The Fate of the Few
Although he was one of the millions who contracted influenza in late 1918, Bennett recovered and slipped into obscurity, dying in 1963 at the age of sixty-eight. Shortly before his death Bennett was tracked down by the World War I aviation journal, Cross & Cockade. One of his clearest memories was reaching an altitude of 21,500 feet in his S.E.5a without oxygen. “I got a bit groggy,” he recalled.
Bishop survived the war and was credited with seventy-two victories, although historians continue to question this total, suggesting the real number was far lower. Only von Richthofen with eighty victories and French ace René Fonck with seventy-five victories shot down more enemy aircraft in World War I. Bishop went into business between the wars, and was appointed director of the Royal Canadian Air Force in charge of recruitment upon the outbreak of World War II. He died in 1956 at the age of sixty-two.
An investment banker after the war, Callahan maintained his friendship with Springs, and was his best man at his wedding in the 1920s. During World War II he returned to England, serving as an intelligence officer in the Eighth Air Force, although it was said he himself stopped flying after an inter-war accident nearly cost him his life. In the twilight of his life Callahan was happy to talk to historians about his wartime achievements, always with “a total lack of pretense.” Callahan died in 1977, the last of the Musketeers, and is buried in Louisville, Kentucky.
Officially credited with two victories, Dixon remained in the military and was the regional representative of the Material Command in Chicago, where he was discharged as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force after World War II. He retained close links to Princeton and in his later years was president of the Class of 1920. Dixon died at his California home in 1992, aged ninety-five.
Something of a celebrity after his dramatic escape from German captivity, Donaldson was granted an audience with King George V at Windsor Castle upon his return to England. In 1919, he won the Mackay Gold Medal for coming first in the U.S. Army’s transcontinental air race. Leaving the military the following year, Donaldson was appointed president of Newark Air Service Inc. in 1926. He continued to fly as a stunt performer, and was killed in an accident in September 1930.
Grider’s two sons, John and George, enjoyed distinguished naval careers in World War II; John died in 1984 aged seventy-four, George in 1991 aged seventy-nine.
For decades it was assumed Grider kept just one diary covering the period up to the Americans’ arrival in England in early October 1917. This was the diary on which Elliott Springs said he based his 1927 book War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator. When he was sued by the Grider family as a result of the book, Springs returned the diary. However, there was a second diary, covering the period October 3, 1917–February 7, 1918, that Springs never returned and which was found in his private papers after his death. However, in his book Letters from a War Bird, David Vaughan speculates that there was probably a third diary that ran from February 8. As evidence, Vaughan points to a letter Grider wrote to his friend Emma Cox, dated 27 February 1918, in which Grider states he’s “keeping the service record up to date, fill[ing] it in every night and try[ing] to stay as near the truth as possible.” No trace of this record has ever been found and Vaughan suspects Springs destroyed it “because it contained detailed references to Grider’s social activities in London, and those descriptions might have been too vivid for family members to read.”
Hale finished the war with seven confirmed victories, remaining in the RAF until July 1919, when he returned to the United States. In November that year Hale was summoned to New York City to receive his DFC from the Prince of Wales on board HMS Renown. On the way to the port, Hale was involved in an automobile accident and had to postpone the ceremony for twenty-four hours. Subsequently, Hale settled in New York and led what was described as an “unconventional” life, one which included “periodic fights with the bottle.”
America’s entry into World War II gave him renewed purpose, and Hale enlisted in the Army Air Corps, despite a heart condition, only for the ailment to be discovered shortly after his arrival in England. Hale was shipped back to the States and was found dead at his home on June 7, 1944, the day after the invasion of France. “Quite possibly his old soldier’s heart couldn’t stand the thought of this tremendous battle going on without him,” said a friend.
Officially declared dead on October 12, 1918, Hamilton’s body was eventually identified in the summer of 1919, and interred in an American military cemetery in France. In 1921, at his parents’ request, he was exhumed and laid to rest in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1932 the U.S. Army Air Corps dedicated a new airfield north of San Francisco in Lloyd Hamilton’s honor, and the Hamilton Air Force Base remained active until the 1970s.
Marrying Marion Keehn in 1919, Landis raised three children and also wrote his memoirs, On the Roof of the War, shortly after the war’s end. He established an advertising business in Chicago, the Reed G. Landis Company, which also had an office in the Midwest. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II, reaching the rank of colonel, and died in in Arkansas in 1975, aged seventy-eight.
In all, “Swede” was credited with nine victories, all flying S.E.5s with 84 Squadron. He returned to the States at the end of the war and enjoyed a successful career as an architect. He died in 1981, aged eighty-nine.
“Boots” finished the war an ace, though his exact number of victories ranges from six to eight, and embarked upon a colorful life post-war. After flying as a “barnstormer” back in the States, LeBoutillier went on to appear as a stunt pilot in eighteen Hollywood movies, including Howard Hughes’s epic Hell’s Angels. Hughes admired LeBoutillier’s skills and he hired him as a test pilot. By the time LeBoutillier stopped flying he had flown some 19,000 hours. LeBoutillier settled in Las Vegas and became president of a pharmaceutical company. He died in May 1983, the last witness to the death of the Red Baron.
For the rest of his life Libby suffered from his war injuries which, coupled with arthritis, left him “hunched over.” Despite this he led a full and happy life, working in the oil industry for many years as a wildcatter. Later he founded Western Air Express, subsequently sold to Western Airlines, but he then lost most of his money drilling for oil. His granddaughter recalled that he took the setback with his customary sang-froid, saying: “True to his cowboy heritage, where a man’s word and handshake were all there was and his honor was never to be forfeit, he lived with the consequences of his actions honorably and most admirably.” Libby died in 1970, aged seventy-eight.
Poler became a barnstormer in the 1920s, as a member of the Syracuse Aero Club, and hit the headlines in 1932 when he was part of an American Legion delegation receiving a $2,000 check for a high school aviation scholarship from film actress Marion Davies. He retired to Los Angeles, and died in September 1994, aged ninety-eight.
“Tubby” returned to Nebraska at the war’s end, graduating from the state university as a doctor of dental surgery. Marrying a fellow dental student, Ralston was an active member of the Ainsworth community, serving as mayor and head of the local American Legion. Despite his settled life, Ralston joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and was assigned to the 304th Bomb Group as an intelligence officer. In December that year he was killed when the B-17 he was travelling in crashed in Montana.
Returning to the United States in May 1919, Rogers “borrowed a car and drove to Palo Alto where for the first time in almost two years, he and Isabelle were reunited.” The pair married the following year and moved to Hollywood, where Rogers was employed by the Los Angeles Examiner flying photographers to important events. In the 1930s, Rogers enjoyed success as a screenwriter and novelist, and he also found time to invent a horse-race photo-finish camera. Rogers divorced Isabelle in the 1940s, and in 1950 married Frances Carrell. In 1961 he suffered a stroke, and five years later he died, aged sixty-nine. His letters to Isabelle were published by the Rogers family in 1996, entitled A Yankee Ace in the RAF. Isabelle died in 2000, aged 102.
In 1921 Springs and Larry Callahan traveled to France to lay the ghosts of old friends to rest. On the ship across the Atlantic, Springs fell in love with Frances Ley, the daughter of a prosperous New York businessman. The pair were married a year later, and the union sparked a decade of feuding between Springs and his father. During that time Springs wrote War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator, largely based on the diaries of John McGavock Grider. The book became a bestseller but provoked a row with Grider’s sister, who threatened legal action if she wasn’t given a share of the profits. Springs eventually paid out $12,500 in return for the right to use the diary, even though he always maintained that Grider had given him permission to quote from it in the event of his death.
Despite the dispute, Springs took an avuncular interest in the development of Grider’s sons John and George, helping to fund their entry into the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.
In 1931 Leroy Springs died, and his son finally felt ready to assume control of the family business, transforming Springs Mills from an ailing company into a phenomenally successful enterprise with assets of $138.5 million, compared to the $13 million it had when he took over from his father. Elliot Springs died of pancreatic cancer in 1959.
On November 6, 1981, nine frail, gray men boarded a jumbo jet at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, bound for Paris. They were going as the guests of François Mitterand, the French President, who had invited thirty World War I pilots to Paris for an event to mark the sixty-third anniversary of the conflict’s end. Among the old men who slowly climbed the steps into the aircraft was George Vaughn who, as the New York Times noted, was eighty-four and a resident of Staten Island. The paper added that after destroying thirteen enemy aircraft, Vaughn had gone into engineering before forming his own company to build hangars. He also trained thirty thousand technicians for the Air Force during World War II.
Before boarding the aircraft to Paris Vaughn told the assembled reporters that back in his day, “all you had to do was fly the plane and shoot the guns.” Mind you, he added as an afterthought, back in 1918 they didn’t have wheelbrakes, or radios, or parachutes. The correspondent from the Associated Press asked Vaughn if he was apprehensive about meeting some of his former adversaries from the German air force. Not in the slightest, replied Vaughn. “You slap him on the back, buy him a drink and laugh about it.”
George Vaughn died on July 31, 1989, aged ninety-two.