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Do we even remember nothing lasts forever?
My father has been immensely enjoying the LOA's Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight (2011) and directed me in particular toward the sequence of letters excerpted from A Yankee Ace in the RAF: The World War I Letters of Captain Bogart Rogers (1996), which turns out to have been edited and published by one of the children of the letter-writer and the recipient of his letters, who did in fact marry when Rogers returned after the war, the only one of his group of five friends from Los Angeles to survive the Western Front with the Royal Flying Corps. All seven letters in the chapter are interesting, but this one—
[Bellevue]
France
September 4, 1918
Isabelle Dear
Everything's all wrong tonight and the only thing left is to take it out on you. You don't mind if I unload a trouble or two on you, do you, lover? If I can write them to you it's almost the same as being able to tell them to you.
It started yesterday afternoon when in one of the easiest shows we've had in many a day, poor little Jerry Flynn was shot down in flames. A bunch of Huns came down on his flight, and before we could get to him he was gone. Then there was a wicked dogfight everybody getting more or less shot up. Jerry was only a kid and about the most popular person in the squadron. Everyone was pretty much broken up over it, more so than I've ever seen them before.
Last night Green, who was Jerry's best friend (they've been together for ten months) went all to pieces, nerves simply gone. It gets to you to see a boy go like that, for while Green is an old man in the war, he still has his twentieth birthday to celebrate. He's been out here too long, nearly ten months, and will probably go home almost any day now. The C.O. told me told me today that I was to be recommended for his flight, but I doubt if it will go thru. I haven't been out here long enough and haven't done a thing to deserve it.
There are only three flying officers in the squadon who were here when I came. Makes one feel pretty old and experienced. It surely is hell to see them pass by, Id. But the only thing to do is simply to forget that you ever possessed such a thing as an emotion or a nerve and carry on just as if nothing had happened. Is it any wonder that fellows go to pieces?
Good night, lover. I always wish terribly that I might be able to say it some other way than with a pen, even without any words at all. But—c'est la guerre.
Love
Bo
I thought I'd just read the God-damned synopsis for The Dawn Patrol (1930) in real time. The more detailed version included further after the fact in "The Startling Truth About War Flyers" in the December 1930 issue of Popular Aviation did little to change my mind except for dropping Only Angels Have Wings (1939) on top of it: "If your best friend was shot down you masked a breaking heart by declaring he was a damn fool who should have had better sense." (Who's Joe? Anybody know a Joe?) Thus it makes a certain amount of sense that Rogers was one of the co-writers and producers of The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), although he was also a writer and producer on a couple of pictures that make no sense whatsoever, most notably—as evidence just check out the musical numbers with Elisha Cook Jr. and Robert McClung—Pigskin Parade (1936). An early investor in the photo-finish camera, too, the internet informs me. And a record of something that I know through fiction, where it became a trope not only because it was reified onscreen but because it had happened too often in life. I haven't even gotten to the chapter excerpted from the memoirs of Ernest K. Gann.
[Bellevue]
France
September 4, 1918
Isabelle Dear
Everything's all wrong tonight and the only thing left is to take it out on you. You don't mind if I unload a trouble or two on you, do you, lover? If I can write them to you it's almost the same as being able to tell them to you.
It started yesterday afternoon when in one of the easiest shows we've had in many a day, poor little Jerry Flynn was shot down in flames. A bunch of Huns came down on his flight, and before we could get to him he was gone. Then there was a wicked dogfight everybody getting more or less shot up. Jerry was only a kid and about the most popular person in the squadron. Everyone was pretty much broken up over it, more so than I've ever seen them before.
Last night Green, who was Jerry's best friend (they've been together for ten months) went all to pieces, nerves simply gone. It gets to you to see a boy go like that, for while Green is an old man in the war, he still has his twentieth birthday to celebrate. He's been out here too long, nearly ten months, and will probably go home almost any day now. The C.O. told me told me today that I was to be recommended for his flight, but I doubt if it will go thru. I haven't been out here long enough and haven't done a thing to deserve it.
There are only three flying officers in the squadon who were here when I came. Makes one feel pretty old and experienced. It surely is hell to see them pass by, Id. But the only thing to do is simply to forget that you ever possessed such a thing as an emotion or a nerve and carry on just as if nothing had happened. Is it any wonder that fellows go to pieces?
Good night, lover. I always wish terribly that I might be able to say it some other way than with a pen, even without any words at all. But—c'est la guerre.
Love
Bo
I thought I'd just read the God-damned synopsis for The Dawn Patrol (1930) in real time. The more detailed version included further after the fact in "The Startling Truth About War Flyers" in the December 1930 issue of Popular Aviation did little to change my mind except for dropping Only Angels Have Wings (1939) on top of it: "If your best friend was shot down you masked a breaking heart by declaring he was a damn fool who should have had better sense." (Who's Joe? Anybody know a Joe?) Thus it makes a certain amount of sense that Rogers was one of the co-writers and producers of The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), although he was also a writer and producer on a couple of pictures that make no sense whatsoever, most notably—as evidence just check out the musical numbers with Elisha Cook Jr. and Robert McClung—Pigskin Parade (1936). An early investor in the photo-finish camera, too, the internet informs me. And a record of something that I know through fiction, where it became a trope not only because it was reified onscreen but because it had happened too often in life. I haven't even gotten to the chapter excerpted from the memoirs of Ernest K. Gann.
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All the letters are this well-written, just about different things. He lived into his late sixties. His wife kept his letters until she died at the age of a hundred and two.
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Oh my HEART
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*hugs*
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He gets immediately arrested for throwing the brick through the bank window.
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It surely is hell to see them pass by, Id. But the only thing to do is simply to forget that you ever possessed such a thing as an emotion or a nerve and carry on just as if nothing had happened. Is it any wonder that fellows go to pieces?
This is really insightful, too - the only way to deal with losing friends right and left is just not to process it at all, which is part of what makes people eventually fall apart in that situation.
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Me, too. The introduction in Into the Blue kindly included his dates so I knew straight off.
This is really insightful, too - the only way to deal with losing friends right and left is just not to process it at all, which is part of what makes people eventually fall apart in that situation.
He reads thoughtfully as well as candidly. I wonder if he was doing as much as processing as was safe, writing to Isabelle. "It's all so terrible that I can't realize it, dear," he says in June 1918. I've ordered the collected letters.
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You're welcome! It was so striking to me.
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(You can probably guess why I was watching it.)
I hope you enjoy the full book! It sounds like it ought to be good.
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I have not seen A Piece of Cake, but I have seen The Way to the Stars, and the template was distressingly familiar.
(You can probably guess why I was watching it.)
(How far into the war does he make it?)
I hope you enjoy the full book! It sounds like it ought to be good.
Thank you! I will probably report back in some fashion when it arrives.
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That cast list has enough People You Like in that I can't even be sure which one brought you there. How great! XD
(How far into the war does he make it?)
He makes it to the Battle of Britain, or just a bit short of the main day. (I forgot I did mention that one before, didn't I, because I was laughing about him being singled out as the pretty one by the CO. Given a bunch of young actors, they were all fairly pretty!) Weirdly, he is the only one of the main cast who is hardly ever in the flying sequences, so I knew when they were actually showing him it would not end well, and it did not. :-(
Thank you! I will probably report back in some fashion when it arrives.
Enjoy. Er, you know what I mean. :-)
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You see why I had to share.
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I see that the BPL has A Yankee Ace in the RAF, but also that it's for in-library use at Central only. Worth contemplating for sometime, at least...
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You're welcome! It was a bit like being punched.
I see that the BPL has A Yankee Ace in the RAF, but also that it's for in-library use at Central only. Worth contemplating for sometime, at least...
I actually went and ordered a secondhand copy for myself (and my father). If you want to hit up the BPL, though, on the strength of what I read I wouldn't stop you!