Over the West Front

Air Combat over the trenches by those who fought

The first hand accounts of the experiences of men in time of war always make fascinating reading. Their stories are, of course, always as varied as the individuals concerned and the eras to which they belonged, whether they were soldiers, sailors or airmen, the branch of their service, their nationalities, the conflict in which they were participants and in which theatre they fought. This is what makes military history so fascinating. Sometimes many men report a common experience that abided for decades. Occasionally we hear, across time, the voices of a few notable men who fought their own war in their own special way and once their time had past history would never know their like again. That is especially true of the pilots of the First World war. The machinery of flight was a new technology. The aircraft were raw, basic, flimsy and unproven machines and both they and the brave men who piloted them were fighting their first conflict while learning and evolving their skills and equipment, quite literally, as they fought and died. The dogfight days of the early biplanes, triplanes and early mono winged fighters would be short, but their images together with those of the iconic airships which they ultimately destroyed will remain indelibly imprinted on the history of conflict and the development of man's mastery of the air. Heroes to a man, these trailblazers were almost always young, carefree, well educated and modest young men full of the joy of living and commitment to their aircraft and to flying. This special Leonaur edition contains the writings of two such men from the Royal Air Force, written anonymously during wartime, which take the reader back to those dangerous and epic delays of aerial combat over the muddy trenches of the Western Front in Europe during the Great War. Available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket for collectors.