Lindsley, Paul Warren

Born June 9, 1897, in Pueblo, Colorado. Son of Charles L. and Emma Bolard Lindsley. Home, Marietta, Ohio. Educated Marietta High School and Mercersburg Academy, Pennsylvania. Banking business, Marietta. Joined American Field Service, May 26, 1917; attached Transport Section, 184 to November 20, 1917. joined American Red Cross in Italy. Enlisted U. S. Aviation, May 5, 1918, at Foggia, Italy. Trained there, and from July at Tours and Issoudun, France. Commission arrived three days after death. Killed in aeroplane accident at Issoudun, October 5, 1918. Buried American Cemetery, Issoudun, Indre.

PAUL WARREN LINDSLEY made his last flight at Issoudun, France, October 5th, just before his commission as Second Lieutenant arrived, which would have entailed the immediate service at the front which he had so eagerly awaited.

Just five months from the day he had enlisted in the air service his name was inscribed on the nation's Roll of Honor. Returning one day from a two-hour flight, his machine suddenly made a nose dive and crashed to the ground. The cause of the accident was never learned, though it is the belief of some that he fainted.

Young Lindsley, then only twenty-one, whose life ended so abruptly and prematurely, had already seen service in the war. He left the United States in May, 1917, a member of the Marietta College Unit, with which he served six months in France.

His term of enlistment expiring, Lindsley joined the American Red Cross, then in need of help to carry on its work behind the Italian army, at that particular time the principal field of its operations. When the German-Austrian onslaught there was stopped, Lindsley secured his release and went south to Foggia, where many American aviators were training.

Enlisting there on May 5, 1918, he was soon working for a chasse pilot's commission. Here, after flying but thirteen times with an instructor, he was given his plane to fly alone, thereby lowering the camp record of fifteen flights with an instructor before solo work.

In July he was sent to Tours in France, and shortly afterwards to Issoudun to finish his training. There, just as he was completing his hard and rapid preparation, he met his unfortunate death.

He was buried near the great American aviation camp at Issoudun with full military honors. Of the impressive ceremony, Lieutenant Ben Putnam, a boyhood friend of young Lindsley from Marietta, wrote his parents: "I have just come back from 'Sol' Lindsley's funeral. I was the officer of the funeral and since the day of his death I have been a boy with a broken heart. It came as a mighty blow to this most magnificent of all flying schools, where deaths are a common occurrence, when the game, jolly, little fellow from Ohio was called upon to give his life for his country.

"On the night of my arrival here, among the first to meet me was Paul. I had n't seen him for almost a year. He was exactly the same little fellow, a real man."

Putnam wrote of Lindsley's courage and his clean-cut devotion to duty, that it was the same which his school boy chums in Marietta High School and Mercersburg Academy had known: "You can tell Mr. and Mrs. Lindsley that, standing beside the grave of their son, through the tears that I couldn't have stopped had I tried, I uttered a vow, and that with God's help I'll carry it out. No son can give more, and no real son will ever be satisfied until he has made the same sacrifice or the dark mantle of war is lifted from this country."

The "Marietta Observer" gives the early history of young Lindsley:

"Paul Lindsley was born at Pueblo, Colorado, and when a young boy he came with his parents to this city where he has since made his home. Clean, energetic, and courageous, he was a favorite among a wide circle of friends, who to-day mourn his death.

"He attended the Marietta High School and afterwards attended the Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. Paul has made the supreme sacrifice. His was the spontaneous joy of living, and his influence will be greatly missed by those who knew and loved him."

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