Kiffin Yates Rockwell

The Eccentric Observer
Old Dominion Tory

During World War I, Americans’ support of France was much more ardent than their support of Britain. There are myriad reasons for the wide difference in affection: lingering resentments toward Britain, France’s status as a “sister republic” in a world of autocrats, the often-brutal German occupation of parts of France, the French soldier’s courage and élan, and the central place of France in high culture.

Perhaps the most common reason, however, why Americans were devoted to France—some so much that they were willing to fight for it—was the critical role that France played in winning American independence. If you read accounts of Americans who served France as ambulance drivers or soldiers before the United States entered the war, you encounter numerous mentions of Lafayette and how America needed to repay the French for their support of the American Revolution. One young man who fought for France described his motivation as “I am paying my part of America's debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau.” That young man was Kiffin Yates Rockwell, VMI Class of 1912.

Born in Tennessee in 1892, Rockwell’s family moved to Asheville, North Carolina in 1904. An apparently impressive youth, at age fifteen, he was described by a teacher as “[a] handsome, intelligent, chivalrous boy . . . immaculate in person as in honor, impatient of the tedium of school routine, restive, though ever courteous under restraint; with serious deep-set, gray-blue eyes, aglow with enthusiasm over tales of daring adventure.”

The “tales of daring adventure” that enthused Kiffin included many martial ones. The Rockwells had French ancestry and Kiffin and his older brother Paul were entranced by the glories of La Grande Armee. Inspired by the First Empire’s soldiers, they vowed that, if France went to war, they would fight for her.

In 1906, Paul enrolled in Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. The next year, Kiffin followed him to Lexington, but, attracted by its connections to Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and other Civil War heroes, matriculated at the Virginia Military Institute. Although an excellent cadet and immensely fond of VMI, Rockwell decided to join his brother at Washington and Lee. Apparently, however, he had not shaken his earlier impatience school routine because, in 1911, he left college and, after some travel, settled in Atlanta and began work in advertising.

During the summer of 1914, the Rockwell brothers keenly followed events in Europe and renewed their vow to fight for France should war come. When war was declared in August, the Rockwells immediately made their way to France, enlisting in the French Foreign Legion at the Hotel des Invalides on August 30, 1914. Moving from Paris to different training camps as part of Les Volontaires Américains du 2ème Régiment de la Légion Etrangère, they entered the line in late 1914.

After a winter in the trenches, their regiment took part in the Spring 1915 offensive in Artois. The fighting was bloody, but, in their fellow soldiers and their officers, the Rockwells saw some of the Napoleonic élan that had inspired them to fight for France. Casualties were heavy in the units of the Foreign Legion during these offensives and Kiffin was among them, hit in a thigh by a bullet in May 1915.

While convalescing, Rockwell met William Thaw, an American aviator who was pressing the French Army to form an all-American aviation unit in its Service Aeronautique. Rockwell had no aviation experience, but the romantic lure of flying, coupled with the possibility that his wounds might keep him from front-line service, prompted him to sign on with Thaw. Together with his brother Paul (who had been invalided out of service because of wounds), he and Thaw kept pressing the French to establish the unit. Reluctant at first, the French relented when the trio convinced them that tales of American pilots flying for France would help convince Americans to enter the war. Thus, on March 3, 1916, the French Army established one of the most colorful units of the war: L’Escadrille Lafayette.

Rockwell almost immediately showed a flair for aerial combat, scoring the Escadrille’s first victory on May 18, 1916. He was renowned for an aggressiveness that included a refusal to open fire until he was mere feet away from his target. As one of his squadron mates, James McConnell, described it, “Rockwell. . . shoves his machine gun fairly in the faces of the Germans.” Indeed, such was his zeal for fighting that his flight leader claimed, “Where Rockwell was, the German could not pass, but was forced rapidly to take shelter on the ground.” The French Army recognized Rockwell’s valor by presenting him with the Medaille Militaire and four awards of the Croix de Guerre as well as promotion to sergeant. His colleagues in the Escadrille—and, thanks to the accounts of the squadron written by Paul Rockwell, many Frenchmen and Americans—also came to admire Rockwell for his indefatigable spirit, which perhaps he summed up best when he said,“From the day a man enters the army, he should consider himself as good as dead; then every day of life is just that much gained.”

On September 23, 1916, nineteen weeks after his first aerial victory and after 141 battles in the air, Kiffin Rockwell’s luck ran out. Diving his Nieuport fighter Bebe into a formation of German aircraft, he was struck in the chest by an explosive bullet and killed. The second member of the Lafayette Escadrille to be killed in action, he was buried in an elaborate funeral that was attended by many fellow fliers, high-ranking officers, and infantry soldiers and featured planes flying overhead scattering flowers.

The effect on the squadron was profound. In his 1916 book about the squadron, McConnell, who would be killed in March 1917, wrote “No greater blow could have befallen the Escadrille. Kiffin was its soul.” The squadron commander wrote, “The best and bravest of us is no more.”

For some, Rockwell might seem a rash adventurer blinded by past glories that existed only in his imagination. However, for Rockwell, service to France, this payment of debt, was inspired by something genuinely noble. Fellow North Carolinian and World War I veteran, Robert B. House closed his biography of the man he called “The Aristocrat of the Air,” with the following passage:

Not the least of his victories was his winning his mother's support. Mrs. Rockwell had rebelled against his going to France at all, and she had continued to move the American and French governments in efforts to get Kiffin back home, until finally Kiffin brought her to realize that he could not retire from the struggle to which he had committed himself, and that he would not if he could. For he wrote her in his last words that referred to death, "If I die I want you to know that I have died as every man ought to die--fighting for what is right. I do not feel that I am fighting for France alone, but for the cause of all humanity--the greatest of all causes."

Comments

[quasimodo]

wonderful story. My grandfather's diary indicates he had a lower opinion of the French character.

I do not understand the near universal fascination and adulation of Napoleon. The man was a brutal megalomaniac who set out to destroy the Church and conquer the world. Not my cup o'tea.

Speaking of the French, I have alway thought that their observance of Bastille Day could be compared to a German celebration of Krystallnacht.

but I digress - back to your regularly scheduled post.

[Christine]

Quasimodo: you'll find many French in agreement with you as to Bastille Day...

ODT: Fascinant. "Aristocrat of the Air." I like that. Thanks for the colorful and inspiring story.

[Father M.]

ODT,
I understand that some, if not all, of the Americans who joined the Royal Canadian Armed Forces during World War II (before the US entry) lost their American citizenship. Did the same fate befall the American members of the Foreign Legion?

[Old Dominion Tory]

Insofar as I know, the laws that threatened to strip U.S. citizenship from Americans who served in foreign forces (e.g., RAF's "Eagle Squadrons" and the RCAF) in World War II were passed in order in response to the Americans who served in the Lafayette Escadrille and other units in the French Army (to include the American Field Service).
The underlying notion was that the Escadrille--courageous American flyers fighting for France--was created by which the French in order to cleverly entice the Americans to shed their neutrality (innocence?) and send their sons to the Western Front.
Related to that, however, is a marvelous story. In August 1914, when war broke out, a group of American men, who wanted to fight for France, went to the U.S. ambassador to ask him what they should do.
The ambassador dutifully quoted them international law as it related to citizens of neutral nations serving in belligrent nations' armies. The ambassador then tossed the papers aside and announced something along the lines of, "That's the law, boys. But if I were your age, I know what I'd do!"
The young Americans cheered and dashed out the door, bound to enlist for France.

[MCNS]

ODT, well done on Kiffin. Have you come across this site in your travels? It's called "The Great War in a Different Light":

http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/index.htm

You'll appreciate the page at the site on "Flying for France."
http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Air_War/Lafayette_01.htm

[Old Dominion Tory]

Thanks, Irish Elk, for the link to that magnificent site! Excellent illustrations, especially of the French Army.