Gervais Raoul Victor Lufbery was a French-born American aviator. He was considered to have been the first American “ace”.
Background
Gervais Raoul Victor Lufbery was born on March 21, 1885 in Clermont, department of Oise, France. His father, Edward, was a United States citizen, born in New York; his mother, Annette Vessières, was French. The latter died when Raoul was young, his father married again and went to the United States, and the child, with two brothers, was brought up by his grandmother.
Education
Lufbery studied at the aviation school at Chartres.
Career
As a youth Lufbery worked in a chocolate factory at Blois and in a factory at Clermont-Ferrand. When he was about nineteen he started out to see the world and thereafter lived a roving life. He made his way to Algiers, then visited Tunis, Egypt, Turkey, the Balkans, and Germany, supporting himself by whatever work he was able to secure. In Constantinople he was a waiter in a restaurant; in Hamburg he found employment with a steamship company. In 1906 he appeared in Wallingford, Connecticut, where his father had established himself, but the latter, his second wife having died, had left his family there and gone to France. For two years Raoul worked in the silver shops of the town, and then set out for new adventures. Cuba was his first destination; later he was a baker in New Orleans and a hotel waiter in San Francisco. In the last-named place he enlisted in the United States Army and was sent to the Philippines. His term of service over, he went to Japan, from there to China, and finally to India, where for a time he was a ticket collector in the Bombay Railroad station.
During all his wanderings he had never been more than a week out of work. In Calcutta he met Marc Pourpe, a French aviator who was giving exhibition flights, and became his mechanic. The two were in France to secure a new machine when the World War began. Pourpe enlisted in the air service and Lufbery in the Foreign Legion, but he was shortly permitted to transfer to aviation and served as Pourpe's mechanic. When the latter was killed, December 1914, Lufbery determined to become a pilot. He saw service as a pilot in the Voisin Bombardment Squadron 106. On May 24, 1916, having qualified as a pilote de chasse, he joined the Escadrille Lafayette. Fearless, and handling his plane with superb mastery and ease, he was soon cordially acknowledged by his comrades to be the best of them all. There was no love of the spectacular or heroic in him, only keen zest for flying and simple devotion to his work.
He was promoted to adjutant and on January 10, 1918, he was commissioned major in the air service of the United States Army. On January 28, he joined the 95th Aero Squadron, and was relieved a week later to go to the front at Villeneuve (Marne) to prepare the way for the 94th Squadron of the First Pursuit Group. The squadron arrived in March, but because machine guns were lacking could do no fighting. In April it began patrol duty in the Toul sector. On May 19 Lufbery went in pursuit of a German plane which had come over the lines. In the combat which ensued Lufbery's plane burst into flames and he jumped from a height of more than two thousand feet. His body was found in the garden of a house in the little town of Maron and was buried in the American Cemetery, Sebastopol Barracks. On July 4, 1928, it was removed to the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial at Villeneuve, near Paris.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Above all the pilots who found themselves at Verdun was Lufbery 'without fear and without reproach. ' . .. His Spad was always the highest and every day he won new victories. He seemed to hardly care about having them confirmed. Calmly he reigned as sovereign lord in his chosen element and beat down his foes to accomplish his duty and not for the sake of glory. " - Captain Georges Thenault