photo1t.png James R. McConnell Who having lost a splendid son in the French Army has given to a great number of us other Americans in the war the tender sympathy and help of a mother. One day in January, 1915, I saw Jim McConnell in front of the Court House at Carthage, North Carolina. "Well," he said, "I'm all fixed up and am leaving on Wednesday." "Where for?" I asked. "I've got a job to drive an ambulance in France," was his answer. And then he went on to tell me, first, that as he saw it

Beneath the canvas of a huge hangar mechanicians are at work on the motor of an airplane. Outside, on the borders of an aviation field, others loiter awaiting their aërial charge's return from the sky. Near the hangar stands a hut-shaped tent. In front of it several short-winged biplanes are lined up; inside it three or four young men are lolling in wicker chairs. They wear the uniform of French army aviators. These uniforms, and the grim-looking machine guns mounted on the upper planes of the l

On the 12th of October, twenty small airplanes flying in a V formation, at such a height they resembled a flock of geese, crossed the river Rhine, where it skirts the plains of Alsace, and, turning north, headed for the famous Mauser works at Oberndorf. Following in their wake was an equal number of larger machines, and above these darted and circled swift fighting planes. The first group of aircraft was flown by British pilots, the second by French and three of the fighting planes by Americans

We're still waiting for our machines. In the meantime the Boches sail gaily over and drop bombs. One of our drivers has been killed and five wounded so far but we'll put a stop to it soon. The machines have left and are due to-day. You ask me what my work will be and how my machine is armed. First of all I mount an avion de chasse and am supposed to shoot down Boches or keep them away from over our lines. I do not do observation, or regulating of artillery fire. These are handled by escadrilles

France now has thousands of men training to become military aviators, and the flying schools, of which there is a very great number, are turning out pilots at an astounding rate. The process of training a man to be a pilot aviator naturally varies in accordance with the type of machine on which he takes his first instruction, and so the methods of the various schools depend on the apparatus upon which they teach an élève pilote --as an embryonic aviator is called--to fly. In the case of the larg

Since the publication of previous editions of "Flying for France" we have obtained the following letters which add greatly to the interest and complete the record of McConnell's connection with the Lafayette Escadrille.    ...

March 19, 1917.      DEAR PAUL: We are passing through some very interesting times. The boches are in full retreat, offering very little resistance to the English and French advance. The boches have systematically destroyed all the towns and villages abandoned. Where they haven't burned a house, they have made holes through the roofs with pickaxes. All the cross-roads are blown up at the junctions, and when the trees bordering the roads haven't been cut down, barricading the roads, they have bee