Germany declared war on France on Aug. 3, 1914. President Woodrow Wilson immediately announced the United States would maintain a policy of neutrality. Some young Americans, among them many North Carolinians, felt a call to the conflict, having both a passion to defend democracy against the authoritarian rule sweeping Europe and a thirst for adventure.

They left schools, jobs and families, most often making their way to France by whatever means they could and joined the battle in whatever way they could — driving ambulances, fighting in the trenches, working as mechanics. A few would take part in a new form of combat with a revolutionary new weapon, the powered airplane.

Only 10 years earlier, North Carolina served as the launch site for this new wonder machine that now called an adventurous few to war. Wilbur and Orville Wright did not anticipate the rapid advancement of their invention into an instrument of war, nor the effects of its magnetic call on adventurous spirits. Four who answered were North Carolina natives: Kiffin Rockwell, James Rogers McConnell, Arthur Bluethenthal and James Henry Baugham.

Kiffin Rockwell was so anxious to join the fray that he wrote the French Council in New Orleans as soon as the declarations of war and neutrality were made, volunteering himself and his brother, Paul. Not bothering to wait for a reply, they left the next day for New York and found passage to France. As they and others discovered, foreign nationals were not allowed to enlist in French military units. Many decided the French Foreign Legion was a good alternative even though it often required stretching the truth about age and military experience.

Having heard their grandfathers’ tales of their time in the Civil War, the Rockwell brothers were anxious to create similar experiences. After graduation from Ashville High School, Kiffin began a path towards a naval career and received an appointment to Annapolis. Fearing what he thought would be an unfulfilling life in a peacetime Navy, he transferred to William and Mary, joining brother Paul in the school of journalism. He did not graduate and left school for work in San Francisco and eventually moved back to Asheville. Paul did finish and took a job with the Atlanta Constitution. Kiffin soon joined him and found work with an advertising agency.

When the bells of war rang in August, they were a clarion call to the Rockwell brothers. Both served as French Legionnaires in frontline combat units. A severe leg wound in early 1915 ended Kiffin’s experience with trench warfare and Paul, wounded earlier and eliminated from further combat, had found work as a wartime journalist. Kiffin was invited by fellow Legionnaire William Thaw, already an aviator, to join a newly formed group of seven Americans known as the Lafayette Escadrille. The idea was to draw America, or at least American sentiment, into the French war effort by glamorizing these young “devil may care” aviators and the new age of combat in the air. To facilitate the effort, Paul was hired on as the unit’s publicity agent.

Wasting no time, the group was assembled for training at Luxeuil-les-Bains, a town within cannon range of the German border. For two months, they trained in broken-down, barely flyable aircraft. Finally, they received top-of-the-line Newport-17 pursuit planes and Kiffin Rockwell, boy from Asheville, NC, and the others, were now determined ready for battle.

No engagements occurred during the Lafayette Escadrille’s first four missions. Most of the German aerial resources were concentrated above the ongoing battle near Verdun. Finally, on the fifth mission, Kiffin detected a German observation aircraft near his formation. Undoubtedly anxious to engage, he ignored a misfiring engine and dove below and behind the two-seat enemy aircraft, hoping to approach from a blind spot. His approach was detected by the observer/gunner who started firing. Kiffin was only able to get off four shots before his gun jammed, and he banked away hoping to clear the jam and return for another attack. It wasn’t necessary.

With only four shots both crew members in the enemy aircraft had been killed and it crashed close to German entrenchments. For the first time in the history of heavier than air flight, an American, a North Carolinian, had downed a hostile aircraft in aerial combat. He was decorated by the French government and celebrated on the streets of Paris.

Kiffin became the Escadrille’s most prolific flyer. Known as “a demon in the Sky,” he often flew multiple sorties a day and in one two-month stint racked up 74 sorties. Once, he received a head-wound but refused to be grounded. He simply had it wrapped up, and he flew the very next day. During his time with the Lafayette Escadrille, he flew more combat sorties, 142, than the rest of the squadron combined.

On Sept. 23, while flying a two-ship sortie with another legendary American pilot Raoul Lufbery, he was shot and killed during an attack on an enemy aircraft — the second American and the first North Carolinian airman to perish in the war.

“When Rockwell was in the air, no German passed … and he was in the air most of the time. The best and bravest of us is no more,” said Escadrille leader Captain Georges Thenault.

James Rogers McConnel, at age 29, was likely the oldest of the initial cadre of American Escadrille pilots. Like Kiffin, he had a wondering and adventurous soul. As a teenager, he gained some notoriety by driving a car from Chicago to New York. He was athletic and played football for the University of Virginia. At some point during his time at UVA, he became interested in aviation and started the first Aero Club.

After his time at UVA, he tried selling cars but ended up in Carthage, where his father was vice-president and general manager of the Randolph and Cumberland Railway. Jim immersed himself into the railroad and the Carthage Board of Trade activities, becoming perhaps the area’s most ardent and successful promoter. In January 1915, however, his passion for excitement drew him to France and to war.

For a while, he drove for the American Ambulance Corps and was decorated for his meritorious service. Again, restlessness caused him to seek out more action, combat, if at all possible. Somewhere he crossed paths with the forming Lafayette Escadrille and was invited to come along. Soon after the group’s transition to the Newport-17 aircraft and a move to Verdun, he was forced to crash land twice near enemy lines. During the second one he struck a telegraph wire and injured his back during the ensuing crash. Unwilling to miss the adventures of being in the air, he forced himself to fly through the pain, not stopping until he was officially grounded and hospitalized.

Ignoring the pleas from his colleges he forced himself back into the air, still in great pain. Perhaps it was the pain talking when he wrote a friend and said, “My burial is of no import. Make it as easy as possible for yourselves. I have no religion and do not care for any service … God damn Germany and Vive la France.”

On March 19, 1917, while flying a two-ship escort flight for a French reconnaissance aircraft, he was surprised by another two-ship formation of Germans. Though his wingman escaped, McConnell was shot down. Paris, the people of Carthage, and his college alumni mourned. The University of Virginia commissioned Gutson Forglum, the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, to build a winged figure in his honor for the campus.

Arthur Bluethenthal followed a similar path to the air battle over France. Like McConnell, he excelled at athletics and was an All-Eastern center on the Princeton football team and for a short time an assistant coach for the University of North Carolina. Unlike Rockwell and McConnell, the Wilmington native was Jewish and likely, if possible, felt the call to war against Germany even more compelling.

His initial foray into the battle was also as an ambulance driver, biding his time until he could join the Foreign Legion. Shortly thereafter, he was assigned to flight training and specifically because of his size assigned to fly the Breguet bomber, the only American attached to the Escadrille 227.

While on leave, he received a standing ovation and was serenaded with a rendition of La Marseillaise by the crowd at a Wilmington theater. He was the first favorite son of Wilmington to volunteer and already a hometown hero. Sadly, he was also the first to be lost in combat. On June 5, 1917, he was directing artillery fire above the battle near Marseillaise and was downed by one of four German aircraft who attacked him. His body was eventually returned to Wilmington and his memory honored by naming the local airport in his honor.

James Henry Baugham was another of the football player-turned-pilots from the Tar Heel state. Growing up in Washington, he had a reputation for cars and boats, the faster the better. He was also athletic and played halfback on the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (later N.C. State University) football team. He was restless, and, by age 17, had left school and earned a pilot’s license from the Curtiss Aviation School in Newport News, Virginia.

After being rejected by the U.S. Navy due to his young age, he went to France and entered French pilot training. He was the only North Carolinian to start the war already in possession of a pilot’s rating, and his experience showed. Acrobatics were his strength and even at his young age, he was considered the best of his Escadrille. Twice, he successfully landed his damaged Nieuport in combat zones among the trenches.

His skills were well known, and he was transferred to a high performance Spad aircraft squadron. Critically wounded in an aerial engagement on July 1, 1918, he still managed to land his aircraft safely near friendly French lines. There is some evidence that he was shot down by the German Ace Ernst Udet. Sadly, he later died from his wounds.

Author of Mutiny on the Bounty, James Norman Hall, talks about Baugham in his history titled “The Lafayette Flying Corps.” He refers to Baugham as “A fine type of Southerner, keen, alert, and full of courage. He came from old American stock, the kind that loves danger for its own sake and fights to the last ditch.”

One hundred years ago, on Nov. 11, 1918, World War I was ended. Above the mud and madness of trench warfare a new battle space had developed, dominated by young men, pilots of the purple twilight and their magnificent flying machines. North Carolinians were among them and made a significant impact. Kiffin Rockwell, James Rogers McConnell, Arthur Bluethenthal, and James Henry Baugham perished in the process — the only ones who did not come back.

Paul W. Carr is a retired captain with Delta Airlines, colonel (Retired) of the U.S. Air Force and an aviation historian.