France. Armée. Légion étrangère; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
=Harold Buckley Willis= was reported killed September 3, 1917, but later
developments proved that, during a combat with German machines, he was
compelled to land on German soil, August 18, and was taken prisoner.
=Rouel Lufbury=, Wallingford, Conn., Foreign Legion, changed to
Aviation, a real cosmopolitan American, for fifteen years roamed the two
hemispheres. Now, crippled by rheumatism, he rides his aerial carriage
and kills German aviators for recreation. He served as a United States
soldier in the Philippines and held the marksmanship record in his
regiment. While engaged in railroad work in India, on refusing to say
“Sir” to a prominent citizen of Bombay, he lost his job just about the
time the P. C. felt the toe of Lufbury’s boot. He traveled in Turkey,
Japan, China, Africa and South America October 12, 1916, the day Norman
Prince was mortally wounded, Lufbury got his fifth Boche machine. By
December, 1917, he had brought down, officially, eighteen. He is the
first American to be awarded the gold medal of the Aero Club of France.
He is also decorated with the Croix de Guerre with six palms; and is a
chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In the spring of 1918, he was
transferred and promoted major in the American Army, and when engaged in
battle, a bullet from the enemy punctured the gasoline tank, and he
jumped from the burning machine to his death.
=Joseph C. Stehlin=, Sheepshead Bay, Long Island, brought down a Boche
machine, when he had only been twenty days in service on the front. He
attacked three enemy machines alone and brought down one with a pilot,
observer, and two guns.
=George Meyer=, Brooklyn, New York, was killed in the Foreign Legion, by
a shell, while waiting for the order to go over the top near Rheims,
April, 1917.
=Robert Arrowsmith=, New Jersey, was wounded in the hip, and lying in
hospital when America entered the war. The wound not healing quickly, he
objected to hospital life, because: “There is so much going on, and so
much work to be done.”
=Dr. David D. Wheeler=, Buffalo, New York, practicing physician, thought
being a doctor in the rear was too much of a shirker’s business. So, he
went into the Legion at the front; and the Legionnaires still talk about
the American, who wore no shirt most of the time, who never unslung his
knapsack en route, who tented alone, who never bent the body or dodged a
bullet, who was supposed killed at the Bois Sabot, but who lived through
it and was found in hospital. Wounded himself seriously, he had cared
for others professionally in “No-Man’s-Land,” while under fire. He was
decorated with the Croix de Guerre, with palm, and mustered out, used
up.
=John Charton=, Foreign Legion, seriously wounded by a machine gun
bullet in the attack on Balloy-en-Santerre, July 4, 1916, after months
in hospital, was sent back as reinforcement to a Zouave Regiment. He
then went into the Aviation at Avord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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