Need Infos About W. Bert Hall !

Hello all,

Bert was my great grandfather.

I didn't knew him until these days when i decided to check about him over internet. His daugther (my grandmother) is 85 now and didn't knew very well his father. I just discovered websites like this one where lots of people have infos about him. I would like for me, and for my grandmother (before she leaves us) to know more about him, to have pictures of him, to know what he did after the escadrille lafayette, how and where he died etc ... Thank you for your help, sadly i don't have many time if i want to tell the true story to my grandmother. Thanks you for your website (by the way i'm joining the french air force but i decided that before to know about Bert).

[cameldriver]

If your grandfather was the Bert Hall who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille in WWI, you come from a very interesting ancestor. He wrote two books that you might want to read: "En L'Air" and "One Man's War". Both make for interesting reading. He volunteered to serve in the Foreign Legion and then transferred to aviation. He was one of the original members of the American volunteer squadron which came to be known as the Lafayette Escadrille. He appears to have been one of the squadron's better pilots, achieving some of its earliest victories. However, he came from a more humble background than most of the other pilots, and was treated with some distrust. He eventually left the squadron, supposedly to go on amission to Russia for the US. He came back to the States, and I believe that he was killed in a car accident in the thirties. From all accounts, he was a real character. If you look on the internet, either under his name or the Lafayette Escadrille, I'm sure that you will find lots of information. The 2 books I mentioned will be helpful also.
Good luck and my compliments to your grandmother.

[Doc]

Use the search function on this forum for "Bert Hall", and you will find lots of entries. He has been discussed at length. Doc

Thanks,

I just discovered the infos you mentionned, i bought yesterday the books, i hope i'll have pictures too. His part of life after he left the escadrille is very unknow my familly said he was in "tigres volants" (flying tigers) fighting in China against Japan. I saw he died in 1948 in Ohio my grand mother didn't knew that yesterday. She has some souvenirs from him a picture and an old book perhaps others objects i'll check it. She has old and small souvenirs sometimes funny and sometimes it match with real infos : for exemple his father offered to her a lion cub and i just saw old pictures of the airbase their pilots with lions. I heard that 3 women claimed to be his wife i would like to know more about that and to know if i have "family" in USA. By the way i'm french and i live in Paris. I hope i'll be able to have good infos like where is his grave or things like that. If you are interessed in aviation i know his flying combat experience didn't stopped when he left the escadrille (at the contrary). My grandmother said his best friend was the pilot "Thaw".

Thanks for all and please if you know people who have objects, pictures or anything about him i'would be very interessed to meet/chat with them. I would like to go in US if i can know more and give to my granmother the history of her father (i'll perhaps be silent about bad things about him because she's old now!). Iwould be happy to "know" my great granfather too.

once again thanks to all

[charles]

Thaw was Bill Thaw.

Bert,

I recently purchased an excellent book, suggested by this forum, that might be of interest to you.

"SPA124 LAFYETTE ESCADRILLE; American Volunteer Airmen in World War 1, by Jon Guttman"

Here is a bit;

"On 1 November Bert Hall left N124, Kiffin Rockwell had been his closest ally against Norman Prince's efforts to drive him out of the escadrille, and five days after Rockwell's death, Hall formally requested a transfer to N103. The orders arrived on 29 October and two days later, Emil Marshall, a former Legionnaire serving among N124's ground personel, wrote in his diary that as Hall departed, he shook his fist at the other pilots and shouted, 'You'll hear from me yet'.

Whatever else can be believed from Hall's two contradictory books, En l'Air! and One Man's War, he was true to those parting words. On 26 November 1916 he sent a German aeroplane down just 200 metres from the French trenches, and he recieved another palm for his Croix de Guerre following this action. He left N103 on 14 December, and subsequently accompanied French aviation missions to Russia and Romania in January 1917. Hall was in France at the time of the Armistice, soon after which he married actress Della Byers. Post-war he moved to Hollywood, where he produced and starred in two films, A Romance in the Air and Border Patrol, before Della divorced him in 1921."

If you'd like I'll post some other bits, after I give these old eyes a rest.

Cool breeze,
Moggie

[R Pope]

Bert--Hall was in China before WWII, but left before hostilities started, so he never flew with the AVG, "Flying Tigers". There were quite a number of women who claimed to be his wife, from every country he ever visited! He was a bigger than life character who made his own rules.

[Taz]

Whatever else you want to write about Bert Hall, he was an excellent combat pilot and, before Lufbery arrived, he was doing more damage than anybody in the escadrille. Sometimes the people you work with are just too intolerant. Bert Hall was treated kind of like Carl Holler in Jasta 6 and both left after doing a good job with little credit given because they were definitely both "different" from their mates.


Taz

[Rod_Filan]

Fascinating.

Bert,
Some time ago a uniform, wings and all, purportedly to have belonged to Bert Hall, was auctioned online. Inside a tunic pocket was a card from Mme C ...Rue Dupont. Hidden within the card was a heart. I will contact you via PM to forward other images to you.

VBR
Rod

[Vin]

More interesting is how Hall's descendents came to end up in France.