Forman, Horace Baker, 3rd

Born March 4, 1894, in Baltimore, Maryland. Son of Horace B. Forman, Jr., and Lucy Chandler Forman. Home, Haverford, Pennsylvania. Educated Haverford School and College, and Cornell University. Class of 1917. Joined American Field Service, April 14, 1917; attached Transport Section 526 to October 15, 1917. Enlisted U. S. Aviation Service, October 19th, three months in aviation camps. February, 1918, training Foggia, Italy. Second Lieutenant, May 18, 1918. Returned to France for chasse training. Killed in accident, September 14, 1918, at Issoudun. Buried American Military Cemetery near Issoudun, Indre.

"LIKE SO many of the heroic youth of America, he saw the right long before his country came to see it, and went forth to make the good fight, not counting the cost and of that you can forever be proud."

There is something quietly suggestive of the modern crusader in this tribute paid to Horace Baker Forman, 3d who died "on the Field of Honor, for France." A very modern, American crusader, who shrank from any manifestations of glory, and asked only the satisfaction of wearing the olive drab uniform, and being permitted an active share in the "job to be done 'over there.'"

Horace was a quiet, college-absorbed Sophomore at Cornell when the Great War broke out. It was n't until two years later that he realized that this war concerned him. Fully alive, then, to its significance, he obtained, after some delay, the consent of his family to sail for France with. the first Cornell unit as a volunteer in the American Field Service. This was the well-known first group of armed Americans, carrying the American flag, to march through the streets of Paris after the United States had declared war on Germany. Their stirring ovation humbled while it inspired Horace. "Though we are only forty, and not worth our food," he wrote, "we are treated by everyone like kings! . . . . . The only thing lacking is 500,000 or more men in olive drab under the same flag."

Then passed six weary months of camion driving, but Horace never complained, because he was helping the French, and the French poilus were to him "the most wonderful people in the world." France itself he loved as "my second country." The beauty, and the pathos, and the courage of this country were ever-new miracles to him.

Upon completing his engagement in the Field Service, when his family wished him to come home, he wrote that he could not return to college: ". . . . You must try to remember that really I am only a little bit of a thing in a big mass . . . . . I must get into line in some regular service and stay to the finish."

Young Forman's enlistment with the camion service expired October 14, 1917. Within the week he had enlisted in the United States Air Service. For three trying months, he was detained in an aviation camp, waiting to go into training. At this time he gave thanks for having been taught to play chess when he was young. "You have lots to thank other people for if you take time to think --- and you have lots of time over here! When you stand out in the dark with a gun . . . . . and with nothing to do but keep awake . . . . .. you can do a lot of thinking! "

Inaction ended the first part of February, and by the 15th, he was settled at a training camp in Foggia, Italy, really flying at last. He showed from the first that he was a born flyer. In three months he had completed the training and received his commission as Second Lieutenant, on May 18, 1918.

Lieutenant Forman was sent back to France for advanced work. Though skilled in bombing, he chose the work of chasse pilot, as more sportsmanlike. There were inexplicable delays and as he waited orders, on September 14th, he was killed in a sad and strange aeroplane accident, when in descending from his plane, "the propeller fractured his skull, causing immediate death."

But the Crusader's spirit cannot die. His life was Forman's gift to his country and to France; his spirit of unselfish service was his gift to humanity --- his memory will live enshrined in the hearts of men.

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