High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France

Hall, James Norman, 1887-1951Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
261K words
Chapters
27

Tags

English Originals Military WWI AviationWar TestimonyFrench FrontLegendary LivesBrotherhoodAdventure JourneyDogfightHeroismAir Combat ChronicleDocumentary Narrative

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France by James Norman HallAuthor: Hall, James Norman, 1887-1951,Language: English, Class: U: Military science, Release Date: Feb 11, 2008

Editor's review

This book is James Norman Hall's narrative memoir of air fighting in France during the First World War, a classic text of early aviation military literature. Its strength lies not in tactical data or a full picture of the war but in the daily experience from a pilot's perspective: training, patrols, moments of air combat, and relationships with comrades, in prose that carries a distinct period tone and personal emotion. For readers who want to understand the real feelings of First World War airmen, it is vivid first-hand material; for researchers of aviation history and war literature, it can also serve as a sample for examining early writing about air combat. Readers should note that it is a personal narrative, with subjective details and judgments, and should not be treated as definitive military history. Reading it alongside general histories of First World War air combat or background material on aviation technology is recommended, so that one can both enjoy the narrative pace and recognize the limitations of memoir.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Learn the basic background of Western Front air combat in the First World War and the technical conditions of aircraft first; the memoir's details will then be easier to understand.
  2. Compare the personal narrative with works of military history to distinguish subjective impressions from verifiable facts.
  3. Pay attention to the author's descriptions of fear, comrades, and daily life, and appreciate the literary quality of the memoir.
  4. Read in sections and briefly record impressions after each chapter to avoid scene fatigue from continuous reading.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a true memoir? Judging from the title and the author's identity, this is Hall's narrative work about his experiences in air combat in France; it is a text of a personal memoir nature, not a fictional novel. However, memoirs involve subjective selection and literary treatment, so it is advisable to compare them with historical materials and not treat every detail as strict historical fact.
Can I understand it without military knowledge? Yes, because the author's personal experience is the main thread and the language is quite narrative. But if you know nothing about the basic conditions of First World War air combat, it may be difficult to judge the significance of certain scenes. It is advisable to spend a little time learning about the aircraft performance and the general situation of Western Front air combat at the time; reading will then be smoother.
Does this public-domain e-book have modern annotations? Public-domain e-books released by Project Gutenberg usually consist mainly of the original text and generally do not include modern scholarly annotations, introductions, or indexes. If readers need to verify people, places, and events, they must consult relevant military history materials themselves or compare with a modern edition that includes editorial notes.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Hall, James Norman, 1887-1951 Author · American · 1887–1951

James Norman Hall (1887–1951) was an American writer best known for the South Seas novels he co-wrote with Charles Nordhoff, including the celebrated Mutiny on the Bounty. This database also holds two of his solo works: one recounts the adventures of an American serving in the British Army, and the other narrates his own experiences of air fighting in France. Both are strongly documentary in character, drawing on his personal military and flying experiences, and are written in a lively style that combines the appeal of adventure storytelling with the authenticity of wartime observation. Hall's writing generally revolves around war, seafaring and the exotic South Seas, with brisk, highly readable narratives that earned him a place in early twentieth-century English-language popular literature. Public information is limited, and details of his life and reputation are difficult to verify, so this note relies mainly on the works held here and on common records.