Word: kosciuszko
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Biggest war since the Versailles Peace Conference was between Russia and Poland, 1919-1921. Few people know that throughout that war a squadron of U. S. aviators fought in the Polish air forces. The story of the Kosciuszko Squadron (named for the Polish patriot who fought in the American Revolution) is told for the first time by Kenneth Malcolm Murray, one of the pilots, in Wings Over Poland, currently published by D. Appleton...
...Kosciuszko Squadron was the first military aviation unit to base on a railroad train. Headquarters, repair shops, bunks were set up in box cars to provide the mobility that Polish campaigns demanded. Receiving equivalent rank in the Polish army, the U. S. pilots were paid on the same basis as the Poles. First casualty occurred when Lieut. Graves flew the wings off his Albatross during a review for bushy-browed Marshal Pilsudski, plummeted to his death in the midst of Lwow...
Because Russia's air force was negligible (during two years' fighting the Squadron saw but one enemy plane), it was at first thought that reconnoitering would be the Kosciuszko unit's principal job. But as the sweeping, open warfare grew more intense, individual battles between airmen and Russian troops became of prime importance. So vicious was the Squadron's strafing that the Soviet Commissars put a price of 12,500 gold rubles on the U. S. flyers' heads, later doubled it. Hawking over enemy territory, pilots would bore down out of the sun, both machine...
...good fortune to visit Poland. It has been my good fortune to meet the illustrious citizen to whose inspiration this gathering is due. It has been my good fortune to know President Wilson to whom it was given to play a part in the history of Poland . . . Kosciuszko . . . Pulaski . . . ragged regiments of Washington. ... It is therefore peculiarly touching to us that a ceremony such as this should take place in Poland on the anniversary which stands first in our calendar...
...navy blue cover there appeared not a portrait of Premier Dictator Joseph Pilsudski, or of President Ignatz Moscicki, or of Ignatz Paderewski, or Joseph Conrad, or Tadeusz Andzrezej Bonawentura Kosciuszko but an action picture of Gilda Gray.* "Polish dancer." Poles, incensed, took umbrage at such terpsichorean levity in their favorite periodical...