Flights for Freedom

The Great War saw armed combat take to the skies in a large way. Although the U.S. Army Air Service did not come into existence until 1918, brave American flyers were attached to aero-squadrons under command of the British RAF much earlier than that. This is the story of one of those daring flyers — "Petrol" Petronas — as he learns to master the undisciplined two-winged fighter called a Sopwith Camel. Out-gunned by the enemy in a bruising air battle, Petrol is shot down over France, after which he is shuttled by women of the Resistance from safehouse to safehouse until he crosses the border to freedom in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, on the mean streets of London, a gang of thieves maneuver to heist thousands of Lewis machine guns manufactured for the Russians but confiscated and now locked away in a lightly guarded Manchester warehouse. On the trench battlefields of France, secure communications between frontline troops and artillery and command to their rear are of vital importance. As human runners often succumb to battlefield injury or death, messages are often delivered by carrier pigeon. These birds' brave flights for freedom help turn the tide of war in favor of the Allies. Elsewhere on the frontlines, cotton sacks filled with American flour become a vital tool of war for the starving peoples of Belgium, many of whom have been imprisoned in slave labor camps. The landscape known as Flanders Fields become choked with the dead and dying. Refugees of all ages seek shelter where they can find it, and some of the youngest land in the able hands of a kindly padre, Father Montagne, and the orphanage he oversees in Douai, France. From the rooftop of his abbey, Father Montagne trains the pigeons who will soon be message-carriers for Signal Corps stationed nearby. Petrol must help spirit secret blueprints for an advanced gunsight out of Holland to Great Britain in a flour sack, where they will come into production just in time for the Allies to gain superiority in the air, prevent a Dresden-like firebombing of London, and win the war.