WWI pilots included Maine governor

As a lad, Charles Woolley Jr. was always vaguely disappointed in his father and his armed service. Instead of being a dashing doughboy, fighting in the World War I trenches, his father was a mere pilot.

After his father died in the 1960s, the son started going through the attic and found his father’s jacket and leather helmet from the 95th Aero Squadron. Then he started going through the piles of pictures from World War I.

The more he learned, the more he wanted to learn. The dogfights, the gallantry, the rooms at the French chateau, the trips to Paris, a mere 20 minutes away. There was no oxygen, no radio and no parachutes. He was hooked.

Woolley started collecting diaries and letters from the families of the gallant fliers. The research eventually resulted in a book, which became “First to the Front” (Schiffer Military History, $49.95). Woolley spoke before a packed house at the Owls Head Transportation Museum earlier this month. He asked the audience how many had heard of the flying exploits of Sumner Sewall, who later became governor of Maine.

Only a few hands were raised.

The 95th Aero Squadron was the first American unit of pursuit airplanes to the front in 1918. Most of the pilots had never flown before basic training and most were society types, college graduates. Flying with Woolley’s father was a Bath resident called Sumner Sewall, who has to be one of the least publicized war heroes in the state.

I have a vague recollection of a Sewall who served as Maine governor. But I never knew he was a World War I ace at a time of open cockpits, French ladies, champagne and daily danger.

Sewall was a Yale dropout, the son of a wealthy Bath banker and shipbuilder. He joined the war effort in 1918, but found ambulance duty too tame. He trained as a pilot and was assigned to the 95th Pursuit Squadron in February 1918. In his Spad XIII, he shot down five German planes and two barrage balloons.

During his tour, he won the Distinguished Service Cross when he “fearlessly attacked a formation of five enemy planes (Fokkers) and separated one from the group, pursued it behind enemy lines and sent it down in a crash, following it to the ground in spite of severe fire from the machine guns, rifles and anti-aircraft guns, bullets which passed through his clothing.”

He also took home a Croix de Guerre from the French government and a citation which read “a pilot eager to fight and devoted to duty. On June 3, 1918, he attacked with his patrol an enemy formation of six planes, pursued one of them to 200 meters and brought it down. During the operations between the Marne and Aisne River, he spent his energy without restraint, brought down an enemy plane in flames and forced a second adversary to land.”

Judging by his letters back to his mother, he was a reluctant hero. He was furious when a photo sent home ended up in the society magazine Town and Country.

He downplayed the danger in the June 3 incident, his first kill.

“We started at 5000 meters and it ended when he burst into flames just before he struck the ground. And what a run for the money he gave me. He really outmaneuvered me and I am convinced he had the better plane. But he did not put a single bullet in mine and afterwards I found he had two or three in his engine, three in his gas tank one right through his radiator and a goodly number through his plane and fuselage. He then burst into flames landed and tipped over. Both the pilot and observer were thrown over the top wing and to my surprise, both got up and started walking.

“And the funny part, I don’t know what made me do it but when I saw them get up, I swooped down and waved at them and they waved back.”

Sewall admitted that he grew to love the aerial combat. He told his mother, “I know personally when I see those horrible black [German] crosses, I get so excited I forget everything, even to be afraid. And when the old tracers start to sail through the air and the machine guns start hammering then everyone goes crazy and the fun begins.”

You just don’t expect this from a governor.

Sewall returned to Maine, graduated from Harvard, worked in the Mexican oil fields, in a sugar plantation in Cuba, and as a riveter in the Dearborn, Mich., Ford assembly plant.

In 1929, he married Helen Ellena Evans, the daughter of a Russian army officer, and in 1934 he became director of United Airlines. He was a state representative from 1934 to 1936, a state senator from 1936 to 1940, serving as president for the 1939-1940 term and was elected governor in 1941.

The war hero died at age 68 in Bath on Jan. 25, 1965.

What a life. Sounds like a movie to me.

Good thing Woolley found that leather flying helmet and wrote “First to the Front.”

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.