Snoopy’s book sold by the GWS Gift Shop

Quick quiz:

What do you remember about World War I?

If you answered “The Red Baron,” you’re not alone. A certain beagle flying a red doghouse cemented that image for me. (Snoopy’s creator, Charles Schulz, made his home here in Santa Rosa.)

If you’re an aviation buff, you might know Baron von Richthofen’s American counterpart: Eddie Rickenbacker.

The man we’re going to profile today does both of them one better. He was a successful novelist, a journalist, an infantryman, a pilot, and an escaped POW. He was also Rickenbacker’s commanding officer. Without further ado, let me introduce you to Karen Tallentire, who owns a wonderful gift shop devoted to World War tees, books, and memorabilia. I just bought a mug. ????

Karen will tell you more about this amazing war hero.

James Norman Hall – History-Making Writer

 By Karen Tallentire

GreatWarStories.com

It’s hard to be a bestselling historical novelist. Just ask the Novel Historian! It’s really unusual to be a bestselling novelist who is remembered by history.

The Journey Begins

James Norman Hall’s life reads like a boys’ adventure book, even though his goal was anything but adventure: he wanted to write. That dream led him on a vacation to London, where he had a chance to meet his favorite author. He had to bicycle all the way to Scotland to do so. (Biking all that way is not quite as unusual as it sounds today, since vehicles were barely more reliable than horses).

Apparently, that was too much adventure. Once he got there, he was too shy to knock on his hero’s door.

The year was 1914, and adventure was about to intervene again. While Hall was in London, World War I broke out. Instead of scurrying home to Boston, he joined the British army!

Off to War

The man who couldn’t knock on a stranger’s door bravely fought in the trenches for another country. This was not a simple thing for an American to do, since America didn’t join the war for three more years. To get to the front lines, Hall posed as a Canadian in order to fight. (Only fifty years later, scores of young Americans would avoid being drafted by going to Canada.)

Hall was eventually found out. While the British appreciated his service, they sent him back to America with an honorable discharge. Perhaps this was the best thing the Allies could have done, because he went home and wrote. Kitchener’s Mob, Hall’s first breakthrough book, recounted his experiences. Its popularity helped swing America toward involvement in the war.

Meanwhile, in 1916, a group of American pilots started the Lafayette Escadrille. They were passionate about defending the Allies in Europe, so these Americans flew under French command. It was named for the Marquis de Lafayette, the French commander who fought in the American Revolution.

 To Write? Or to Fight?

Hall’s publisher sent him to France so he could write about this new technology of aviation and its use in war, and Hall got a bit closer to his subject than reporters are supposed to. He joined the Lafayette Escadrille as a pilot. (He did – eventually – coauthor a history of the Lafayette Escadrille.)

Hall was not one of the great aces, but he scored several victories before being shot down and wounded. When America entered the war in 1917, the US Army put him in charge of a flying squadron. His short experience had qualified him as an aviation veteran in those early days of flying. In fact, one of the new pilots he commanded was very impressed with him – Eddie Rickenbacker, who eventually became America’s top-scoring ace.

All this wasn’t enough excitement for James Norman Hall, who just had to get into the air again. He was inevitably shot down. This time, he became a prisoner of war, though he managed to escape shortly before the war ended. (Talk about adventure! Take that, Hogan’s Heroes!)

The Island Paradise

After the war, he settled down, but he couldn’t even do that in the usual way: he moved to Tahiti. Together with fellow American WWI pilot Charles Nordhoff, he wrote a number of historical novels. The best-known is Mutiny on the Bounty.

There is a quote in Mutiny on the Bounty about tall ships that makes one wonder whether Hall and Nordhoff were really thinking of their days in ships of the air. (After all, at the beginning of WWI, airplanes were not much more than wood-and-wire crates with wings and an engine.)

“For a ship is the noblest of all man’s works—a cunning fabric of wood, and iron, and hemp, wonderfully propelled by wings of canvas, and seeming at times to have the very breath of life.”

In Tribute

Hall’s son-in-law, Nick Rutgers (of the family that founded Rutgers University) flew in the next world war, and military aviation runs in the family to this day. You can read more about Hall in this online tribute. His family sponsored a flying replica WWI SPAD painted in Hall’s colors. It is on display at the Vintage Aero Flying Museum, near Denver, CO. Our Great War Stories Gift Shop promotes the museum, and we offer a t-shirt honoring James Norman Hall. Pictured above, it shows Hall’s biplane with a ghostly Bounty behind it.

Whether you are interested in more great war stories, or just stories of the Great War, please sign up for our email list. We’d love to give you a free PDF e-book about one of the most amazing tales to come out of the war – Captain Hedley, who fell out of his airplane only to fall back onto it.

NOTE: In the interests of preserving correct history – there was another Hall in the Lafayette Escadrille, Bert Hall, and a picture of Bert Hall is what you would expect a world adventurer to look like. Unfortunately, that picture has been mislabeled on the Internet as James Norman Hall. Of course, anyone in the Lafayette Escadrille was quite an adventurer, but worldwar1.com reveals the real James Norman Hall.

post c. 2017 by Karen Tallentire and thenovelhistorian.com