Frederick Libby

Great Story. One more people should read. Very well written with many humorous and interesting anecdotes . Feels authentic without being pretentious or braggadocios. It follows the author from growing up as a cowboy in the American Old West to being one of the first American pilots in WWI. Interesting to note the differences between the British and the Americans on so many different levels. It was enough to make me wish I was born in time to fly in WWI. With the Brits.

Make no mistake, the WWI Air War was tough and the author talks about coming home to empty chairs round empty tables after some missions where there were few survivors. So far my favorite flying memoir from WWI. I'd love to see this one on the Chief of Staff of the Air Force's reading list.… (mehr)

This book's name is a bit misleading. It's actually a memoir of Libby's years growing up on the American Western frontier in the 1890's through the end of World War I.

During the first half of the book he tells anecdotes about growing up and starting out as an adult. He injects a lot of humor into the stories which I enjoyed. My favorite story involved him at about age 5 wearing his very best Sunday clothes, a deer, and a lasso, minutes before his father was ready to leave for church.

When World War I broke out, Libby was in Canada where he joined the Canadian army. After a period of driving trucks, (although he had never driven one before joining the army) he transferred to the air corp as a gunner and later as a pilot. The officer who interviewed him for the position OK'd the move after finding out that Libby rode horses. This made no sense to Libby since "horses don't fly" which provided the name of this book.

Libby (or his stepdaughter after his death) spends a few pages telling about the rest of his life. Apparently he wrote the manuscript and the family found it stuck in a drawer after he died.

I liked the first half of this book better because I enjoyed Libby's sense of humor and his stories of the war (naturally)weren't as humorous. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in frontier life or World War I.… (mehr)