Dawson, Coningsby,
CARRY ON: LETTERS IN
WAR-TIME.
John Lane Company., 1927. VG. A tight, clean copy. Gilt lettering
on
cover & spine moderately faded. Minimal wear to book. 133 pages.
Ads in back. Pencil inscription by original owner on front and
rear
flyleafs, dated 1917.
~~~ Letters of Canadian artillery officer in
France
and Flanders to April, 1917.
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Libby, Frederick,
HORSES DON'T FLY:
A Memoir of World War I.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket.
(Arcade Publishing, 2000).
274 pages.
~~~ 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".
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Steele, Harwood,
THE CANADIANS IN FRANCE 1915-1918.
NEW copy, Battery Press: 2003 reprint of original 1920 edition. 8 maps, 362 pages.
~~~
This history of the Canadian Army Corps provides detailed coverage of the four Canadian divisions on the Western Front. There are chapters on the Canadians at Second Ypres, Festubert, Givenchy, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendale, Amiens, Cambrai and Mons. Due to copyright restrictions, this book is available to U.S. residents only. This is a 200 copy limited edition reprint.
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