The Legionnaire

American Boys in the Great War

THE LEGIONNAIRE

American Boys in the Great War

...the best WWI flying story since The Blue Max.

Karl Kunkle: Book Reviewer

The story follows the lives of two boys who grow up in an orphanage in North Carolina and adopt each other to become brothers for life. They join the group of young Americans who rush to France at the outbreak of WWI to join the Foreign Legion and fight in Mankinds last great conflict.

The protagonist, Ward Cartwright, and his brother, Dan Cason, survive the second battle of the Marne then, at Artois Ridge, Ward is wounded twice and told that he is no longer fit for infantry duty. Rather than be mustered out because of his wounds, Ward applies for pilot training and is accepted because flying is a sitting down job and does not require the pilot to march and carry heavy loads.

On convalescent leave in Paris before going to flight school, Ward meets and flls in love with Antoinette Packham, an English girl who works in the British Embassy. During subsequent meetings over a period of a year their feelings for each other grow more intense and they eventually marry.

Dan joins Ward in flight school and, after graduation, goes to the famous Lafayette Escadrille while ward is assigned to a regular French unit on the front at Verdun where he distinguishes himself by shooting down a German plane on his first combat patrol.

As one of the worlds first fighter pilots, Ward discovers within himself a natural talent for flying and fighting in the sky. Within a few weeks he has downed five enemy planes thus becoming an Ace and a hero in the French press. One of his fellow pilots, as a joke, tells reporters that Ward is the illegitimate spawn of a liaison between an American girl and a French Count. The newspapers pick up the story and soon Ward is known on the western front and in the papers back in the U.S. as Duke Cartwright.

Axel Uhler is Wards Doppelganger in the Imperial German Air Service. Easy to recognize because of the green snake coiled three times around the fuselage of his fighter, which is always painted white, Uhler kills several of Wards friends and Ward has sworn to kill the Snake. They meet and fight several times over the Marne and the Somme rivers but each time the German either gets the upper hand or outmaneuvers Ward and escapes.

Meanwhile, back in Paris, Antoinette is fired from hr job when the embassy officials discover that she is pregnant. When Ward sees her at their apartment in Paris, he realizes that she is terrified by the almost nightly Gotha bombing raids so he sends her to have their child at her ancestral home in England. Early in 1917, she dies giving birth to their son.

America enters the war in 1917 and most of the Americans serving with the French transfer to the U.S. Aero Service. One of the exceptions is Lannie Morris who saved Wards life at Artois Ridge and later became histories first black fighter pilot. In spite of having flown at the front for over two years the U.S. Army is not ready to accept the grandson of a slave as an officer and gentleman. They turn him down as physically unfit to fly.

Wards final fight occurs two days before the end of the war when The Duke and The Snake clash over Verdun where they first met. The two aces engage in a fierce and prolonged dogfight high over the raped city with its necklace of cemeteries faceted by the white crosses of almost half a million men. Wounded and with his Spad leaking oil and coolant, Ward finally gets Uhler centered in his ring sight but before he can press the toggles to fire his machine guns Antoinettes voice comes to him from the void telling him to stop. Two days later the Armistice is signed. The killing is over.

There are funny moments in The Legionnaire such as when Ward and his friends stage a fake bomb raid on Arras in order to steal cha