Joel Merrill
4th February 2007, 05:58 PM (17:58)
I like history and especially airplanes. By far my favorite era was the WW1 air war. It was all so new, experimental, exciting, and very dangerous.
It all started for me when I read a book in the 10th grade called "The Lafayette Escadrille." The United States entered WW1 very late in the war. Some Americans felt strongly enough about what was going on "over there" that they went and joined the French Foreign Legion before the US entered the war. A few of them were trained as pilots. That wasn't as great as you might think since the life expectancy of a pilot was just a few weeks. Since most of them didn't speak French, they were put in a squadron of their own. They named it the Lafayette Squadron after the French general who helped the US during our Revolutionary War.
That book was very exciting to me and started me reading one book after another about WW1 fighter planes. I read every book on the subject I could find and that was all I talked about. I still like to build models of those planes and read about them. There aren't many movies about WW1 flying. Many are so phony that I don't really care for them. One of my BIG pet peeves is a movie that claims to tell a true story and then is nothing like the true story. The movie, "The Lost Battalion" is a good example of a movie that was extremely inaccurate.
Well, I was in Walmart yesterday and they had the movie, "Flyboys." I couldn't help but pick it up and read the cover. It said it was "inspired by the true story of the Lafayette Escadrille." "Inspired" is a much more honest way to put it. I bought it. Yes, there are a lot of inaccuracies in it but not enough to ruin it. It was a great movie with lots of courage and action. I highly recommend "Flyboys" to you guys who like war movies.
Joel :fav18
It all started for me when I read a book in the 10th grade called "The Lafayette Escadrille." The United States entered WW1 very late in the war. Some Americans felt strongly enough about what was going on "over there" that they went and joined the French Foreign Legion before the US entered the war. A few of them were trained as pilots. That wasn't as great as you might think since the life expectancy of a pilot was just a few weeks. Since most of them didn't speak French, they were put in a squadron of their own. They named it the Lafayette Squadron after the French general who helped the US during our Revolutionary War.
That book was very exciting to me and started me reading one book after another about WW1 fighter planes. I read every book on the subject I could find and that was all I talked about. I still like to build models of those planes and read about them. There aren't many movies about WW1 flying. Many are so phony that I don't really care for them. One of my BIG pet peeves is a movie that claims to tell a true story and then is nothing like the true story. The movie, "The Lost Battalion" is a good example of a movie that was extremely inaccurate.
Well, I was in Walmart yesterday and they had the movie, "Flyboys." I couldn't help but pick it up and read the cover. It said it was "inspired by the true story of the Lafayette Escadrille." "Inspired" is a much more honest way to put it. I bought it. Yes, there are a lot of inaccuracies in it but not enough to ruin it. It was a great movie with lots of courage and action. I highly recommend "Flyboys" to you guys who like war movies.
Joel :fav18