RETRO FILES / LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE JOINS THE FREY

 

AMERICAN FLYBOYS FREELANCE FOR FRENCH

Before the United States officially entered World War I, a small group of American volunteer pilots crossed the Atlantic to fight for France. They became known as the Lafayette Escadrille, one of the most celebrated combat flying units of the First World War.

The squadron was officially formed on April 20, 1916. At the time, America was still neutral, but many young Americans believed France was fighting for civilization itself. Some volunteers came from wealthy families. Others were adventurers or idealists. All understood they might never return. 

Originally the unit was called the Escadrille Américaine. Germany protested the name, arguing it implied official American involvement in the war. To avoid diplomatic trouble, France renamed the squadron after the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero who helped America during the Revolutionary War. 

The symbolism was perfect. Lafayette had once sailed west to help America. Now Americans sailed east to help France. The unit was organized largely through the efforts of Norman Prince, a wealthy Boston pilot, and Dr. Edmund Gros, an American living in Paris. 

France desperately needed trained aviators, and the volunteers arrived at a time when military aviation was still experimental, dangerous, and wildly unpredictable. The Lafayette pilots flew lightweight French fighters called Nieuports. Built of wood, wire, and stretched fabric, the aircraft were fast but fragile. 

Pilots sat in open cockpits exposed to freezing air, engine oil, and enemy fire. Parachutes were not standard equipment. 

The Escadrille saw first combat during the terrible Battle of Verdun on May 13, 1916, one of the bloodiest battles in human history. While millions fought and died in trenches below, the Lafayette pilots carried out reconnaissance missions, bomber escorts, and aerial combat high above the battlefield. 

Among the 38 original members of the Lafayette Escadrille (with French unit commander, Capt. Georges Thenault, center) pose in front of a Nieuport bi-plane are left to right: James McConnell, Kiffin Rockwell, Norman Prince and Victor Chapman. None of the Yanks lived beyond 1917--all dying in aerial combat. WikiCommons.

The Yanks quickly became international celebrities. Newspapers loved their daring image and romantic reputation. They drank hard, posed for photographs beside their planes, and became symbols of youthful courage before America officially joined the war. 

But the danger was very real. 

In May 1916, Victor Chapman became the first Lafayette pilot killed in combat. Norman Prince later died after injuries suffered in a crash landing. The unit’s most famous ace, Raoul Lufbery, became one of the war’s legendary fighter pilots before eventually dying in combat after America entered the war. 

When the United States officially entered World War I in April 1917, many Lafayette pilots transferred into the new U.S. Army Air Service. 

First ace: William Thaw II survived his stint with the Escadrille's four-year history.  Credited as of of the unit's first to fly in combat.  Also credited with being first pilot to fly under all NYC's East River bridges.

By early 1918, the Lafayette Escadrille ceased operating as a separate French unit. Its legend only grew afterward. The larger organization of American volunteer flyers became known as the Lafayette Flying Corps. 

Films, books, and memorials celebrated their bravery for decades after the war ended. 

Today their tiny airplanes look impossibly delicate beside modern aircraft. Yet those young Americans willingly climbed into them over Verdun’s burning skies long before their own country officially entered the war. America had not yet donated soldiers. 

WBut it had already donated wings.

Robert Soubiran was an early combat fighter with the American unit Lafayette Escadrille.  Unique Indian artwork was used to readily ID the Nieuport bi-planes.  Note Lewis machine gun on the top wing.  Reloading was tricky as the pilot had to stand in the cockpit to replace the canister.

MEDIA MONDAY / OAKLAND CA HOMICIDE RATE PLUMMETS. HOW?

Oakland Ceasefire-Lifeline life coach LaSasha Long, left, puts her arm around Bernard C. during an interview Thursday, April 23, 2026, in Oakland, Calif. 
(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) 

GUEST BLOG / BY JANIE HAR, ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER--Young men at risk of succumbing to gang violence slump over tables in an Oakland church. With them are prosecutors, clergy and survivors of shootings determined to show them they have more to look forward to than incarceration, injury or death. 

The message is not one of punishment but of unceasing support. The men start to perk up. 

“We’re going to talk about keeping you and those you love alive and free,” Jim Hopkins, emeritus pastor of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, says he told the men who gather at his church. “If you put down the gun, start taking the (city’s) services, we’ll help you find another way.” 

The California city has driven homicides to historic lows, and experts say part of the credit goes to a program that identifies people who are most likely to get pulled into gang violence and pairs them with life coaches to help turn their lives around. 

City officials meet weekly to review recent shootings and identify the participants. The city’s Department of Violence Prevention finds and talks to those people, one-on-one or in a group session at the church, and offers a host of services, including a life coach. There is no single reason why a city’s homicide rate falls, but officials say the Oakland Ceasefire-Lifeline program has been key, making a difference one person at a time. 

 Oakland records lowest homicide rate since the ‘60s Homicides rates have plummeted in major cities across the U.S. in recent years but the shift in Oakland has been particularly dramatic. Homicide rates have not been this low in the city of roughly 400,000 people since 1967, when the Black Panthers were a powerful force and hippies overran nearby San Francisco for the Summer of Love. 

For nearly 25 years, Oakland ranked among the nation’s most dangerous cities. City police recorded annual homicide rates ranging from 16.2 up to 36.4 deaths per 100,000 people, while the U.S. rate hovered around five per 100,000. 

Oakland adopted the lifeline program, which originated in Boston, after gun violence in 2011 took the lives of three children ages 1, 3 and 5 in separate incidents. 

The city recorded a 43% reduction in homicides from 2012 to 2017. Officials subsequently watered the program down until it was essentially dismantled during the pandemic, according to an audit in 2023. 

It wasn’t until city officials implemented changes recommended in the audit that the number of homicides declined, from 118 in 2023 to 78 in 2024. 

Last year, Oakland hit a record low of 57 homicides. 

Oakland Ceasefire-Lifeline life coach LaSasha Long, left, laughs with Bernard C. during an interview in Oakland, CA (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) 

Meeting people whose lives were changed by violence Police are not involved except to provide the names of people expected to retaliate for a shooting that wounded or killed a friend or relative, or to be a victim of retaliation. “People may underestimate how little the clients believe in themselves, and how little they value their own lives,” said Holly Joshi, chief of the violence prevention department. 

Once selected, the men meet or learn of people whose lives have been forever changed by gang violence, such as parents who have lost a child, or someone left paralyzed able to communicate only by clicking their tongue. 

Last year, Bernard, a 27-year-old former gang member, was among 200 people matched with a life coach. He was contacted as he was leaving prison after serving six years for attempted robbery. 

Today, he has a full-time job, an apartment and a new outlook. He’s more aware of community ties, he says. “When I was younger, I didn’t realize I wasn’t only hurting myself. I was hurting everybody around me, everybody who cared for me,” said Bernard, who asked that his last name not be used because he fears sharing his background could hurt his future opportunities. 

Ready to turn his life around At first, Bernard was standoffish with his life coach, 35-year-old LaSasha Long. But then the young man who missed his mother’s funeral because he was still behind bars when she died suffered another loss. A close childhood friend had died. He had to talk to someone. “As soon as I called Sasha, she was there with advice,” he says. Long understood. She had a chaotic upbringing, bouncing between relatives after a stray bullet killed her mother when she was a toddler. She told him what she felt would have helped her move forward: That he’d lost a lot, but had a lot to live for too. And she reminded him his friend would have wanted him to live. 

He listened. 

“I can’t take the credit for it because it was all him. He was the pilot,” she says, adding that she helped with rides and reminded him of upcoming appointments. “But he wanted to change. He wanted that.” Now, they chat on the phone every day. He makes goofy faces at her while posing for photographs for The Associated Press. She says she’ll be the best man at his wedding one day. He says she’s not a man. She says he hasn’t seen how good she looks in a suit. Long describes life coaching as “heart work,” helping someone see light in a dark tunnel. 

Wanting to inspire others Bernard aspires to be like Long one day, a coach who can offer a lifeline to others who grew up surrounded by violence and with bills to pay. 

His mother was loving but addicted to drugs. His father was in and out of jail. He has discovered the joy of helping people. On a recent day, Bernard was on break from his job cleaning streets in San Francisco when he saw a teen crash his bike. 

The old him would not have rushed over, much less reassured the embarrassed boy that everyone falls sometimes. But Bernard helped wash the gravel burn on the boy’s face and told him jokingly: “Tell your girl you got jumped.” 

“All some of us need is to see or know that people care,” he said. “Once people realize that, I believe they start to do better, they want to do better. They figure there’s more to life.”