With a light breeze, fluffy cumulus clouds drifted by his cockpit window high up in the family barn. As he sailed his Spad in and out of the open loft, young George Keegan's imagination raced with stories of the Lafayette Escadrille's courageous missions against the deadly German Air Force. Brave young Americans volunteered by the score to fly with the Escadrille, founded by Americans in France during the Great War. Fearless and reckless, the Americans turned the tables on the German flyers and established a bold reputation.
Every week, young George read stories of Eddie Rickenbacker and other famous Aces and imagined himself flying with them hunting the most dangerous of Germans in the skies over France. Mastering loop de loops, barrel rolls, strafing runs and emergency landings became his dreamy obsession. He spent endless hours re-enacting heroic dogfights and aerobatic maneuvers with all his favorite planes and aces.
Stories of the Lafayette Escadrille and it's most famous aviators left an indelible impression on my father's young imagination. He shared stories of these daring pilots with me throughout my childhood and taught me all their aerobatic tricks and heroic tales. He affectionately referred to my friends and I as the "Lafayette Escadrille" throughout my life. This especially applied to my closest friends (you know who you are!) and the Grenadiers from Culver.
My father's love of aviation was definitely borne from the remarkable stories of these brave American flyboys who pioneered combat avaition in the skies over Europe during the Great War.
-GK3
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