Let's go back to the memorial plaque for a moment.
The plaque honoring Luke just outside of Murvaux had been missing for some years. You were responsible for restoring the plaque
and refurbishing the monument, right?
Well, I raised the idea and the money, but a lot of other people made it
happen. Scott Hamilton [editor of theaerodrome.com], Billy Haiber [author of September Rampage], Phil Rivers [superintendent
of the US Meuse-Argonne Cemetery at Romagne], Tim King [television producer], Lil Pfluke [coordinator for the Paris bureau
of the American Battle Monuments Commission] and a lot of others were really helpful.
I contacted the Battle Monuments Commission
and met Lil Pfluke, and she told me that they'd love to put the plaque up but it was never a government project. Since
it was put up privately, they weren't responsible to maintain it. So Lil asked me if I thought I could raise the money
and I said I'd try. She said if I could come up with the money that she'd work out the legalities and act as a government
liaison with French bureaucracies - there's a lot of them. So I asked every organization I could find to support the project
and the response was amazing.
We raised more than enough money... enough to have the plaque manufactured,
mounted, and have the stone monument itself sandblasted and refurbished. I went over in November of 2000 to oversee the work
and set the unveiling for Saturday, the 18th. Billy did a lot to help organize everything. He and Phil sort of picked
up the ball and ran with it. They were fantastic. Everything went great and the French press picked up on it as well. I was
surprised.
I hear the American Battle Monuments Commission has asked you to work on several other monuments in France
as well?
Yeah, they've got a bunch of projects but they've only mentioned one so far in particular... the monument
at the training center at Issoudun. Its pretty run down. The Commission asked me if I could supervise the restoration and
raise the money.
What did you say?
I said "Wait until I finish the Luke
project." They wanted someone with experience overseeing something like this and they needed somebody who could raise
the money and had a track record.
They first approached me right after the Luke monument restoration, in mid-2001,
and of course I've been working like a madman on THE STAND since then. So I'm definately interested but not until
THE STAND is published. Then I'll have a chance to evaluate things and see what my next project will be.
Let's talk more about THE STAND. What are some of the biggest surprises you found during your research?
Well,
the internal squadron scandal that led to Frank's death was one of the biggest. Everybody knows that Luke didn't get
along with [27th Aero commander Alfred] Grant, but there were a lot of inner workings within the squadron that are still
unknown. It was a horrible mess and it was directly responsible for Luke's death.
I guess the famous arrest was another big
surprise... finding the two lost witnesses to Frank's death was also a big deal. That's probably an understatement...
it was a huge deal.
And of course the neatest thing of all was figuring out how he really died. That was the primary goal all along
and the real drive behind this book. For the first time in ninety years we can actually piece together, minute by minute,
exactly what happened during the final moments of Luke's life.
What kind of hurdles did you have
to work through during the writing of THE STAND?
One thing that was really difficult was deciding how to tell the story.
It would have been easy to write a clinical, academic book that satisfied all the scholars but I wanted something that would
be readable.
I wanted people to want to read this book. I wanted them to enjoy it and be as fascinated with it
as I was. So I decided to concentrate on storytelling. I wanted a plot that unfolds around the reader. Then I wanted to take
them on a journey through time and follow the Luke researchers through the twentieth century to where we are now. There's
still tons of footnotes and documentation so nothing is lost academically, but I think this is a book that you'll
like to read.
When you spoke with the families of those involved, what sort of reaction did you get?
Fantastic.
I think everyone involved realized that this story is bigger than any of us and it needs to be told. The Frey family gave
me all of Sonny's private papers - stuff that was never sent to any museum - all this stuff that had
never been released before. They said their dad would have been so thankful to see what I was doing and that really meant
a lot to me.
The Mangels family bent over backwards to cooperate. They dug up information that they forgot they even had.
The Luke family was more than wonderful... they're as fine a friends as you could ask for. The same goes for the Stout
family, the Hartneys, the Lennons and all the others. I can't think of anyone who really just blew me off or refused to
help. I think doing the monument made a difference. Word got around about that and people had some assurance that if they
helped, that this book would actually happen.
Tell me about Murvaux [the village near which Luke died]. Norman Hall never
actually went to France and Frey went there twice. How much work did you do there and what did you accomplish?
Well,
first of all, I wouldn't criticize Hall [author of 1928's The Balloon Buster] for anything. He didn't
go overseas but he still did the best he could from here, and that was pretty good. I've scrutinized everything I can
from Balloon Buster and he didn't get the details of his death right, but its probably the best work on Frank's
early years that will ever be produced. I can find no serious faults in it. In fact, much of what I've found actually
corroborates his work. I was running across old documents and family histories that actually backed up much of what Hall wrote.
And Frey was actually in Murvaux four days, not two. He was under a lot of pressure because at the time we
were pulling troops out of Europe and he was in the Air Force and was leaving in a matter of weeks. So considering the time
he had available he did extremely well. He didn't solve the mystery, but if it weren't for him we could never
have figured out what really happened to Luke.
But how much time have you spent in Murvaux?
I don't
really know. I've been there about six times and every time I was there anywhere from a few days to a week and a half.
But there was a lot of work to be done there. I wanted to completely reconstruct the entire village as it was in 1918 in order
to better understand what Luke was up against. We had to go through town records dating back some two hundred years to verify
the identity of each of the witnesses. That was a real nightmare. Those old French people always named their sons after their
dads so you could never tell who was who.
Of course there were scores of interviews that had to be done. And I wanted
to do on-site archeological work to locate the anti-aircraft guns and hopefully figure out which one got Luke.
Did you?
Yes.
How certain are you?
About 98%. What you're really working
with is not "proof," but probabilitites. I mean, you can never be 100% sure unless you were standing there in 1918.
But everything points to this one gun position... everything. The angle of fire, the elevation of the gun, the caliber, the
witnesses, the timing, everything. Put it this way: if the guy who manned this gun was tried for murder he'd get convicted.
Its beyond reasonable doubt.
Didn't you learn French in order to conduct all this overseas research?
Sort of. I had always wanted to learn French anyway and this was a good excuse to start working on it. But
I still talk at a child's level. Every French document in the book has been retranslated by native French speakers working
from the original document. Accuracy was critically important and my French isn't nearly good enough for a perfect translation.
It was done professionally by native Frenchmen. Same for the German documents.
What were some of the keys to deciphering
Luke's last moments?
One thing I had to do was determine where - and I mean exactly where - things
happened. I needed to know where the French witnesses were when Luke went down and it took scads of interviews and pouring
through hundred-year-old family address records to place them. Were they inside their house? Which room? Outside their house?
Working out in a field or walking along the D102? That sort of thing. If a guy says he saw Luke die but I find out that he
was in a room with no windows, then his testimony fails. You can eliminate possibilities by tracking down the locations of
the people in involved.
I needed to know exactly where Mangels was during Luke's attack on his balloon and we found that out as
well. That's really an amazing story and I found out completely by accident.
I needed to know where Moore and Kadinger
and Higgs were [of the 7th US Balloon Company] and where Koenig and Kuhn [of the 2nd US Balloon Company] were... Kuhn nearly
shot him down, by the way. There's an irony. Luke almost died from friendly fire. If Kuhn had gotten him we wouldn't
be having this conversation and Luke would never have gotten the Medal of Honor. Instead he dies twenty minutes later
and bang... he's a hero.
But I needed to know exactly where Luke went down - people thought they knew
where he went down but they were way off. The exact spot had been lost over time. That's been a real chore.
Did you find it?
Yes and no. Or yes and not yet. I know where his plane went down...
Exactly?
Yeah. Within ten or fifteen steps. Finding where he went down eliminated some possibilities as to what could
have happened to him, so that was important.
Why is THE STAND different from other books that came before it?
There
weren't that many books that came before it. Almost every book so far has relied on known documents to create a theory
on what happened to Luke and I didn't want to do that. I wanted original research. I didn't want to confuse things
by making more theories. There's enough unfounded theories already floating around. I wanted to establish facts and determine
what really happened to Frank Luke.
And if the data simply didn't exist to prove one theory correct over
the others, I wanted to work in reverse - through process of elimination - and try to disprove theories until only one remained.
So that, I think, makes THE STAND different right up front.
The other thing is that I've had more
time. As you said, Hall never got to France and Frey only spent four days there. I've been at this for fifteen years and
I've had the advantage of instant communications over the internet. That allows me to look harder. I turn over more rocks
than the other guy. And I was able to because I had more time than they did.
What is the sense of personal pride
in this work?
Its more like fear than pride. The people who are my mentors - at the League [of WWI Aviation Historians],
at the aerodrome [www.theaerodrome.com] - they're the ones who will read this book.
I've looked
up to them my whole life. They wrote the books that I grew up reading. They edited the magazines and wrote the articles that
I learned from, and now they'll judge my life's contribution to WWI aviation research. Is that scary or what?
But in the end, all of us realize that anything that furthers WWI aviation research is a good thing. Its
just really wild to have your work read by all the people that you've looked up to for so long.
