In The Company of Eagles

In The Company of Eagles by Ernest K. Gann. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780671370855.

Superb prose in a gritty and vast WWI landscape. This is worth having, and reading over and over. This author has used some interesting ways of telling this story, and not just in the blood rivalry between the French ace Sgt. Chamay and his personal enemy, German Lt. Kupper. Look for some interesting subplots: the adventures of the ham from Kempinskys, the comic (and sometimes dangerous) mishaps of Chamays mechanics, and Sgt. Chamays bicycle trip through the terrible aftermath of the Nivelle Offensive. The author has avoided the cliches about knights of the air. He spares nothing about the lethal and grisly nature of fighting, without parachutes, in what were little more than cloth-and-wood kites. And Chamays battle with Kupper is not a duel but a search for vengeance: he wants to kill him, not joust.