A Year for France. War Letters of Houston Woodward.

New Haven, CT: The Yale Publishing Association Inc.,, 1919. First edition, first printing; presentation copy from Woodward's parents, inscribed on the front free endpaper: "To Lewis D. Crenshaw from George & Gertrude Woodward, Paris, May 9th 1928". An attractive provenance: Crenshaw (1884-1947) was the "creator and director of the Virginia 'bureau' of a wartime Paris club for American college men, organizer extraordinaire" (University of Virginia magazine). First secretary of the University of Virginia Alumni Association, Crenshaw was also a moving force in the establishment of a Memorial Association honouring US servicemen who has fought in the war and, more pertinently, a Pilots Association. Henry Howard Houston Woodward was born in 1896 at Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, was educated at Taft and Yale, and left university early to join the American Ambulance Field Service. He sailed for France in February 1917 and after participating in several actions - "in the hellish Mt. Cornillet district" - he tired of the AA: "The crowd who have come out since America declared war are a wretched bunch of émbusques, have disgraced themselves and America in Paris … I consider the time I served at the front the best I have ever lived … but it grieves me terribly to see how the AA has gone to the dogs". Woodward joined the Franco-American Aviation School at Avord, where he trained as a pilot, and joined the Lafayette Flying Corps in December 1917. He explained "We are in the Foreign Legion, aviation branch, regular members of the French Army." Woodward flew Nieuport scouts, raiding and patrolling over the German lines for the next few months, until the unit was refitted with SPAD fighters in February 1918: "We rule the air in this sector. In some sectors Fritz is king … but here we are the undisputed bosses of the third element. For several weeks now very few Boches have crossed to our side and gotten back to tell the tale … He's going to bring up some crack escadrilles surely, and then the fur's going to fly". On 1 April 1918, Woodward was posted "missing in action" and awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm; his grave was only located after the war by Franklin Spencer Edmonds, a fellow Philadelphian working with the YMCA in Paris. In 1963 Houston Woodward's remains were re-interred in the crypt of the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial at Marnes-la-Coquette. Octavo. Original blue cloth, gilt-lettered spine and front cover, crest of the Armée de l'Air to front in gold and silver. Photogravure portrait frontispiece, printed on India paper and mounted, 14 half-tone plates, two of them folding. Gilt of spine dulled, binding just a little rubbed an extremities, occasional foxing. A very good copy, sharp and square. Lengel 1397 ("Woodward's surprisingly frank letters present an intriguing picture of his changing attitude and tragic end").