The War To End All Wars

I'm assuming from the lack of comments or hits on my blog, that there is a lack of interest in what went down during  WWI, or how the first battle of the war went. Actually the Battle of Mons was similar to the fight between Allie and Sonny Liston. The only difference was that the battle lasted longer than the fight and the British were not knocked out. Sooo maybe it was more like the Allie vs Foreman donnybrook.

Today I met Roland Gilliam who owns an airfield that is named after James McConnell.

So who is this McConnell guy? Will, he was an American that sailed to France to on January 1915 to enlist with the American Ambulance Corps in France. OK, why would someone name an airfield after an ambulance driver? The answer is...they didn't

After serving as an ambulance driver for a while, he decided to become an aviator. Perhaps he changed careers because the sky is less muddy, or at the time, less people shooting at you.

McConnell joined the French Lafayette Escadrille and on May 13, 1916, McConnell participated in the unit's first patrol. The unit was operating from Luxeuil Field in eastern France. Each day at dawn thirty-eight pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille would set off  in their Nieuport biplanes to fly patrol for two hours. They looked magnificent clad in fur-lined outfits, at least they looked better than the animal that donated the fur.

At this point in the war planes were not yet equipped with machine guns. The only weapons at the pilots disposal were hand held machine guns that were designed for infantry. So it must have been a sight to behold watching pilots shooting at each other while firing a machine gun with one hand and  flying the plane with the other hand. Sort of make me wonder how many new pilots shot themselves down?

McConnell died on March 19, 1917 during aerial combat with two German planes. He was shot down over the Somme battlefields and was buried in a meadow between the villages of Flavy-le-Martel and Jussy in Aisne, France.

THE REST OF THE STORY

A monument erected to McConnell is located in his home town of Carthage, North Carolina. It bears an inscription reading in part, "He fought for Humanity, Liberty and Democracy, lighted the way for his countrymen and showed all men how to dare nobly and to die gloriously. Guess where the monument is? You guessed it, close to the runway at the Gilliam-McConnell airfield.