Chapter 1 In the Beginning For the last forty years, I have been researching this story, the story of the young eagles, the men from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Andover, and Groton who took to the skies over France in 1918 and became the first American fighter pilots. First Lieutenant Charles H. Woolley, United States Army Air Service, my father, a Boston boy who left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to answer the call of duty, was one of these men. Although I did not know it at the time, my research actually began when I was a twelve-year-old boy. I was unnerved, confused, and concerned by the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor that December Sunday. Impending war had relocated our family. It had moved my father, my mother, and me from our home in suburban Boston to Washington, D.C. It had brought Dad, then a Reserve Major, back into the military. It was the world he loved: ìfifty mission crushî visored hats; ìpinks and greens,î as the officersí uniforms were called; new aircraft to fly; and cryptic orders that would soon send him on missions around the globe. The world of war brought a constant stream of visitors to the city of Washington and our home. Most of them were my fatherís old comrades from the Great War, seeking new commissions in the Army Air Corps and the opportunity to serve the cause. Many of these men were to become the leaders of Americaís ìgreatest generation,î as Tom Brokaw was later to call them. They were men with straight backs, easy smiles, refined tastes, and sharp wits, who at the cocktail hour made us all laugh with their unending stories as they sipped their martinis, dry, very dry, with an olive. Many of our guests had served in 1918 with Dad in the 95th Aero Squadron, United States Air Service, the first American-trained fighter squadron ever to see combat. There was Sumner Sewall, the recently elected Governor of Maine, a jovial bear of a man whom I knew from our summers in Maine; Harold Buckley, a fast-living Hollywood screenwriter and the author of a highly amusing history of the 95th; Jimmy Knowles, a fearless ace who had attained a top position in the pharmaceutical business; and Ted Curtis, General Ted Curtis, who was soon to be sent to England to create and help build the United States Eighth Air Force, the mightiest air force in the history of the world. Others were with them in spirit: Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of Teddy, who put action into his fatherís bellicose words; Hamilton Coolidge, a classmate of Quentinís at Groton and Harvard, who could quote the poetry of Tennyson as well as he could un-jam a Vickers machine gun; Dick Blodgett from Williams College and West Newton, Massachusetts; ìBig Billî Taylor, one of the prep school boys who sailed overseas with the Andover Ambulance Unit; and Waldo Heinrichs, the missionaryís son who disapproved of the binges prompted by good times as well as bad on the front. The man who impressed me the most was Colonel Harold B. Willis, a six-foot-two-inch, barrel- chested man who before being commissioned in the U.S. Army Air Corps sported the French- tailored uniform of the American Field Service, a corps of volunteer ambulance drivers with whom he served in 1916 and again in 1940. Flamboyant in his light-blue French beret and full white moustache, Willis took extra time to talk with me as I stood self-consciously among those heroes in our living room. He told me stories about his service with the famous Lafayette Escadrille, the French fighter squadron manned by American volunteer pilots. The stories he told were always light, but laced with adventure. He told me about chasing German Rumpler two-seat observation planes that flew so high he could never quite reach them and nearly froze in the attempt; he told me about his special Spad equipped with an aerial camera with which he would dash behind enemy lines, snap pictures of some important subject, and then streak home with enemy Fokkers spraying hot lead in pursuit. He told me about the Spad in which he was shot down: ìA real beauty, fast and steady as a rock. I painted a large green ìWî on the upper wings so all would know where Willis was in a scrap.î He was the first family friend to welcome me into the inner world of aerial warriors. On one visit Willis casually said to me, ìIím going to send you a German Mauser rifle I picked up on a battlefield in France when I was an ambulance driver.î I was ecstatic! A Mauser! An actual German military rifle! To feel it, to hold it, to own it was the most exciting experience imaginable. To me, a rather lonely only child in the world of wartime Washington, the idea of holding a Mauser was as thrilling as wandering through my newly found favorite place, the Smithsonian Institution. When I first arrived in Washington, I fell in love, love at first sight, after my first visit to the Smithsonian. It was open every day, free of charge, and easy for a boy to get to, a pleasant ride for me on the ìFriendship Heightsî trolley car. I would lose myself for hours in the redbrick arts and sciences building known as ìThe Castle,î staring at the vast exhibits of firearms, the large glass cases filled with full-figured mannequins wearing complete uniforms from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and best of all, the Great War, and the aviation building with its World War I fighter aircraft, the Spad XIII and the German Fokker D VII. These inanimate objects, so unfamiliar at first, became my companions, unforgotten companions who have been with me ever since. My grandmotherís treasure-packed attic in Winchester, Massachusetts, paled by comparison to my newly discovered attic, the nationís attic. I had found a place where I felt I really belonged. But to actually own a Mauser, to actually feel it! Mauser barrels were a beautiful blue color, the action finished silver bright, the sculptured stock a handsome honey brown. After Willis made his offer, I pestered my father almost every day, asking him when the gun would arrive. ìWhere the hell is that damn gun?î Dad asked Willis several times over the next few months. Finally a large long package arrived by Railway Express, addressed to me. The Mauser! With trembling fingers I ripped apart the string and brown paper and there was revealed not a Mauseróbut a rusted, Revolutionary Warñera muzzle-loading musket. My hero had forgotten that he had given the German gun away years before. I was heartbroken, but I didnít give up. Some time later I was able to trade a rusty sword for a vintage Mauser with a broken stock. I was thrilled with the Mauser, but even more thrilled when Dad presented me at Christmas a brightly wrapped package that contained an original unbroken stock. My father wanted to reinforce my interest in things military. There was indeed a Santa Claus that year! It is strange that at that time of my life, the war in the air never seemed as exciting or heroic as the war on the ground. Sure, I bought model airplanes and sent them flying across my bedroom on strings to battle German aircraft in imaginary dogfights. Before moving to Washington, I had spent many Saturday mornings in Dadís second-floor study, sitting with him at his oak desk, tracing the outlines of the various aircraft he had encountered in the Great War. ìThatís an excellent Nieuport,î he enthused over my crude rendering. ìNow the Fokker, you see, had a much longer profile, like this.î Spads, Albatroses, Sopwith Camels, I learned to draw them all, and learned which planes were the fastest, and which could climb the highest. But I was more interested in the Mauser. Bullet-riddled helmets, rifles, bayonetsóthat is what I thought war souvenirs should be. Dadís souvenirs from the war were the type collected by an aviator, not a mud-spattered infantryman. Aviatorsí souvenirs were apt to be less war-likeó decorated vases formed from empty shell casings, brass cigarette lighters shaped like French helmets, matchbox covers made from German belt buckles, a Luger pistol and a bone-handled folding knife. One spring day in 1942, at Bolling Field near Washington, I took my place in the rear seat of an Army Air Corps AT6 airplane with Dad at the controls. My presence was covered by regulations. As a military dependent, I was entitled to one thirty-minute flight each year. I was thrilled. It was rare enough for me to spend thirty minutes with Dad, much less to fly with him! His ground crew zipped me into a fleece-lined flying suit and strapped me into the rear cockpit of the AT6, a general purpose and advanced training aircraft. As we took off, I felt a rush in my stomach. As we banked steeply over the Capitol, I looked down at the tall white tower of the Washington Monument and began to understand for the first time my fatherís thrill in flight. I recalled the insignia of the 95th Squadron he had once drawn for me. A defiant kicking mule. Airborne over Washington with Major Charles Woolley at the controls, I felt as if it were 1918. I felt that kicking mule. I felt Dadís flying skills, his reliability, his strength. I trusted him and knew he would bring us through the hard war days ahead. In those few moments, I felt that I was more than his son. I was his friend. His flying companion. An honorary member of the 95th Aero Squadron, United States Air Service. Diminutive to be sure, but strong, resourceful, and noble like the others. A young eagle. It was not until after Dad died in 1962 that I was drawn once again into his extraordinary world. I began to seriously examine his papers, his logbooks, photo albums, and library. I was work- ing in the financial services industry, but spent all my spare time scouring attics, barns, out-of- print bookstores, and antique shops, searching for antique cars, boats, old photographs, military curios, and books. My mother claimed that I had inherited the collecting bug from her father, who loved all old things and became an antiques dealer and antiquarian bookseller in his later life, with a shop on Charles Street, antiques row in Boston. My fascination with military history only grew stronger over the years. Before I became interested in World War I aviation, I joined the Company of Military Historians in 1955, and in the late 1960s became a frequent visitor to J. S. Canner, a large out-of-print bookseller in Boston. ìWhat do you think of this?î I asked Ray McGuire, who managed the bookstoreís military department. Ray, an adventurer who had served with the French Foreign Legion in Indochina, had become a good friend. He carefully opened the book I had brought, Up and At íEm by Lieutenant Colonel Harold E. Hartney, and read the inscription on the title page: ìFor Up and At íEm Charlie Woolley (Major, U.S. Air Corps) a gallant officer of the 95th Aero Squadron in our outfitóone of the gang that made this book possible and got for me so much unearned satisfaction. With warmest regards and best wishes. Harold E. Hartney, Washington, DC, November 28, 1941.î I could tell Ray was impressed. He held the book gingerly, turning the pages carefully, skimming the story of the 95th Squadron and the other squadrons of the First Pursuit Group that Hart- ney had commanded. As he read, he seemed to be transported to the skies above the muddy flying fields of France, sitting in the cramped cockpit of a Spad, pushing the stick forward into a dive on the tail of a Fokker D VII, the exhaust pouring out of the straight pipes of the Hispano-Suiza eight-cylinder engine, waiting to squeeze the trigger of his Vickers machine guns and send his adversary to earth in a flaming wreck of wood, wire, and linen. ìYour father actually flew with the 95th Aero Squadron?î ìSure,î I answered with a shrug. Ray shook his head, ìImagine flying and fighting in those Nieuports and Spads! They were nothing but motorized kites. Those guys invented aerial combat. They fought by their wits and improvised as they went along!î I shared with Ray more of Dadís books: Harold Buckleyís Squadron 95, Norman Archibaldís Heaven High, Hell Deep, and Riders in the Sky, a full-length epic poem by Leighton Brewer of the 139th Aero Squadron. I showed him some of my fatherís war letters to my grandmother and his large, folded 1917 passport. We studied his brevet, a wallet-sized document bound in blue leather and imprinted Pilote-Aviateur, FÈdÈration AÈronautique InternationaleóFrance. Inside was his photo, stamped with an imprint of the AÈro-Club de France and his brevet number, 9,163. He was the 9,163rd licensed pilot in the history of French aviation. We pored over other items, including his identity card issued by the American Expeditionary Forces, with two photographs signed by ìChas H. Woolley, 1st Lieut. A.S.S.C.U.S.R., Aviator.î Always Chas, never Charles. Then came the photo albums that contained sepia-toned photographs of his first days in France driving an ambulance with the American Field Service, his flight training at Tours and Issoudun, his move to the front with the 95th, the first American fighter squadron, and later his time as Flight Commander with the 49th Aero Squadron, the ìWolf Pack.î Rayís enthusiasm for the subject was infectious. The more details I uncovered relating to the military career of Charles H. Woolley, the more I wanted to learn. I began searching out old squadron logs, combat reports, and personnel reports that were available in the U.S. Archives. I located a fifty-year-old 95th Squadron address book that, despite its age, yielded some names and contacts that were still valid. I began to write and to phone every lead, asking each if he or his family would be willing to share their war letters, diaries, photo albums, snapshots and reminiscences about that time, the dawn of American combat aviation. Being able to use the name of Woolley opened many doors. When asked what I planned to do with this information, I promptly answered, ìWhy, write a book, of course.î True, I had never written a book, but I knew that I would do it someday and that I would learn a lot more about my father and his fascinating cronies in the process. Traveling with my wife, Nancy, whose transcription skills proved to be invaluable, we covered the New England area and interviewed my dadís closest surviving friends. We visited Sumner Sewallís family in Maine and Ted Curtis, a six-victory ace and a vice president of Eastman Kodak, who had a summer place near the Sewalls. We met with Jimmy Knowles in Boston, where his son headed Massachusetts General Hospital. We found Bill Casgrain, one of the early casualties of the 95th, alive and well at his summer home in New Hampshire. A name I had heard mentioned in those Washington gatherings of old eagles was Waldo Heinrichs. When doing some of my preliminary searching for veterans of the 95th, I discovered that Waldo had been a professor at Middlebury College after the war. The college, located in the town of the same name, was twenty-five miles from my wifeís family home in Rochester, Vermont. The phone book indeed listed a Waldo Heinrichs in Middlebury, and with the triumphant feeling of a successful treasure hunter, I dialed the number. A woman answered. I quickly introduced myself and explained my reason for calling. The woman who had answered was Waldoís widow, Dotty, and she explained that he had died in 1954. She was willing to help, but explained that she only had a few photos and two diaries he had faithfully kept during his experiences in France. She willingly agreed to a visit the next time I was in Vermont. A date was set. During our visit, she showed me the photos, and then out came the two small diaries, treasured reminders of the thirty- five years she had spent with a man she deeply loved. As I read through some of the small, neatly written lines, I realized that I was holding one of the most accurate and detailed records ever made of an American flyerís experience in World War I. I could not help but notice that there were some missing pages that had been neatly removed. Had they been removed by Waldo, or by his wife, who was so often mentioned on the other pages? What had they described? Sexual exploits, lapses in devotion to her, lapses in courage, spiritual floundering? A mystery that was not to be solved. As I continued my search for squadron members, I visited with Walt Avery in a New Jersey suburb outside of New York City. In Washington, D.C., I met Johnny Mitchell, a wonderful, warm guy, and later, in the same city, the son of Carl Menckhoff, the German thirty-nine-victory ace that Avery had shot down in his first fight. All the flyers were eager to help. All were products of Americaís finest prep schools and colleges, among the best educated, most adventurous, most idealistic, and most patriotic men of their generation. Most regarded duty and honor as more than mere words. They understood that education and social posi- tion brought with them social responsibility, a responsibility that would lead them to be among the first Americans to give their lives overseas in defense of democracy. All supplied me with additional names and contacts that expanded our research network. With Nancy taking copious notes, my eyes and my heart opened to the story as it unfolded. As word of my research spread, other scholars offered their kind assistance. In 1969, Royal Frey, at that time the head of the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, invited me to the fiftieth and last meeting of the Archie Club, an organization of First World War air combat veterans that my father helped found. At the meeting in Boston I met Eddie Rickenbacker, Americaís ace of aces, Doug Campbell, the first American-trained ace, ìSheepî Alexander, a highly decorated bomber pilot, and many others with remarkable stories to tell. They had all known ìChas,î as they called my father, and welcomed me to their ranks. My investigations led me to write and publish articles on the subject of military aviation. I became a member of Cross and Cockade, the Society of World War I Aero Historians, which published a quarterly journal, and in 1976, I became one of its editors. I continued to search for more diaries, letters, photos, and official reports, finding treasure troves at the Smithsonian, the United States Archives, the Library of Congress, and at the MusÈe de líAir in Paris. I found that I was the first to study the 95th in any depth, and one of the first to uncover the story of these aviators as men rather than as statistics or as unblemished heroes. I felt duty-bound to write the story, the real story, of a group of young men, with all their real strengths and real weaknesses. These men forged on the anvil of experience the first links of aerial combat knowledge that bind the F-16 pilots of today to the pilots of the Great War, who soared in the flimsy wood and canvas aircraft of 1918. Now my research is complete, or as complete as I can make it. One can never completely detail a life, much less a group of lives tossed about by a world at war. The eyewitnesses, the aviators I interviewed, are all gone. I am more than seventy years old myself. The airfields now lie under apartment complexes and industrial sites. Even the aircraft, except for the few in museums, have long ago turned to dust. Writing this history has enabled me to appreciate and know my father and the men he led in combat. Though it has been forty years since ìThe Colonel,î as he was known in his later years, died in his beloved Maine home, he is as alive with me today as he was sixty years ago, when our spirits met in the cockpit of that AT6 as we cut a path together across the American sky. Chapter 2 Some Family History On September 9, 1894, as Minnie Lunger Woolley gazed at Charles Hildreth Woolley, her newborn son and first child, she was confident that he was born at the appropriate time to enter a world of stability and unlimited promise. The telephone had just come into her home on White Street in East Boston, Massachusetts. Soon electric bulbs would replace the gaslights in her bedroom where she sat cradling her son, and in the babyís room as well. Maroon, green, scarlet, and yellow trolley cars rolled beneath a web of electric lines that crisscrossed the city of Boston, so much faster, cleaner, and more reliable than the horse-drawn trolleys. Charles, her husband, had recently purchased the most up-to-date equipment for their flourishing family-owned business, a large laundry in East Boston. Garments and fashions were changing; new clothing styles required more professional attention than just the flatiron on the stove. Business was booming. Good things were occurring all over the United States. Grover Cleveland was President and the country under his leadership enjoyed economic prosperity. Americans were confident, comfortable, enjoying all the best that life had to offer. In just fifteen years, Bostonís population had grown from 250,000 to more than 450,000. The city could not compare in size with New York or Chicago, but the economy was strong and Bostonís per-capita income was higher than that in most emerging commercial centers. Boston financiers had a large role in funding the great railroads, the engine of the American economy, and proper Bostonians were teaching New Yorkers how to manage and finance their burgeoning business trusts. The Woolleys were a comfortable, well-established family of Bostonís upper middle class. My grandfather, Charles Ambrose Woolley, was a successful and respected businessman, a devoted husband, who liked nothing better than returning from his office on Condor Street to his home on Whiteís Hill above Boston Harbor and settling in with Minnie, whom he adored. Prior to their marriage, she had been a teacher and was artistically and, in a gentle way, socially more inclined than her husband. In their young married life, she had urged her husband to participate more actively in the sophisticated life of the cityóto attend art exhibitions and concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and to dine at the Ritz, the Parker House, or the Hotel Vendome. But after giving birth to Charles, then a daughter who died at age six, and then another son, James, born eleven years after Charles, Minnie was content to confine her life to overseeing the society of her householdóher cook, her maid, her husband, and her two unruly boys. ìCharles,î she scolded on more than one occasion, ìa tricycle is not meant to be ridden through the halls of this house!î East Boston was a mercantile community perched on the edge of the sea. In many ways, the Woolley family and the entire community of East Boston moved with the tides of the Atlantic Ocean; dry goods, groceries, and even mail crossed Boston Harbor bringing the necessities to this satellite of the main city. Minnie and her boys often took the ferry to Boston to visit the State House Tower, Faneuil Hall, or even, on one occasion, to watch the elephants of the Ringling Brothersí Circus parade down Boylston Street. The family home stood just a few blocks above Boston Harbor and the Mystic River. Constructed for his family by Donald McKay, a master clipper ship designer and builder, the interior of the house had the feeling of a ship. And well it should. There had been no finer or faster craft in the world than McKayís Flying Cloud, which in 1851 crossed from Canton, China, to Boston in eighty-nine days, a record. Shipís carpenters, barrel makers, sailmakers, cordwainers, and caulkers swarmed over East Bostonís shores in the mid-nineteenth century, many of them employed at McKayís shipyard at the bottom of Whiteís Hill, just a few blocks from his home. When modern and more economical steamships began to replace the clippers, McKayís fortunes declined. In the 1870s, he sold his home to James Woolley, my great-grandfather. James was also a man of the sea. He owned and operated the Commercial Tow Boat Company and knew McKay from their business dealings in the harbor. He owned, in addition to a towboat business, the Boston Submarine Dredging Company, operating from East Boston. The Woolleysí gigantic steam dredge Goliath, a monster of the age, did much of the work dredging the Charles River, turning what was once a foul-smelling marsh into todayís fashionable Back Bay. My grandfather was proud of his familyís martial history. He boasted of his uncle, who had served in the Federal Navy during the Civil War with Admiral Farragut, and who had witnessed the epic battle between the U.S.S. Kearsage and the Confederate raider C.S. Alabama off the coast of France. On more than one occasion, Grandfather stood with my father in front of an oil portrait of another ancestor, painted by the great English portraitist, Sir Joshua Reynolds. The subjectís proud brown eyes, his firm mouth, his hair cut in bangs in the style of the late eighteenth century, and his dark-blue sea captainís uniform with its shining brass buttons intrigued the young Woolley. Grandfather explained to Dad, who later passed the story on to me: Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous English artist, painted that portrait of the first Charles Woolley to come to the United States. He left his home in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, seeking more important commands, and sailed for America shortly after the Revolutionary War. He first settled in Newport, Rhode Island, then was given command of a ship out of Boston. He moved to the city in 1790, where he met and married Susannah Bentley in 1796. Her father, Joshua Bentley, was a dedicated American patriot and a friend of the engraver and silversmith Paul Revere. On the night of April 18, 1775, he and another boatman had rowed Revere across the Charles River to Charlestown, maintaining silence by muffling their oars with their wives petticoats. Once on shore, Revere leapt on his horse and rode to Concord to warn the Minutemen with his famous cry, ëThe British are coming!í Later, Joshua Bentley served as a commissioned officer in the Massachusetts forces of the Continental Army against the British. Then there was Captain Zachariah Hildreth, whose name you bear, who was born in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1754. In his twenties he commanded an infantry unit in the Revolutionary War.
