Remembering a Veteran: Volunteer James Rogers McConnell, Ambulance Driver & Aviator

McConnell, American Field Service Driver

James Rogers McConnell was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a prominent judge, in 1887. The family later moved to North Carolina. McConnell attended private schools throughout his childhood and went to college at the University of Virginia. He attended law school briefly and then worked in several business ventures back home in North Carolina.

A family friend described McConnell’s “adventurous spirit,” which led him to volunteer in 1915 for the American Ambulance Field Service, a volunteer ambulance corps newly founded by Americans in Paris that same year (later called the American Field Service or AFS). As an ambulance driver, McConnell gathered injured men from the battlefield and brought them for treatment to military field hospitals. After bravely serving for a year, he earned the distinguished Croix de Guerre medal from the French government for courage under fire.

Increasingly passionate about defending France, however, McConnell had begun to consider leaving the noncombatant ambulance service to enlist as a volunteer with the French military. The newly created Lafayette Escadrille provided him the opportunity to do so.

McConnell, Lafayette Escadrille

The Lafayette Escadrille was a group of American pilots serving with the French Air Service (Aéronautique Militaire) prior to the entry of the United States into the war. Authorized by the French government in the spring of 1916, the group was named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, considered by many to be a French hero, who helped win the war for the American colonists during the American Revolution. The pilots wore fur-lined uniforms to keep them warm in the fragile planes, often going out on two-hour patrols.

Thirty-eight Americans served in the Lafayette Escadrille, many of whom became famous on the home front for their dangerous volunteer service. McConnell wrote a book about his experiences during the war titled Flying for France (1916); it helped Americans at home understand the kind of service they were doing overseas on the side of France and built support for the U.S. to enter the war.

Volunteering as a military pilot for France allowed McConnell to take sides in what he saw as a righteous cause. It also gave him the privilege of learning to fly. As he wrote about flying for the French Air Service in his book, “It was the beginning of a new existence, the entry into an unknown world. . . For us all it contained unlimited possibilities for initiative and service to France.”

Casualties in this type of volunteer service skyrocketed during the war, as air-to-air combat increased. McConnell’s plane was shot down on 19 March 1917, during aerial combat with two German planes. McConnell was killed just weeks before his government joined the Allied cause in Europe as a combatant nation.

Source: The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914-1919, AFS International