High Adventure A Narrative of Air Fighting in France

James Norman Hall (1887 - 1951)

High Adventure A Narrative of Air Fighting in France by James Norman Hall; you will find this book although an exciting narrative has an unpolished feel because it was published in June of 1918 while Mr. Hall was a captive in a German POW camp. When he was captured behind enemy lines, the book was still a work in progress. The Armistice would not be reached until November of that year.

Although he does not mention it in this book, Mr. Hall had already served the better part of 15 months with the British Expeditionary Forces, surviving the battle of Loos in Sept – Oct 1915, and upon which his excellent work “Kitchener’s” Mob is Based.

The US did not enter the war until April 1917, and Hall had already served nearly three years as an American with British and French forces, as a machine gunner with the British, and as a pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille.

Pilot training in the French Air Corps was primarily a matter of survival. Visualize if you will, a class of “Penguins”, aircraft with wings too short for flight scurrying about the airfield as student pilots learn to control these machines with no instructor on board, and for that matter in Mr. Halls case there was never an instructor on board. Their solo flight was their first flight. They learned by doing.

The sheer joy and wonder of man’s early experience of leaving the bounds of Earth in an aircraft coupled with the danger and excitement of air combat made “High Adventure” such a good read, I completed the narration ahead of schedule, because I couldn’t put it down

Mike Vendetti, Narrator

Genre(s): War & Military, Memoirs

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 01 - The Franco-American Corps John W. Michaels
00:28:06
Play 02 02 - Penguins John W. Michaels
00:26:53
Play 03 03 - By the Route of the Air John W. Michaels
00:38:48
Play 04 04 - At G. D. E. John W. Michaels
00:34:23
Play 05 05 - Our First Patrol John W. Michaels
00:45:19
Play 06 06 - A Balloon Attack John W. Michaels
00:27:15
Play 07 07 - Brought Down John W. Michaels
00:20:58
Play 08 08 - One Hundred Hours John W. Michaels
00:20:51
Play 09 09 - 'Lonely as a Cloud' John W. Michaels
00:10:03
Play 10 10 - 'Mais oui, mon vieux!' John W. Michaels
00:08:34
Play 11 11 - The Camouflaged Cows John W. Michaels
00:11:14
Play 12 12 - Cafard John W. Michaels
00:08:54
Play 13 13 - Letter from a German Prison Camp John W. Michaels
00:09:06