Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
hierarchies?… Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans…
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the horrific slaughter of World War I came to a stop, 92 years ago today. We like that symmetry: it’s a kind of poetry.
When I was a child reading about that war, I focused on its new weapon, the airplane. The English Sopwith Camel, the German Fokker (oh, the fun we young boys had with that), and the French Spad — made originally of wood and cloth and wires — were beautiful, deadly and fragile, an irresistible combination. Americans came in too late to be the real stars, so, like Snoopy in Peanuts, I unpatriotically admired the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, who shot down 80 Allied planes, and the French pilot René Fonck, who nailed 75 German aircraft (and, unlike Richtofen, survived the war). I was also drawn to stories about another French ace, Paul Tarascon (22 “kills”), who had a foot amputated after a crash and was known as “l’as la jambe de bois” — the ace with a wooden leg. While reading about him, I’d sometime get up and limp around the room, getting ready for my future adventures.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2010.