Before he became renown for such classics as The Left Hand of God and Lilies of The Field, Barrett honed his craft across the pages of the pulp magazines—and nowhere more so than in War Birds and it’s companion magazine War Aces where he contributed smashing novels and novelettes, True tales of the Aces of the Great War, encyclopedic articles on the great war planes as well as other factual features. Here at Age of Aces Books he’s best known for his nine Iron Ace stories which ran in Sky Birds in the mid ’30s!

Today is Barrett’s birthday, so we have a different kind of story from Mr. Barrett. It’s the story of Philip Law—a young man who’s blind who longs to fight in the Great War when he hears about it. By chance a German doctor arrives at the asylum for the blind looking for willing participants for an experimental procedure he’s developed that could restore sight to the blind!

What meant blind ruin to other men was salvation to Philip Law—for in the pitiless glare of war-torn skies he alone could wrest the secret from the eyes that could not see.

From the July 1932 War Aces, it’s William E. Barrett’s “The Night Eagle!”

• Download “The Night Eagle” (July 1932, War Aces)