New Hampshire aviators in The Great War

By GLYNIS HART
[email protected]
CLAREMONT – Sunday, Nov. 11 marks the 100th year since the end of what was then called The Great War, and the Fiske Free Library is honoring the date with a display that documents local involvement in the war. On Thursday the library hosted Byron Champlin, who is collecting material for a book on New Hampshire aviators in World War I. 

Champlin, who is from Concord, presented the stories of four men connected to that city: Arthur Coyle, John Winant, Thomas Hitchcock Jr. and Sidney Beauclerk. 

Colin Sanborn of the Fiske Free Library introduced Champlin. “When I set this up, I was looking for stories about our boys from Claremont, but I soon realized that was impossible,” he said. 

Although there exist some newspaper articles describing the deaths in combat of Oliver LaCasse (for whom the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post is named) and Lt. John Jewett Miller, in our information-rich age it’s hard to imagine how little documentation exists for the lives of people who lived in the early 20th century. 

Therefore, Champlin shared his research on the Granite State Airmen. “The experience of the Concord flyers was typical of what other flyers from New Hampshire would have had,” he said. 

However, due to the short time the United States was involved in the war, and the country’s lack of air force at the beginning of the war, “the opportunity to get into the war was limited,” said Champlin. 

Champlin focused on four men: one, Arthur Coyle, was left the sole supporter of his family after his father, a quarryman, died of lung disease, followed shortly by Arthur’s oldest brother. Coyle joined the National Guard and was one of only 26 trained pilots in the country when the U.S. joined the war. 

John “Gil” Winant grew up about a mile away from Coyle’s home in Concord, but the two men never met until both were overseas. Winant’s privileged background was far different from Coyle’s: he went to St. Paul’s Academy in Concord and then became a teacher. After the war, he went into public office, serving as governor three times and ending his career as U.S. ambassador to Britain. 

One of Winant’s students at St. Paul’s, Thomas Hitchcock Jr., beat both older men to the war by joining a French squadron (he was too young to join the American Army). And Sidney Beauclerk, another Concord man, was at college in Syracuse when he took the opportunity for flight training. 

Fortunately for Champlin and his listeners, Arthur Coyle wrote good letters. He first met Winant when he discovered the other airman reading the Concord Monitor. Coyle, who had a subscription to the paper, assumed Winant had stolen his paper and accosted him — but Winant had his own subscription. The two men became fast friends. After the war, Coyle did some barnstorming and oil prospecting in Texas, and they co-founded an oil company. 

Winant also remained friends with Hitchcock, and the two men created the P-51 aircraft for World War II. 

Sidney Beauclerk was shot down and buried by the Germans, then reinterred after the war’s end in France. His father, a doctor, died young, at age 45; according to accounts of the time, the elder Beauclerk’s demise was due to overwork during the influenza epidemic, and the loss of his son Sydney. 

Reading from Coyle’s letters and other accounts, Champlin brought the dangerous missions of the flyers to life. After hearing of numerous crashes and near-death events, the audience was impressed that any of the men made it home. 

“Please remember them,” said Champlin in closing. “The men, and also the women who died in the war. To them, this was a big war.” 

For information about Claremont’s involvement in the war, visit the Fiske Free Library and pick up the pamphlet, “Claremont in the Great War.”