My grandfather, Alden Sherry was an aviator in WWI, flying SPAD-13 bi-planes with the 94th Aero Squadron of Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, flying daily sorties against the "Flying Circus" of Baron Manfred von Richthofen, also known as the Red Baron.
He had to drive before he could fly. When he told his mother at 17 that he wanted to leave Cornell and join the Marines, she refused. So he volunteered to be an ambulance driver for the Red Cross instead. By February 1916, he was driving an ammunition truck at the Battle of Verdun.
He may have joined the ranks of US volunteer pilots in the "Lafayette Escadrille," which was officially part of the French military until the US entered the war in April 1917. At that point, it became the 94th U.S. Army Aero Squadron, known as the "Hat-in-the-Ring Squadron" for its distinctive insignia.
During the war, Sherry developed a lifetime friendship with Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, the top American ace who became head of the Army Air Corps in WWII, and called Sherry back into service. As a staff officer and Rickenbacker's personal pilot, he traveled everywhere from North Africa to Moscow on high-level missions, experiencing a very different war from his eldest son, who was an Army infantryman.
I'd like to do more research on this someday. Materials available include:
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