WINGS IN THE NIGHT
by Willis S.Fitch '17. Marshall Jones Co. p. 302.$2.00.
The last of Dartmouth's pre-war generations knew Willis Fitch as the shrill voiced cheer leader who exhorted the regimented brethren to give an Indian Yell for THE TEAM or a Wah Hoo Wah for Frank Cavanaugh and make it loud and long. Such of those young gentlemen, now twenty years older, as reside in the vicinity of Boston, know Mr. Fitch now as an investment broker, as successful as any investment brokers are in these times, with a residence on the classic "water side of Beacon Street" commanding an impressive view of the River Charles.
The point is that, so modest has this alumnus of the Class of 1917 been about it, that nobody has known him as a war hero, and, certainly, not as the possessor of a literary bent.
Both these facts have just been revealed by the publication of the newest war book, "Wings in the Night," an autobiographical treatment of a Dartmouth undergraduate's (Fitch's) experience in the great adventure of 1917-18.
Briefly, Fitch, in common with so many other Dartmouth volunteers of that tense and turgid time, went into aviation. Trained quickly and commissioned, he was rushed to Italy as one of a group of young American flyers, sent in command of Capt. Fiorella LaGuardia, now Mayor LaGuardia of New York City, both to fight and to fly with the Italian Air Corps, and to serve as a stiffener of Italian morale.
The collapse of Russia had freed Austria from pressure on that side and had made it possible for the Austrians to mass their guns and men on the Italian border. Italy's General Cadorna plead in vain for reinforcements from England and France. The Allies either couldn't or wouldn't spare strength of their own. The Italians broke at Caporetto in headlong rout, but managed to rally doggedly at the Piave, to hold the enemy and probably save the Allies.
But it was a terrible winter in Italy, defection was imminent, German propaganda subtly poisoned the Italian war zone with stories that the Americans weren't coming, the Allies were lying and that Italy was being deserted and betrayed by those who claimed to be her friends.
In command of this dynamic personality, LaGuardia, who spoke Italian as well as he spoke English, Fitch and his young brother flyers were rushed to the danger zone where, resented and mistrusted at first, they proved themselves able harbingers and first class fighting men. Before it was over, most of them had either been killed in training accidents, or shot down in action. Fitch, almost alone, survived, to finish the grisly business a first lieutenant, with a flight commandership halted only by the armistice, with two decorations from Italy's king, one of them bearing with it an annual subsidy from the Italian government for life.
The fighting, the killing, the technique of night bombing, the thoughts and the reactions of a typical young American "when he's up there with only God in the front seat beside him" are all here set down, and in restrained, modest and self effacing style.
But, in my humble opinion, the book is distinctive amongst literature of its sort, and it will especially pull at all Dartmouth heart strings because it isn't so much a history of killing and being killed, as it's a tribute to the decency, the idealism and the pure unalloyed patriotism that inspired most of the collegians who went into that war. There've been plenty of books about the winning and wenching and hairtriggered goddamning that characterized that noble and futile experiment.
Here's an author who's really paying tribute to his father, his college, his college pal, his country and, through them, to whatever was clean and beautiful about that holocaust.
Dartmouth men of that era will remember Walt York. This book is really a tribute to him.
He and Fitch were fraternity brothers and the closest of friends in college. The war chapters in the book are merely incidental to the saga of friendship, through Dartmouth, of these two flyers, York, a decorated ace in the famed Lafayette Escadrille, and Fitch, spurning a decoration ceremony at which the King of Italy and the Prince of Wales presided in order to keep a hurried rendezvous with his Dartmouth roommate in Paris.
Their letters, their talks in the few hours they could snatch together, the eventual tragedy when Fitch hurried to keep the big furlough they'd planned together for so long, only to discover that he'd have to keep it with his memories because his best friend was dead, is a powerful preachment concerning how completely war can rob youth of all he holds dearest, despite the fact that the eagles of victory technically perch upon his guidons.
"Wings in the Night" is replete with Dartmouth names, Dartmouth figures and Dartmouth ideals of that era. It may not rest in fame as one of the great books about the war, but it definitely speaks for whatever was decent and noble about that grandiloquent butchering, and it recalls the sincerity and high purpose of tens of thousands of collegians who offered their all upon the altars of democracy, Dartmouth men being typical of the rest.
