LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE

There are few episodes in American history that match the daring, the reckless courage and the grand adventure of the young American men who flew for France in World War I and were known as the LaFayette Escadrille.

With the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, hundreds of young Americans volunteered to fight for France Some arrived to take part in an epoch-making event; others went for adventure; but for many there was a genuine love of France and its culture, an appreciation of the democratic traditions which the German onslaught seemed to threaten. Most served as ambulance drivers or fought with the French Foreign Legion, which did not affect their citizenship since it required no oath of loyalty to France.

By 1915 a number of American volunteers had made their way into the French Service Aeronautique. A proposal initiated by 28 year-old Norman Prince, son of the enormously wealthy Frederick Prince of Massachusetts, to form a squadron composed entirely of American volunteers initially made little headway with the beleaguered French government. But eventually the idea was seen as a way of encouraging American support for the Allied cause. Meanwhile Prince and two other volunteers barely escaped internment on a visit to New York as complaints arose that their efforts were a violation of American neutrality. As the exploits of the squadron known as the Escadrille Americain began receiving wide coverage in 1916, the German government filed a protest. To defuse the issue, the name of the squadron was changed to the Escadrille LaFayette.

The film LaFayette Escadrille will tell the story of the thirty-eight Americans from radically different backgrounds who would create a legend in the skies over France. Though Norman Prince -- who would be killed in 1916 -- and a number of other Escadrille members came from privilege, most did not. Many had served with the Ambulance Corps; others, including William Thaw -- scion of a wealthy Pittsburgh family and cousin of Harry Thaw, who had shot and killed architect Stanford White -- had fought in lice-filled trenches with the Foreign Legion. Another Legionnaire, Weston Hall, had most recently driven a Paris taxicab and would be kicked out of the Escadrille for, among other things, cheating at cards. Raoul Lufbery, who became America's second ranking 'ace' before falling from his plane in 1918, was a world traveler and airplane mechanic with a grade school education. Other members of the Escadrille would include James Norman Hall, who would co-write The Mutiny on the Bounty; and Edmond Genet, a descendant of the emissary from France whose American visit caused a furor in the 1790s.

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