Le Mort de Chapman

Grave at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery

By Steve Ruffin

(Updated 1 August 2024)

Victor Emmanuel Chapman was the first American pilot to die in combat. He was born in 1890 in New York City, the son of a distinguished East Coast family. After graduating from Harvard in 1913, he traveled to France to attend the École des Beaux-Arts school of architecture in Paris. After hostilities commenced, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion, in which he fought for the next several months. In August 1915, he transferred to the French air service and flew many missions as a pilot for the French 1st Aviation Group, before becoming one of the founding members of the Lafayette Escadrille. 

With the Escadrille, in a wild aerial melee on 24 May 1916, Thénault, de Laage, Thaw, Rockwell, and Chapman were patrolling when they encountered a formation of 12 German airplanes. The dangerously impetuous Victor Chapman did not wait for an attack signal but simply dived on the large formation, forcing everyone else to follow suit. During the attack, Rockwell's Nieuport took a bullet to the windscreen, which sent glass and metal fragments into his face. Stunned and blinded by the blood, he made his way back to the aerodrome and landed safely. Fortunately, the wound was relatively superficial. After a few days of rest and recuperation in Paris, he was back in business. While Rockwell was fighting for his life, Victor Chapman was having a similarly unpleasant experience. Bullets whizzed all around him, into his airplane, and through his clothing, one of which grazed his arm. 

On 17 June, Victor Chapman once again impetuously broke formation and went hunting on his own. In a letter dated that same day to his own brother, Kiffin Rockwell explained what happened:

Chapman has been a little too courageous . . . He was attacking all the time, without paying much attention. He did the same thing this morning, and wouldn't come home when the rest of us did. The result was that he attacked one German, when a Fokker . . . got full on Chapman's back, shot his machine to pieces and wounded Chapman in the head. It is just a scratch but a miracle that he wasn't killed. Part of the controls on Chapman's machine were broken, but Chapman landed by holding them together with his hand. 

On the afternoon of 23 June, Victor Chapman took off from the aerodrome at Behonne, head still bandaged from his wound of six days earlier. He carried with him a package of newspapers, chocolate, a letter Balsley had just received in the mail, and some oranges that Victor had somehow managed to acquire. Chapman's plan was to join up with Thénault, Lufbery, and Prince, who had already taken off for a patrol over the lines, and afterward, as he told his mechanic, Louis Bley, "to take the oranges and chocolate to poor Balsley at the hospital, for I think there is little hope of saving him." Bley put the package in the airplane and shook hands with Chapman, who said, "Au revoir, I shall not be long." 

Exactly what happened to Chapman on this last mission will never be known, but a French Maurice Farman crew operating in the vicinity later reported a lone Nieuport desperately battling four enemy fighters northeast of Douaumont. They saw the Nieuport go down out of control and break into pieces in the air. It could only have been Chapman.

Victor Chapman

Victor Chapman's loss was a crushing blow to the squadron. The squadron's first fatality brought the grim reality of war painfully close to home—and as one of the most popular and courageous members of the squadron, his absence was keenly felt by his fellow pilots. However, given the reckless abandon with which Chapman flew, it was only a matter of time.

Those with whom he flew knew it, as did he himself. As he related to his "Uncle Willy"—William Astor Chanler—only three days before his death, "Of course I shall never come out of this alive." McConnell wrote of Chapman: 

Considering the number of fights he had been in and the courage with which he attacked it was a miracle he had not been hit before. He always fought against odds and far within the enemy's country. He flew more than any of us, never missing an opportunity to go up, and never coming down until his gasoline was giving out.

His machine was a sieve of patched-up bullet holes. His nerve was almost superhuman and his devotion to the cause for which he fought sublime.

Kiffin Rockwell was especially affected by Victor's loss, as he wrote to his brother on the day of Chapman's death:

Well, I feel very blue to-night. Victor was killed this afternoon . . .There is no question but that Victor had more courage than all the rest of us put together. We were all afraid that he would be killed, and I rooming with him had begged him every night to be more prudent. He would fight every Boche [German] he saw, no matter where or what odds . . . I am afraid it is going to rain to-morrow, but if not, Prince and I are going to fly about ten hours, and will do our best to kill one or two Germans for him.

Escadrille Commander Capitaine Thénault wrote simply, "Glory to Chapman, that true hero! Men like him are the pride of a nation, their names should ever be spoken with respect." 

At a ceremony on 28 June 1916, Chapman was posthumously promoted to sergeant and awarded the Croix de Guerre.  Chapman's remains (it is believed) are buried at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery, and he is commemorated at the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial outside Paris.

Originally Presented in Over the Top, September 2016