Heroes of the Great War Echoe of Eagles by means of Charles Woolley with Bill Crawford (Dutton.

Heroes of the Great War

Echoe of Eagles by means of Charles Woolley with Bill Crawford (Dutton, $2495) was published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight and is a rousing chronicle of American air combat during the First World War.

In 1917 Charles H Woolley the author's father, enlisted and trained as a pilot with the newly created US Air Service. He and his equal pilots of the 94th, 95th and 49th Aero Squadrons - including Teddy Roosevelt's youngest son Quentin, and Sumner Sewall, a time to come governor of Maine -flew at 20000-ft in spread cockpit French biplanes with death as their constant companion. The work takes the reader into the cockpits of these fighters and into the vital principles of the men who fought for their rural parts in a new environment - the air. It is also the story of their lives forward the ground - the grit of dirty airfields and the frustration of fickle airplanes balanced by means of the glamour, the women, and the champagne of Paris.

From tales of dogfighting with German aces to strafing enemy trenches, the trap describes the risks and dangers of flight, feats of incredible heroism and acts of stunning cowardice, and the camaraderie among men dedicated to a general goal. Based on diaries and epistles and never-before-published interviews with the pilots themselves, this account of America's first fighter pilots is also a son's tribute to his father.

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