War Birds Diary of an Unknown Aviator (First Editon)
by John MacGavock Grider
Category: Biography & Autobiography

"WAR BIRDS: DIARY OF AN UNKNOWN AVIATOR is the product of First Lieutenant John MacGavock Grider and Captain Elliott White Springs, two of the 210 cadets who joined the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps shortly after the United States entered World War I. The young men of that group, many of them university students or graduates, volunteered for immediate service abroad and were sent to England to be trained to fly with our allies and to fight with them until the United States could organize squadrons of our own. Grider and Springs, after completing their training, were assigned to Number 85 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, then commanded by William ("Billy") Bishop, in May 1918. Grider was killed in air combat some twenty miles behind enemy lines on 18 June 1918, but before he was shot down he gave his diary to Springs, his closest friend. Springs apparently added two months to the diary, then published it with Goerge H. Doran in 1926. It was also published serially in LIBERTY MAGAZINE and in a paperback edition in 1951. The text and illustrations reprinted here are from the original 1926 edition..."--Page 5, Foreword to the 1988 edition.