Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I had an awful tragedy when I was young. My mother died of quick consumption, and I was left with four siblings. Father turned down all the aunts and uncles who wanted to take me away, saying we would fight it out together. #2 I had two horses, a dark bay named Shoefly, and a sorrel named Kid. I loved riding them, and I spent my vacation time watching my brother Bud break horses to ride. I was growing too slowly, and time was passing slower. #3 The King boys were great fun to be with. They could have left me holding the bag, but they told their mother, who was able to handle their father. The horse was never the same after being sprayed with the liquid. #4 My uncle Sam was a favorite uncle of mine. He was always so happy, and he enjoyed life. He would take a plug of chewing tobacco out of his pocket and bite off a big chew. This didn’t smell bad like whiskey, but was pretty and brown like the crust of Sally’s pies. I wanted to try it.

" From breaking wild horses in Colorado to fighting the Red Baron's squadrons in the skies over France, here in his own words is the true story of a forgotten American hero: the cowboy who became our first ace and the first pilot to fly the American colors over enemy lines.Growing up on a ranch in Sterling, Colorado, Frederick Libby mastered the cowboy arts of roping, punching cattle, and taming horses. Once he even roped an antelope. As a young man he exercised his skills in the mountains and on the ranges of Arizona and New Mexico as well as the Colorado prairie. When World War I broke out, he found himself in Calgary, Alberta, and joined the Canadian army. In France, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an "observer," the gunner in a two-person biplane. Libby shot down an enemy plane on his first day in battle over the Somme, which was also the first day he flew in a plane or fired a machine gun. He went on to become a pilot. He fought against the legendary German aces Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen. He became the first American to down five enemy planes and won the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in action. When the United States entered the war, he became the first person to fly the American colors over German lines. Libby achieved the rank of captain before he transferred back to the United States at the behest of another aviation legend, then-colonel Billy Mitchell. Written in 1961 and never before published, Horses Don't Fly is a rare piece of Americana. Libby's memoir of his cowboy days in the last years of the Old West will remind readers of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy-but it's the real thing. His description of World War I combines a rattling good account of the air war over France with captivating and sometimes poignant depictions of wartime London, the sorrow for friends lost in combat, and the courage and camaraderie of the Royal Flying Corps. Told in a modest, self-deprecating, and often humorous voice in a pure American vernacular, Horses Don't Fly is, as Winston Groom notes in his introduction, "not only an important piece of previously unpublished history [but] a gripping and uplifting story to read."

From breaking wild horses in Colorado to fighting the Red Baron's squadrons in the skies over France, here in his own words is the true story of a forgotten American hero: the cowboy who became our first ace and the first pilot to fly the American colors over enemy lines. Growing up on a ranch in Sterling, Colorado, Frederick Libby mastered the cowboy arts of roping, punching cattle, and taming horses. As a young man he exercised his skills in the mountains and on the ranges of Arizona and New Mexico as well as the Colorado prairie. When World War I broke out, he found himself in Calgary, Alberta, and joined the Canadian army. In France, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an "observer," the gunner in a two-person biplane. Libby shot down an enemy plane on his first day in battle over the Somme, which was also the first day he flew in a plane or fired a machine gun. He went on to become a pilot. He fought against the legendary German aces Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen, and became the first American to down five enemy planes. He won the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in action. Libby's memoir of his cowboy days in the last years of the Old West evokes a real-life Cormac McCarthy novel. His description of World War I combines a rattling good account of the air war over France with captivating and sometimes poignant depictions of wartime London, the sorrow for friends lost in combat, and the courage and camaraderie of the Royal Flying Corps. Told in charming, straightforward vernacular, Horses Don't Fly is an unforgettable piece of Americana.

A biography of the young, London-born, World War I pilot who was the first to be shot down by the legendary Red Baron. Nineteen-year-old Lionel Morris left the infantry for the wood and wires of the Royal Flying Corps on the Western Front in 1916, joining one of the world’s first fighter units alongside the great ace Albert Ball. Learning on the job, in dangerously unpredictable machines, Morris came of age as a combat pilot on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, as the R.F.C. was winning a bloody struggle for admiralty of the air. As summer faded to autumn and the skies over Bapaume filled with increasing numbers of enemy aircraft, the tide turned. On 17 September 1916, Morris’s squadron was attacked by a lethally efficient German unit, including an unknown pilot called Manfred von Richthofen. As the shock waves spread from the empty hangars of No.11 Squadron all the way to the very top of the British Army, the circumstances surrounding Morris’s death marked a pivotal shift in the aerial war, and the birth of its greatest legend. Told through previously unpublished archive material, the words of contemporaries, and official records, Lionel Morris and the Red Baron traces a short but extraordinary life and reveals how Morris’s role in history was rediscovered one hundred years after his death. Praise for Lionel Morris and the Red Baron “The best written World War I aviation history account this reviewer has read in some time . . . has earned the highest recommendation.” —Over the Front “This is a book that deserves to be read.” —The Aviation Historian

A fascinating, photo-rich exploration of early aviation in Canada, told through the backstories of pilots who flew, fought, and risked their lives in the First World War, through the interwar period, and beyond. In Our Youth explores the lives of thirty-two young Canadian military and civilian flyers, viewed through the medium of archival photography. All of these young men were pilots in the First World War, a time when flying was pure adventure and danger. Some of them were from humble origins, some from elite families, some became heroes, one was cowardly, and most have now faded from our attention. However, all embraced the romance of flight and the danger of war. Although much of the book is focused on military experiences—including the mental stress and injuries faced by pilots who had barely reached adulthood—the book looks beyond war, examining the fascinating world of civilian aviation from 1908 to 1941. Featuring long-hidden photography uncovered from provincial archives, confidential military records, and precious family collections, this book covers the lives of many young Canadians who made important contributions as they flew and fought in what seem today to be the flimsiest of machines.

The 1914-18 conflict narrated through the voices of the men whose combat was in the air. 'This moving book uses letters and diaries to evoke the terrible cost of such warfare...Sleepless nights, separated lovers and grieving parents are recalled with painful immediacy in this meticulously researched tribute to those who died or were lucky enough to survive' DAILY MAIL The empty chairs belonged, all too briefly, to the doomed young First World War airmen who failed to return from the terrifying daily aerial combats above the trenches of the Western Front. The edict of their commander-in-chief was the missing aviators were to be immediately replaced. Before the new faces could arrive, the departed men's vacant seats at the squadron dinner table were sometimes poignantly occupied by their caps and boots, placed there in a sad ritual by their surviving colleagues as they drank to their memory. Life for most of the pilots of the Royal Flying Corps was appallingly short. If they graduated alive and unmaimed from the flying training that killed more than half of them before they reached the front line, only a few would for very long survive the daily battles they fought over the ravaged moonscape of no-man's-land. Their average life expectancy at the height of the war was measured only in weeks. Parachutes that began to save their German enemies were denied them. Fear of incarceration, and the daily spectacle of watching close colleagues die in burning aircraft, took a devastating toll on the nerves of the world's first fighter pilots. Many became mentally ill. As they waited for death, or with luck the survivable wound that would send them back to 'Blighty', they poured their emotions into their diaries and streams of letters to their loved ones at home. Drawing on these remarkable testimonies and pilots' memoirs, Ian Mackersey has brilliantly reconstructed the First Great Air War through the lives of its participants. As they waited to die, the men shared their loneliness, their fears, triumphs - and squadron gossip - with the families who lived in daily dread of the knock on the door that would bring the War Office telegram in its fateful green envelope.

An action-packed military biography of a British fighter pilot and his rise through ranks during World War I. World War I pilot Albert Ball’s invincible courage and determination made him a legend not only in Britain but also amongst his enemies, to whom the sight of his lone Nieuport Scout brought fear. Ball enlisted in the British army in 1914 with the 2/7th Battalion (Robin Hoods) of the Sherwood Foresters, Notts, and Derby Regiment. By October, 1914, he had reached the rank of Sergeant and then became Second-Lieutenant to his own battalion in the same month. In June, 1915, he trained as a pilot in Hendon. Then in October, he obtained Royal Aero Club Certificate and was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He further trained at Norwich and Upavon, being awarded the pilot’s brevet in January, 1916. In May, he opened his score, shooting down an Albatros C-type over Beaumont. Days later he shot down two LVG C-types, while flying his Nieuport 5173. Captain Albert Ball made his final flight on May 7, 1917, when he flew as part of an eleven-strong hunting patrol into action against Jagdstaffel 11, led by Lothar Von Richthofen. Albert was pursuing the Albatros Scout of Lothar, who crash-landed, wounded. Then many witnessed Albert dive out of a cloud and crash. He died minutes later in the arms of a French girl, Madame Cecille Deloffre. Ball rose from obscurity to the top rank of contemporary fighter pilots in only 15 months. In that period, he had been awarded the MC, DSO, and two Bars, and was credited with at least 44 victories.