1930, Flight)

As a bonus, here’s an article from THE OREGONIAN where Mr. Bamber discusses what he sees as the state of Pulp fiction writing from February 17, 1931:

FREE-LANCE writers who are getting nothing but rejection slips should take heart because 1931 probably will not be such a tough year in the fiction market as 1930 was and the chances are that 1932 will be pretty good. This is the advice brought from New York by Wallace R. Bamber, publisher of Far East Adventure Stories and Amazing Detective Stories. Mr. Bamber was in Portland yesterday after a brief visit to Spokane, where he grew up and started writing. Speaking of pulp-paper fiction, Mr. Bamber said that, gangster stories now are in most demand, with half a dozen magazines publishing nothing else, and a number of others using this type of story generously. War stories, he said, are now almost unsalable, and the detective Story market, is on the wane after enjoying tremendous popularity. As to what will succeed the gangster story in vogue, “I wish I knew,” he said.

In pulp fiction there are only three kinds of stories, according to Mr. Bamber—love, detective mystery, and adventure. The gangster story is in the adventure, not detective field. In each of these divisions there are three kind’s of conflict—man against man, man against himself, and man against nature.

Furthermore, according to Mr. Bamber, there is only on® plot with which the pulp-paper writer need concern himself. The story opens, figuratively speaking, with the villain on top of the hero with a knife in his hand, and ends with the positions reversed. This one plot can be varied to suit any pulp magazine, the individuality of the story depending upon the characters used and the incidents employed in effecting the reversal of positions.

The magazine publishing business is largely a gamble, in Mr. Bamber’s view, and this is the reason so many pulp publications start and stop abruptly.

• Download “Fiction Field Better” (February 17, 1931, The Oregonian)

“HAW-W-W-W-W!” That sound can only mean one thing—that Bachelor of Artifice, Knight of Calamity and an alumnus of Doctor Merlin’s Camelot College for Conjurors is back to vex not only the Germans, but the Americans—the Ninth Pursuit Squadron in particular—as well. Yes it’s the marvel from Boonetown, Iowa himself—Lieutenant Phineas Pinkham!

Phineas Pinkham was ordered to take two weeks leave or else face not only the wraith of The Old Man, but a Court Martial to boot. The Boonetown jokester couldn’t and the inactivity and found a way to get back in the war and put an end to the Allies Drachen problem as well.

Two weeks’ leave and no Spad to fly anywhere in—what do you do in a case like that? Easy—just take a leaf from Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham’s book and go—

• Download “From Spad to Worse” (April 1932, Flying Aces)

BACK with the third and final of Frederick Blakeslee’s “The Roaring Town” featurettes. Blakeslee only produced three installments of his two-page illustrated looks into the boom towns of the Wild West in Pecos Kid Western. Authored by Jhan Robbins, the prolific western story author and editor of pulp magazines, and deftly illustrated by Blakeslee, the feature delves into the story behind noted boom towns of the old west. This time Robbins and Blakeslee tell us the tale of Weaverville, California—a gold rush boom town that made it and still stands today with a lot of it’s old 1850’s charm.

From the January 1951 issue of Pecos Kid Western it’s “The Roaring Towns: Weaverville, California!”

THE ROARING TOWNS: Weaverville, California
by Frederick Blakeslee and Jhan Robbins (Pecos Kid Western, January 1951)

THIS week we have a story by Franklin M. Ritchie. Ritchie only wrote aviation yarns and his entire output—roughly three dozen stories—was between 1927 and 1930, but Ritchie was not your typical pulp author—he was a lawyer who wrote pulp stories on the side to satisfy his yen for flying.

Jack Gorham flew in a trance. “Thirty hours to live!” he muttered, talking to himself under the roar of the motor and the fierce screaming of the wind in his wires. “That’s all a pilot has on the front!” And mechanically he fell into the formation. Swiftly they winged toward the front. The trenches zigzagged under them, and suddenly Gorham realized that he was over German territory, “Thirty hours to live!” he repeated to himself. . .

With a weird shrieking whir, the airplane streaked for earth like a flaming comet. The pilot’s chum turned yellow and fled, but—read it and see for yourself!

• Download “Thirty Hours to Live” (April 1929, Sky Birds)

As a bonus, here’s a letter from Franklin M. Ritchie that Flying Aces published in the March issue—the month before the issue this story ran.

BACK with the second of Frederick Blakeslee’s “The Roaring Town” featurettes. Blakeslee only produced three installments of his two-page illustrated looks into the boom towns of the Wild West in Pecos Kid Western. Authored by Jhan Robbins, the prolific western story author and editor of pulp magazines, and deftly illustrated by Blakeslee, the feature delves into the story behind noted boom towns of the old west. This time Robbins and Blakeslee tell us the tale of Soya, Texas—a town now lost to the sands of time.

From the September 1950 issue of Pecos Kid Western it’s “The Roaring Towns: Soya, Texas!”

THE ROARING TOWNS: Soya, Texas
by Frederick Blakeslee and Jhan Robbins (Pecos Kid Western, September 1950)

THIS week we have a short story by renowned pulp author Frederick C. Davis. Davis is probably best remembered for his work on Operator 5 where he penned the first 20 stories, as well as the Moon Man series for Ten Detective Aces and several other continuing series for various Popular Publications. He also wrote a number of aviation stories that appeared in Aces, Wings and Air Stories.

This week’s story features that crack pilot for World News Reel, the greatest gelatine newspaper that ever flashed on a silver screen—Nick Royce! Davis wrote twenty stories with Nick for Wings magazine from 1928-1931.

Hollywood comes calling at the World News Reel field when J. Harold Shaw and director arrive hoping the World News Reel pilots and cameramen can help them capture a dramatic stunt for the climax of their latest feature. Who’s j. Harold Shaw? Well, his pictures send thrills and chills up and down the prickley spines of a million girls. Right at that minute his likenesses were decorating the dresser-tops of adoring females from coast to coast. Many a dissatisfied wife thought of him as an ideal husband for herself. His face was certainly his fortune. Yes, sir, right then there wasn’t any more heroic hero in the whole flicker business than J. Harold. Needless to say, Nick took an instant dislike to Shaw—especially when he started to put the moves on his gal! From the February 1928 Wings, it’s Frederick C. Davis’ “Hero Stuff!”

Between earth and sky he hung, helpless in the useless parachute—until Nick Royce, sky-eater, jumped into space, a grim smile on his lips as he prayed for an even break!

• Download “Hero Stuff” (February 1928, Wings)

IT’S no secret that we’re big fans of the work of Frederick Blakeslee here at Age of Aces Books. He did the covers for all of Popular Publications’ big Air titles—Dare-Devil Aces, Battle Aces, Battle Birds, Fighting Aces, Dusty Ayres and his Battle Aces, and, of course, G-8 and his Battle Aces. In addition he did the interior art for Dare-Devil Aces, Battle Birds and Fighting Aces. Blakeslee also provided art for other titles as well—including a few special illustrative features. One of those features was “The Roaring Towns” for Pecos Kid Western magazine.

Similar to his “Adventures Into The Unknown” feature that ran in several mystery magazines, “The Roaring Towns” was a two page feature focusing on a different Wild West frontier town each time. Blakeslee teamed with writer Jhan Robbins for the “The Roaring Towns.” Robbins was a Brooklyn-born writer who became an editor for pulp magazines like Big Book Western and Dime Mystery after WWII. With his wife June Stumpe he became a widely known for writing articles—one being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize—and later biographies.

Pecos Kid Western only ran for five issues, and, sadly, “The Roaring Towns” for only the first three of those. The first installment centers on boomtown of Jackson, Nevada which sprung up in 1871 with the discovery of silver. Over the next year, forty thousand prospectors mined more than five million dollars of silver out of dem thar hills.

THE ROARING TOWNS: Jackson, Nevada
by Frederick Blakeslee and Jhan Robbins (Pecos Kid Western, July 1950)

THIS week we have a story by H.P.S. Greene. Henry Paul Stevens Greene was a newspaper man who wrote aviation tales from the late 20’s to the early 40’s for magazines like Wings, Air Stories, Sky Fighters and, the magazine this story appeared in—Aces.

Billy King hated the French. A year in the Foreign Legion infantry, under hardboiled officers and non-coms, was mostly responsible. That was before the United States entered the war and Billy became eligible for transfer—a transfer that shot him right back into another French outfit again! It was in a cafe wallowing in his misfortune that Billy King wound up getting mixed up with a girl, an ex-king of Monravia. and a hairbrained scheme to snatch the mustaches of Captain von Grunow of the Imperial German Air Service! From the pages of the December 1931 Aces, it’s H.P.S. Greene’s “Kings Up!”

Take a Yank pilot soured on the world. A Paris mademoiselle. A strange gent with a monocle, and a red-nosed taxi hawk. Mix well with champagne, toss into tracer-torn sky—and watch for fireworks!

• Download “Kings Up” (December 1931, Aces)

“HAW-W-W-W-W!” That sound can only mean one thing—that Bachelor of Artifice, Knight of Calamity and an alumnus of Doctor Merlin’s Camelot College for Conjurors is back to vex not only the Germans, but the Americans—the Ninth Pursuit Squadron in particular—as well. Yes it’s the marvel from Boonetown, Iowa himself—Lieutenant Phineas Pinkham!

When Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham cracked up a Spad, it stayed cracked! Yes, Major Garrity was right. If Phineas had been twins, the Allies would have, been in the hands of receivers!

• Download “Too Good for Hanging” (March 1932, Flying Aces)

THIS week we have another story by the prolific O.B. Myers! Myers was a pilot himself, flying with the 147th Aero Squadron and carrying two credited victories and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Following up his first story last week, we have his second published story. “Pip” Preston brings down the great von Stangel. But von Stangel turns out to be an undercover agent…. From the pages of the January 31st, 1929 issue of War Stories it’s O.B. Myer’s “The Buzzard’s Guest!”

Either that lone Jerry was afraid to fight, or else he thought he was too good. But he needed a better excuse than either of those to run from a Yankee ace and get away with it.

• Download “The Buzzard’s Guest” (31 January 1929, War Stories)

Somewhere in France

With another story by O.B. Myers we have another letter from the front reprinted in O.B.’s hometown paper the MOUNT VERNON ARGUS. This one isn’t by O.B. though, it’s from a fellow Mount Vernonite who ran into old Myers as they called him in France who offered to take him for a ride!

Published in the MOUNT VERNON ARGUS, May 25th, 1918:

Following is an extract from a letter received by his parents from Corporal Valentine Treyvoux from “Somewhere in France”:

Well, I’ve got a bit of real news that may be of interest. Your boy is “flying very high these days’’ I bumped into another old Mount Vernonite, old Oscar Myers, who is first lieutenant in the aviation. We sat around and talked for awhile and he said if the weather was fine the following day he would give me the flight or fright of my life. You can bet I was Johnny Thomson on hand—and up we went. Holy smoke! I thought for sure I was straight on my way to meet St. Peter. The earth soon faded beneath us and I found myself passing as Myers called it, through cloud banks. Gee! but it sure was a funny feeling. We dropped down a few hundred feet, about 600 or 700 and gradually mother earth hove into view. Then he thought he would pull a few stunts as he called it, and so he looped the loop, glided, banked and a few others which I forgot in the excitement and then we made a beautiful volplane to the sod. Well, I Just can’t begin to explain or express the feeling one has while in the air, or while doing some of those things, but one thing I can say is this. Before going up we were strapped into the seats with a big strap across our chest and when doing the loop, the machine is turned completely upside down and there we were out of our seats and lying flat on this belt face to earth. Boy, oh boy! that’s the only time I said good-bye to friends so dear, to home and mother in fact everything, but it was only for a moment for he again righted her and it was over. I’ve given you but a vague description, Mother and Dad, but I guess you can get some idea as to what we did. Just as soon as I have a chance again and it’s a fine day, I’m going to bring Mac over and the three of us are going up.

I sure do envy old Myers that’s what we used to call him, but now it’s Lieutenant Myers.

Have Just been called so will close for a while.

Your boy who is always thinking of you. —VAL.