Horses Don't Fly: A Memoir of World War I Book

When I was a lad I used to love being in the presence of men like Libby. There were a lot of them around in the fifties, veterans of both global conflicts and Korea; lumberjacks, cowboys and farmers who signed up to face whatever seemed to be threatening the empire. I even knew a couple of Boer war veterans. Without exception, these chaps signed up voluntarily to go over and do their bit. They were real men with the bark on, tough in a way that comes only from deprivation and toil. Their strength came from hard work, and most would be disdainful of the perfumed poofery and posturing of a modern gym. I loved their stories and I'm afraid I could be a bit of a nuisance in trying to coax more tales out of them.

Libby was one of these hard men. He started life as a cowboy in Colorado, and broke tough broncs for top pay, often working alone many miles from the closest neighbor. When he had companions, they would often be fellows who had it in their best interest to avoid towns or any other place that employed a lawman. He cared little for cash and was easily separated from it by folly or friendship. These were the days when friendship was a tangible thing and a fellow could spend from his friends' wallets as freely as he could from his own.

Libby ultimately decided to cast his loop further afield. He found himself in Canada and was promptly swindled out of his stake (by an American, I hasten to state), which was one of the contributing factors to joining a transport battalion in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, in spite of the fact that he had never driven anything that didn't have a horse hitched to it. Libby, in effect, declared war on Germany several years before the rest of his homeland.

Once overseas, our hero found himself manning a machine-gun as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps. He would eventually become a pilot and rise to the rank of Captain. He was one of the first Americans in action, preceding the exploits of the Lafayette Squadron. Without ruining the book by going into too much detail, I can tell you that this amazing man actually served in the military forces of three sovereign states during the same conflict. His exploits could fill several volumes with no requirement for fluff or filler.

This book might not be a great work technically; Libby has a homey style and uses an awkward sentence structure that can be mildly annoying after a while, but he gets full marks for telling a whopping good tale. My biggest beef is that the book could easily have been a little thicker: I would have loved to have coaxed a couple more tales from the good Captain. We owe it to these men to read their memoirs...they are all gone now and it seems like we're not making any more like them.