Polish air force officer
Cedric Fauntleroy |
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 Cedric E. Fauntleroy in his Polish Air Service uniform. (U.S. Air Force photo) |
| Born | 1891 (1891) |
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| Died | 1963 (aged 71–72) |
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Cedric Errol Fauntleroy (1891–1963[1]) was anAmerican pilot who in 1919 volunteered to serve in thePolish Air Force during thePolish-Soviet War of 1919–1921.
Born nearNatchez, Mississippi, Fauntleroy served withEddie Rickenbacker's94th Fighter Squadron on the Western Front in World War I.[2]
Recruited by his fellow veteranMerian C. Cooper in 1919, he became one of the best pilots of thePolish 7th Air Escadrille, dubbed theKościuszko Escadrille (the Kosciuszko Squadron, named for Polish and American national heroTadeusz Kościuszko). He was promoted tocolonel and he received Poland's highest military decoration: theVirtuti Militari,[year needed] besides being awarded theCross of Valour four times.[3]
- ^"Cedric Errol Faunt le Roy".niebieskaeskadra.pl. Retrieved2021-10-26.
- ^Olson and Cloud (2010) remark on his being named afterCedric Errol, Lord Fauntleroy, boy protagonist of the highly successful children's novelLittle Lord Fauntleroy published in 1885/6.Lynne Olson, Stanley Cloud,For Your Freedom and Ours, Random House, 2010,29f."At a little sidewalk café in Paris, he [Merian C. Cooper ] recruited his first volunteer, a tall, lean army major from Mississippi with the improbable name of Cedric Errol Fauntleroy. A friend of Cooper's, Fauntleroy had flown in France with Eddie Rickenbacker's famous "Hat in the Ring" squadron. He had grown up on a small plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, where his incorrigibly romantic mother had given him the first and middle names of the golden-haired protagonist ofLittle Lord Fauntleroy and read him poems by Byron and others celebrating the heroics ofTadeusz Kościuszko."His middle name is occasionally reported asErald.
- ^citation in: personnel records of the Polish army (Dziennik Personalny), Ministry of Military Affairs, published 30 April 1921 (appeared periodically as an appendix toPolska Zbrojna), Nr 21, item 844.
3. Documentary television movie in Poland from 2005. Story of Merian Cooper, and the Americans who flew in defense of Poland in 1919/20. The Magnificent Seventeen.http://www.filmydokumentalne.eu/siedemnastu-wspanialych/
- Janusz Cisek,Kosciuszko, We Are Here!: American Pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919-1921, McFarland, 2002.
