Lights, Cameras, Action: Hanna and World War I Heroes in the Spotlight

In the modern day, America hesitates to enter and play a part in worldwide conflicts. America also hesitated to enter World War I. But a select few young “alpha males” did not want to wait for America to join the Great War. Part of their goal in joining was to make Americans more supportive and abandoning the idea of neutrality. They formed an all-American volunteer aviation unit in the French air-force, because its members felt that the United States was doing the wrong thing by not entering the war. Dr. Edmund Gross and Norman Prince led the efforts to persuade the French government to allow this unit to exist; the French air department approved the unit in March of 1916, and it was deployed in April. The unit was called the “Lafayette Escadrille,” in honor of Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolutionary War. The upcoming documentary “The Lafayette Escadrille,” which tells the story of this small group, features history teacher David Hanna.

The film will use a mix of archival footage and photographs from World War I and videos of various locations, such as bases and memorials. Hanna predicts that the Escadrille Memorial Cemetery right outside of Paris will be prominently featured in “The Lafayette Escadrille” and described the memorial as “really moving.” The memorial not only remembers the lives of all the Americans who fought with France in World War I, but also serves as a symbol of Franco-American comradeship during that time.

Hanna’s love for history came from his maternal grandfather, John Elco, who had fought in France in 1918 during World War I. Elco served with the Keystone Division, a unit within the Army National Guard, and later with the 19th Engineers. This sparked Hanna’s interest in World War I, specifically the Lafayette Escadrille. Hanna finds this topic so intriguing because of the nature of the volunteers who participated in the Escadrille. He explained, “They did not ask for any special favors. They felt that Germany was bullying France, and France was a country that they admired. They wanted to help.”

Before taking part in the documentary, Hanna wrote a book called “Rendezvous with Death,” which came out in the summer of 2016. Two of the chapters near the middle of his book focus on the actions of the Lafayette Escadrille. Hanna’s inspiration for the title of his book came from a poem titled “I have a Rendezvous With Death,” by Alan Seeger. Seeger’s poem was published after his death in World War I.

Hanna became involved in the documentary when filmmaker Darroch Greer encountered his book while doing research on the topic. Hanna recalled, “[When] he decided to make a documentary on the Lafayette Escadrille, he was doing research, and my book had come out. He picked it up in the bookstore, read it, and reached out to me. At the end of that summer, we talked, and he said, ‘Look I am going to be making this documentary, and I’ll be in NY, and we should set aside time. I would love to interview you because your book was a really good source for me.” So, Hanna and Greer had numerous hour-long conversations in the fall and late summer of 2016, and filmed that November.

To Hanna, the interview was much shorter than it could have been: “I could have talked for three or four times as long as I did. It is something that I could just go on, and on, and on about. I wasn’t struggling to find answers,” he said.

Hanna said that his relationship with Greer and with Paul Glenshaw, another producer of “The Lafayette Escadrille,” was much better than the interactions that he had with the publisher of his book because “the filmmakers are doing it because they love it, and I love it. We all share this passion for this particular topic. Anyone who has written about it, made films about it, or researched it—there is sort of like this kinship, because they feel strongly about these particular figures,” he said. The publishers, on the other hand, “do not have any passion. They just want to get it out and sell it,” Hanna explained.

Hanna discusses the Lafayette Escadrille in both his AP U.S. History and AP European History classes. Oftentimes when people teach World War I history with poetry, they use poems by Wilfred Owen or other British veterans, but Hanna uses poems by Seeger. He specifically uses the poem “MakToob.” This is very rare, because “I have a Rendezvous With Death” is Seeger’s most used poem. Hanna prefers “Maktoob” over other more commonly used poems, because he thinks it is the most accurate and powerful description of what life was really like in the trenches.

Hanna would not place as large an emphasis on the Lafayette Escadrille if he were not as passionate and knowledgeable about the topic. “I think I might mention it more in passing as Americans who went over there and were fighting before,” he said.

Hanna believes that all Stuyvesant students can learn numerous important lessons from the Lafayette Escadrille. First, we learn that if we see a problem in the world, we should try to go out and fix it. This doesn’t necessarily mean fighting in a war, but instead could involve national problems. “Think about what is happening in our country. There is Black Lives Matter, the Women's March, the Pipeline [in North Dakota],” Hanna said. You do not have to go abroad nowadays.”

Also, we should not rely on other people to do things for us. We have to get up and do things ourselves. Hanna reminds us, “You have to be your own hero. You gotta do it. If you do not do it, who will?”