Brown, Stafford Leighton

Born October 25, 1895, in Newton, Massachusetts. Son of George W. and Eugénie Stafford Brown. Home, Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Educated Newton High School and Dartmouth College, Class of 1919. Plattsburg Camp, 1915. Joined American Field Service, March 12 1917; attached Sections Seventeen and Nineteen, until October 18, 1917. Enlisted in French Aviation, July 21, 1917. U.S. Air Service, January 21, 1918. Commissioned Second Lieutenant. Attached Acceptance Park, Orly. Killed in accident at Hargeville, September 28, 1918. Buried American Cemetery, Suresnes, Seine.

WITH all the zest of youth and an adventure-loving nature, Stafford Leighton Brown went abroad a month before the United States declared war, and entered joyously into the precarious life of war: "It's certainly fun and excitement --- something I've always wanted." He was young and utterly unselfish at heart. He wrote home, "If I should happen to get killed don't blame yourself, I will die having a good time," yet in the next breath he could beg his mother to be gay: "Your letters are altogether too sad. You keep speaking about death, but we all feel that if one is fighting for the United States, dying is not to be feared --- in fact it is quite an honor." To Stafford it was all a big, fine adventure. He could not realize that war was a thing of fears and forebodings for those who waited across the sea for news. The expectation of combat and great moments, even should they bring an end to living, was to him glorious anticipation. To his mind there was no cause for worry except in delays and idleness. He made sincere if unsuccessful efforts to relieve his family's anxieties, writing in his last letter: "Don't worry about me, I am as safe as though I were back in Newton Centre," then at once effaced his reassurances by adding that an aviator friend had been killed a few days before.

Upon his arrival in France Stafford helped drive chassis from Bordeaux to Paris, then left with Section Seventeen for the front as an ambulance driver, to be transferred shortly as mechanic to Section Nineteen. His duty it then was to keep the whole section fit to "roll," besides which he drove truckloads of wounded and supplies, and in "rush" times took his turn with an ambulance.

In August he went on leave and was released to enter aviation in the Lafayette Escadrille. "Expect to be chasing the Boche around up in the clouds in a few months --- or being chased," he wrote. After training with the French, he enlisted in the American service, being breveted on May 2, 1918. Having driven almost every make of plane, he was placed at Orly delivering machines to squadrons at the front. He grew "pretty sick of this 'ferry' job," writing: "It looks bad now for me. I'll probably be stationed here for the duration of the war, because I know all the routes to the front and schools."

He wanted his people to be proud of him "for having done something worth while or for dying while trying to do the same." "But that," he said, "is the feeling we all have over here, so it's nothing new." Typical of Stafford's unconscious generosity are his words, "I received your Christmas box. Everything was there and was finished in fifteen minutes. The fellows who shared the box with me send their thanks, too." However thoughtless of himself he felt keenly for others. He disliked testing and approving planes: "I wouldn't mind so much going out and getting killed myself, but I don't want to be responsible for someone else's death."

On September 22, having "a chance to go to a large factory and test planes," he did not accept because it would be for "duration." So "Staff" went on, hoping always that he might be sent to a squadron, and feeling, as he expressed it, "pretty much of an embusqué to be only driving machines out there for them to take and get killed in," until six days later his plane fell at Hargeville and he was carried into the Chateau where he died. Not in combat, but in making tests that others might not die needlessly, and in furnishing them means of fighting, Stafford did his part, and in the end joined the ranks of the fighters who died in those same planes for their country.

• Tribute from Memorial Volume of the American Field Service, 1921