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In the summer of 1917, more than two hundred American men volunteered for service in England's Royal Flying Corps, where they would be trained to fly with the Allies until American squadrons could be organized. John MacGavock Grider, assigned to Royal Air Force Number 85 Squadron, flying SE-5a pursuit planes, was shot down and killed some twenty miles behind German lines in the summer of 1918. He was not a hero, nor were his training and combat experiences much different from those of his fellow pilots. He is set apart only by the records he kept of his experiences during that year. This is Grider's story, but in telling it he encompasses the opinions and prejudices, the successes and failures, the lives and deaths of those 210 volunteers. He details the rigors of training, the terrors of combat, and the respite of social activities. Of this group, fifty-two were killed in training or in combat, thirty were wounded, fourteen became prisoners of war, and twenty dropped out of training under the mental pressures of combat flying. After the war, many of these pilots returned home without rank or medals, suffering by comparison with the much-decorated pilots from the American front. This book is not an attempt to make heroes of these men, but rather to tell the story of one man and his friends, who fought for the United States in World War I as guests of an ally in a strange land.
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Justin Perry
reviewed War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator on June 21, 2013
War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator
First person memoirs provide some of the most informative and interesting insights into the nuts and bolts of serving in the Armed Forces in wartime. Spencer Wurst weaves such a compelling tale. Joining the 28th Infantry Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard at the age of 15 before the outbreak of hostilities, he had two solid years of military experience when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. In the rapid expansion of the Army that was to follow, he was made an NCO and training instructor in the 112th Infantry Regiment.
Disenchanted at the low quality of the draftees he was charged to train and the bureaucracy of the Army that prevented him from a desired transfer overseas, he volunteered for both the paratroopers and for OCS. He was determined to accept whichever transfer was approved first and thus became a paratrooper.
Wurst takes the reader through his training at the Parachute School at Fort Benning, Georgia and through his early assignments in various stateside paratrooper units. Still desiring an overseas assignment and making a nuisance of himself in the process, he was eventually transferred to the 82nd Airborne Division just as it shipped out to North Africa in 1943.
He was assigned to a "casual" unit that would serve as replacements for the first casualties suffered by the division. As such he missed the Sicilian Campaign but was ultimately assigned to F Company, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. From that point on, Wurst was in the middle of the action. With three combat jumps and two Purple Hearts, he served bravely in Italy, Normandy, Holland and the Battle of the Bulge. He was an NCO and a grizzled combat leader before the age of 20.
This is a poignant story with a great deal of "inside baseball" about how the paratrooper brass and the men functioned throughout the War. It is also a tale of commitment, dedication and love of country. Only America can produce fine young men to fight its battles with the humility of the likes of Spencer Wurst.
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