Customer Reviews

Horses Don't Fly: A Memoir of World War I

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Since my brother noticed my review on the last book he sent me, a true story of submarine espionage during The Cold War, "Blind Mans Bluff", I guess he figured to warm up my library with another real life adventure--"Horses Don't Fly". As I opened his package, I admit, I sighed. However, this book is enthralling and compelling as any fictional novel I have ever read.

Frederick Libby wrote his impactful memoir in 1961. He passed away in 1970. There are so many questions I want to ask him. His marvelous capacity for recalling specific details on his life as first a cow puncher out West to his becoming the first American to down five enemy planes during WWI is fascinating indeed. I truly think of him as being the first Marlboro Man. Not in a negative tobacco way, as a rugged, adventurous, spirited man who can capture your attention as fast as he learned to be a pilot and use a machine gun. Which was one day!

Some of my favorite parts of Libby's experiences are during his stand with the Canadian army. Through sensitivity, detail, and even humor, he recreated scenes of comraderie with fellow pilots I shall not soon forget. Friends lost in combat, poignant depictions of wartime London, even playful pranks.

Libby was a true hero. With medals to prove it. Yet, his writing reveals he was just a cowboy who learned how to fly. He tangled with the Red Barron and won, but does not flaunt his ego. In this day of techno wars and seeking singular positive influences--this man amazes me.

A superb true to life memoir of a flying Ace in WWI.

--CDS--

A splendid book about growing up in the American west in the early years of the 20th century. Fred Libby is a wonderful companion and a tough young man. When luck falls his way, he's wide-eyed with happiness; and when luck turns sour, he shrugs his shoulders and moves on. So it was when he loses his small fortune in an oil-field scam in Canada. What the hey?--he joins the Canadian army as a truck driver, despite the fact that he doesn't know how to drive. The army, he figures, will keep him warm and dry and well fed.

But nobody is dry on the Western front in the winter of 1916, so Fred volunteers as an observer for the Royal Flying Corps. On his first outing, he shoots down a German plane, and he is accordingly commissioned as an officer & gentleman. He's as good at shooting down airplanes as he was at breaking wild horses, and he soon has a Military Cross from the hand of King George. The RFC then teaches him to fly, which doesn't take long: he soloes the first day, and he is soon back in action as a pilot.

The dustjacket credits him with 10 kills as an observer and 14 as a pilot, which would have made Fred one of the leading American aces of WWI before the U.S. even entered the war, but this is apparently an error. His total score was 14. His military career goes into a tailspin in 1917, when he loyally returns to the U.S. to become a pilot in his home service--never to see combat service, alas, and with a sour taste at the ineptitude of the U.S. Army Air Service.

Horses Don't Fly is a classic American story, a Colorado cowboy who becomes America's first ace flying for the Royal Flying Corps and later a wildcatter and airline executive. Libby's story is well told, again in the classic American mold, modestly and succinctly. When the average life span of a combat pilot was 10 hours, Libby flew over 350 combat hours, and yet somehow his story was lost until now. That not withstanding, there is no doubt that Libby is a real American hero. An excellent book and an even more important story.

This story is not about horses, or flying. It's about one thing: character. In Frederick Libby's autobiography the reader sees the story of a young man born in Colorado before the turn of the last century. He grows up learning the family business, mainly horse breaking and cattle ranching. The early chapters are a bit juvenile in their telling but this is only a reflection of his retelling of childhood events. The narration becomes more sophisticated as he recounts later years, but always maintains a simple frontier charm.

While a young man traveling through Canada in 1914 he volunteers for the Canadian army when war breaks out in Europe. He joins as a truck driver even though he has never driven a car before. He ships out to france and spends a cold wet year ferrying supplies to the frontlines. But through it all he maintains a positive outlook and high admiration of the boys in the trenches. After a year of driving he volunteers for the Royal Flying Corps as a observer (gunner). So this American who volunteered with the Canadians ends up with British flying as an observer/gunner/photographer against the deadly German flyers. He later earns his pilot rating and ends up as a squad leader. The desciptions of battles, some of the only first person accounts of the flying war, are intense but not sensationalized. He never glorifies war and tries to give some account of the hardship experienced by the men in the trenches.

The entire narrative shows Captain Libby as a man devoted to those he works with. Whether it is cattle hands in the American west or the officers of the RFC he shows that once he is committed to something he stays with it. The fact that he was barely twenty years old when this started shows how the youth of the time rose to the challenge of the day. Several time during the book He says that he does not know what they are fighting for. However, a man who gives his word to a group of men and sees it through to the end knows exactly what he is fighting for.

One of the wittiest memoirs of any era I have ever read. An often bust your gut funny read from a true turn of the century Forrest Gump who grows up to be a war hero. My most common thoughts as I read this wonderful prose was "I wish I had been born back then." Family, courage, honesty, loyalty, and right from wrong all mattered; and all issues were black and white. Libby goes from cowboy private to fighter ace, endures the utter stupidity that is WWI, yet keeps a sense of humor and fast becomes someone you wish you had personally known and called a friend. Do you think Uncle Sam would let you "trial run" an aerial combat mission today to see if you have the "right stuff" to be a pilot or aerial observer?

Frederick Libby's HORSES DON'T FLY is the author's autobiographical account of his life from his birth in 1892 to 1918. His mother having died shortly before his fourth birthday, Libby was raised on his father's Colorado ranch with an older brother. Fred became a "cowboy" in the most authentic sense of the word, working on his family's ranch as well as others in the Southwest. Training wild horses to become cow ponies was his much sought after specialty. Then, tiring of hard life on the range at age twenty, he has the vague notion of settling in a warm and more lazy environment, such as Tahiti. However, he gets sidetracked to Canada where, at the outbreak of World War I, he's seduced into enlisting into a motor transport unit of the Canadian Army with the promise of travel and regular pay. By the end of 1917, Libby is a commissioned officer in Britain's Royal Flying Corps, having logged more than 350 hours of combat flight time over the trenches of the Western Front, and with 24 confirmed downed enemy planes to his credit.

The book contains no indication when Libby penned his memoirs. The style indicates somewhat of a detached perspective, which is perhaps evidence that the author wrote many years after the fact when memory had smoothed over the emotional highs and lows of his early years. But, no matter. Libby comes across as that sort of young hero that most Americans, I trust, would like to see representing their country overseas, or anywhere. He's conscientious, unflappable, brave, modest, hard working, honest, honorable and loyal. Indeed, his only vices seem to have been, as a cowboy, foolish gambling, and, while as an RFC pilot, a weakness for the British Army's regular rum ration. Girls are only mentioned as reserving their best for the lads in uniform. I suspect that Libby's wilder youthful indiscretions became lost in the retelling. In any case, the chief attraction of HORSES DON'T FLY, besides the personality of Libby himself, are the insights the reader gains into the hard life of a cowboy, and the early years of military aviation when warplanes could be either "pushers" (rear-mounted propeller) or "tractors" (front-mounted propeller), and both pilots and observer-gunners were exposed to the elements and the enemy in open cockpits with neither seatbelts nor those little packages of salted peanuts. Libby himself was personally awarded the Military Cross by King George V at Buckingham Palace for gallantry in action.

To Captain Frederick Libby, long dead since 1970, honor is due.

Horses Don't Fly: A Memoir Of World War I is the story of Frederick Libby who went from breaking wild horses in Colorado to fighting the Red Baron's squadrons in the skies over France. When World War I broke out, Libby was in Calgary, Alberta where he joined the Canadian army. In France, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an "observer" -- the gunner in a two-person biplane. Libby shot down an enemy plane on his first day in battle over the Somme. This was also the first day he ever flew in a plan or fired a machine gun! He went on to become a fighter pilot and fought against the legendary German aces Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen. He became the first American to down five enemy planes and won the Military Cross. When the United States entered the war, Libby became the first person to fly the American colors over German lines. He achieved the rank of captain before being transferred back to the United states. A tremendous and welcome contribution to U.S. military in general, and World War I studies in particular, Horses Don't Fly is Libby's military autobiography written in 1961 and is here published for the first time.

This is a story of Fredrick Libby, a great American. This is one of those books that can not be put down until it is done. Waldo Pepper's tale seems tame when compared to Frederick Libby's true story. The money spent on this book was well spent, this book is a keeper.

Libby's story does not compare to the biography of Eddie Richenbacher, "Fighting the Flying Circus." You really get a sense of what the fight was like from Richenbacer, while so many of the details are glossed over by Libby. Libby's story starts out very slowly, picks up when he becomes an observer and pilot, and just peters out when he rejoins the United States military. We are left with lots of unanswered questions--why did he survive so long when most died in a couple of weeks, what did he think when his squadren was literally completely replaced every few weeks, etc. There is no introspection--no emotional side to this book. We do know that he likes to drink, but he is not a deep thinker--loyality and friendship are important driving components of how he makes his decisions. There is a feel to the book like it has been rewritten and the juicy (emotional) parts removed. The book was interesting but very limited if you are looking for information about that time. Read Richenbacher's book for a much better understanding of that time.

My grandfather was the author of this memoir. Dan Ford stated that there was an error in his record of victories. There was not. He had 14 as a pilot and 10 as an observer. The error in my opinion is that they did not consider victories while you were an observer for awards for aces. They do now and began to sometime around wwII.
My grandfather had 24 victories before the American's entered the war, but was not credited because 10 were while he was an observer. Even though he shot the guns that downed the enemy.
Politics!?