Little record remains of Joe's family. He was the son of German immigrant Frank W. Wehner and his wife, Joanna Nelson, a Swiss immigrant.Joe was born in Roxbury, moved to Everett and attended Everett public schools. The family lived a t 22 Lynn St., Everett, Mass. He had a brother named Arnold who served in the Tank Corps and fought at St. Mihiel, and two sisters. His father, Frank Wehner, is listed as a cobbler by several sources.

Born Sept. 20, 1895, in Roxbury, a working-class suburb of Boston, Joe's family moved to Everett, another blue-collar community overlooking Boston harbor. Joe first made a name for himself as an athlete at public Everett High School. A multiple-sport jock, he played offensive tackle and captained the 1913 Everett HS team to an undefeated season. He graduated in 1914 as the school's top football player, a talent that probably helped earn him a scholarship to the two-year program at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, beginning in the fall of 1914.

Joe set out to have a grand summer in 1914, working his way to London. It was the last innocent summer for thousands of young men. War clouds gathered over the Balkans as summer heightened, and by August the storm was rolling across the continent. England entered the fray during the first week of August, and young Wehner presented himself at the American embassy, where he did "helpful service" before returning for the fall term. On Aug. 31, with the backing of the American embassador, Joe got a $40 loan from the London Relief Committee. He probably spent it on his boat ticket home.

At Exeter, Joe was bright and busy, taking part in social, athletic and academic activities during both his years there. He was the football team captain in his second year, keying the offense from his center slot and stacking up opponents as a defensive lineman. He played baseball and even took up the patrician sport of crew. Joe joined the Bay State Club, earned a spot in the Kappa Delta Pi education honors fraternity and generally made himself a BMOC.

In 1916, Joe finished his prep school days and again set his sights on Europe. While his classmates made plans for the Ivy League, Joe booked passage to Berlin as the private secretary to a high official of the Young Men's Christian Association in Sweden, Switzerland and Germany.

The YMCA was involved in prisoner-of-war camp relief work in WWI, and Joe's job reportedly had something to do with helping Allied POWs interned in Germany. Joe lived in Berlin on Kleinemuseum Strasse. He remained there until the U.S. severed diplomatic ties with his family's homeland in April 1917, returning to the United States among Ambassador Gerard's party.

But it wasn't quite the same America that Joe had left in 1916. Anyone with a German name was suddenly suspect. It was perhaps inevitable that Joe - with his serious, inscruitable air, active passport and obviously German surname - would come under investigation.

The "report" that started the trouble came on October 8, a little more than three months after Joe enlisted for flight training. It came from a former Exeter classmate - Walter Whalen of 652 Columbia Ave., Dorchester, Mass. Whalen wrote to the Office of the Chief Signal Officer in Washington, D.C. that Joseph Wehner was a college mate of his, was German and after completing his course went to Germany to take up YMCA work. Wehner "recently boasted of how easy it is to secure a passport and has joined the Aviation Corps in Bellville, Ill." Whalen wrote. "This information is submitted for whatever it may be worth."

The Signal Corps - the branch responsible for aviation in those days - was instantly interested. It called for an FBI investigation, which prompted the assignment of an Agent Loebl on Saturday, Oct. 13. Loebl traveled that day to Illinois, where the officers in charge were already aware of the Whalen letter and anxiously awaiting his arrival.

Loebl's investigation turned up nothing.

The sergeant in charge of cadets described Wehner as studious and ambitious, said he did not "associate with anyone in particular and spends most of his spare time reading and writing....He performs his duties strictly according to instructions and is a most efficient candidate for commission."

Cadet Irwin S. Stone had bunked with Joe in Austin, Texas, and Bellville, Illinois. "He has never noticed anything suspicious and has always known him to be a highly educated and ambitious man," Loebl wrote in his report.

But Stone's other comments may have been enough to keep the heat on young Joe. "Stone also stated he frequently had bitter arguments with Wehner on account of his bitter attitude toward England as being the main cause of the European conflict and of the American war." Stone did not believe Wehner had any acquaintances in St. Louis or Bellville "as he is very incommunicative and reserved and does not seem to associate with anybody."

On Sunday, Oct. 14, the cadets left the post on a pass. Loebl used the opportunity to go through Wehner's personal belongings.

"Wehner's desk next to his bunk is loaded with books, periodicals and several issues of Christian Science Monitor. Books are on general topics, some from the Bellville Public Library. Found notebook on one of the shelves with addresses of several people in France and Belgium and a diary from Sept. 6. It contained descriptions of Berlin before and after the war and his daily experiences at the aviation school. There was nothing in Wehner's dress suit case which would in any way arouse suspicion or indicate any disloyal intentions."

But that was not the end of it. "Notwithstanding the non-productive investigation, Wehner will be kept under discrete surveillance and, if necessary, will be shadowed during his next absence from the aviation corps," Loebl concluded.

There are no further records of the case against Joe Wehner, not even a follow-up report to Loebl's original investigation. But the surveillance continued. After finishing the course at Bellville, Wehner's unit was transferred to Kelly Field, outside San Antonio, Texas. He was arrested there - perhaps by the Secret Service - for suspicion of treason. No evidence was ever found, and he was released just in time to hurry to New York, where his unit awaited a boat to Europe.

Joe arrived in New York in January, received a promotion to first lieutenant and was detained again. This time - with the help of a judge's order - he managed to force his own release set sail for England with his unit in February, 1918.

After several weeks training in England, Joe got his orders to Issoudun - the great muddy field outside Paris where Americans learned combat aviation. It was also the place where Joe's path would cross Frank Luke's.

Joe and Frank were as different as two men of similar talents could be - one a wild Westerner, the other a Bostonian from Phillips Exeter. A world traveler and a provincial yahoo from the high desert. Yet both were exceptional athletes and bold, skillful pilots. And, of course, both were first-generation German-Americans at a time when anyone with a German name (including Eddie Rickenbacher, ne Rickenbacker) was under suspicion.

The 27th Pursuit Squadron
Frank and Joe got their wish on July 25 when orders came through posting them to the 27th Aero Squadron, 1st Pursuit Group, then located at Saints. For both it would be a rough introduction. Word of Joe's troubles with the FBI and Secret Service had preceeded them.

Exactly how the word got out will never be known, but aviation was a small family in those days. Perhaps someone from Kelly Field remembered Joe and the day the government men came and hauled him off like a traitor. Anyway, within hours of Joe's arrival even the enlisted men knew. On July 26, Cpl. Walter "Shorty" Williams wrote in his diary: "There's a nigger in the woodpile somewhere. We suspect a couple of German spies are in our outfit." Not only was Joe falsely accused, but in the eyes of the clubby 27th Frank Jr. was guilty by association.

The 27th at Saints was one of a handful of American squadrons that had been formed, trained and drilled as a unit from its inception. Its commander, Maj. Harold Hartney, was a diminutive Canadian ace with strong and unconventional ideas about how a pursuit squadron should be organized and led. Hartney's philosophy - foster individualism, stress initiative, teach extreme tactics and maneuvers - made the unit one of the AEF's best during the spring and early summer of 1918.

The 27th wasn't originally assigned to France. According to Hartney, the 27th was assigned to duty in England until those orders were intercepted during the squadron's Atlantic voyage by a cowardly major commanding the 148th squadron. Thinking Zeppelin duty in Britain preferable to trench warfare in France, the major swapped the two squadrons' orders. Hartney later said he knew of the fakery but chose not to expose it because it meant his squadron would report to a hotter zone.

On July 25th a group of replacement pilots arrived at the headquarters of 1st Pursuit Group. 1st P.G. would become the most storied American flying unit of the war, but on that quiet midnight most of the unit's accomplishments still lay ahead of it.

First Pursuit consisted of four - later five - squadrons: the 94th "Hat-in-the-Ring" and 95th "Kicking Mule" squadrons, which arrived first; and the 27th "Eagle" and 147th squadrons (the 147th painted a terrier dog on the fuselages of its planes), which arrived in June. The fifth squadron, the 185th "Bat" Squadron, was a night-pursuit squadron equipped with British-made Sopwith Camels. It was created only weeks before the Armistice and saw little action.

When Luke, Wehner, four other rookies and 95th Squadron transfer Donald W. Donaldson arrived at the 27th's Saints headquarters around midnight on July 25 - a cold, rainy night for July - they walked into a unit at an uncertain point in its history. What had once seemed a jaunty adventure for a bunch of cane-carrying Ivy League frat-boys had only recently turned into a real shooting war.

The 27th enjoyed some early success, but its two leading pilots - including its only ace, 2nd Lt. John McArthur - had been shot down in the preceding week. None of the remaining pilots - save Hartney - had more than one victory to his credit.

The 27th had been in operational status since June 1, but much of that time had been in the relatively quiet Toul sector, where the officers lived in a chateau and entertained themselves with drinking, whoring and periodic raids on their neighbors' livestock. Its pilots flew patrols and occasionally engaged enemy aircraft, but the routine was nothing like the grinding low-level patrol schedule the 27th would fly in September.

Its high-living lifestyle began to change on July 8, when orders sent the 27th to Saints in the Chateau-Thierry sector, where the German Army was attempting to break out of its old lines before the American Army could be brought to bear. The effort was futile, but for the pursuit squadrons it meant combat on a more regular basis.

For the officers, leaving Toul meant bidding farewell to their 900-year-old estate and checking into the Hotel de Marie - a once-noted establishment that now crawled with lice from prior duty as a field hospital for Arab soldiers. The enlisted men of the 27th slept in pup tents outside a nearby farm house where they were billeted, finding their tents more agreeable than the cootie-infested quarters their officers had picked for them.

The Old Boys' Club
Twelve of the 16 pilots on the squadron roster on July 25 were from the original Kelly Field muster in November 1917. They were a tight, perhaps insular, bunch.

The original veterans still on combat duty with 27th Squadron on July 26 were: 1st Lt. Alfred A. "Ack" Grant of Benton City, Texas; 2nd Lt. Kenneth S. "Gonny" Clapp; Hartney, the squadron commander; Lt. Robert E. Hill; Lt. William J. Hoover; future ace Lt. Donald Hudson; Lt. Jason L. Hunt; Lt. Richard C. Martin; Lt. Clifford McIlvaine; Lt. Frederick Ordway Jr., Lt. Eugene Rucker; and soon-to-be-ace 1st Lt. Jerry C. Vasconcells, the eventual C.O. of the 185th.

The rest of the squadron consisted of Lt. Ivan Roberts, a stocky boy from Massachusetts who linked up with the squadron in May at Epiez, just two weeks before its operational debut; Leo Dawson, who arrived 10 days ahead of the July 25 replacements; and the doomed duo of Lts. Oliver Beauchamp and Charles Sands, grizzled veterans of a mere three days at the front.

The morning after Luke's arrival, Hartney addressed his new pilots for the first time: Here's James J. Hudson's rendering of the speech:

"You men stand in front of me today (but) within two weeks each and every one of you will be dead - cold dead - unless you weigh what I say. "You are going to be surprised in the first, second or third trip over the line and, despite all I can say right now, you will never know there is an enemy ship near you until you notice you windshield disintegrating or until a sharp sting interrupts your breathing. "School is over. You have a man's job... so when you get up there over the lines and you find you want to come back that means you're yellow. I do not ask you to be brave enough to go over, I only ask you to have enough guts to come back and tell me so and get to hell out of this outfit.

"You are in the 27th in name only. When you have shown your buddies out there that you have guts and can play the game honestly and courageously, they'll probably let you stay. You'll know without my telling you when you are actually members of this gang. It's up to you."

Here's how Hartney remembered it:

"If you survive the first two weeks you're well over the hill. I'm not trying to discourage any of you, but you may as well know what you're up against from the first. Some of you are certain to be washed out during the first two weeks. If you get through that period safely and your own personal god continues to strap himself in with you, you'll probably accomplish things. That's all, gentlemen."

In the 1920s, Hartney - then the head of General Airways, Inc., in New York City - looked back on that first meeting and remembered feeling conscious of Luke's individual presence during the entire talk.

"In a way I resented his attitude," Hartney said. "He seemed to be saying 'Don't kid me. I'm not afraid of the bogey man.' When I had finished talking he was grinning. That ruffled me, too.

"But I came to love him and to have downright respect for him before long. Man, how that kid could fly! No one, mind you, no one, had the sheer contemptuous courage that boy possessed. I know he's been criticized for being such a lone-hander, but, good Lord, he won us priceless victories by those very tactics.

"He was an excellent pilot and probably the best flying marksman on the Western Front. We had any number of expert pilots and there was no shortage of good shots, but the perfect combination, like the perfect specimen of anything in the world, was scarce. Frank Luke was the perfect combination."

Nobody gave him such high praise in July 1918. Instead, Luke's most profound talent during his final summer seemed to be his inate ability to alienate the old-hand majority of the 27th.

Of N.28s and Flying Bricks
In July 1918, most American pursuit squadrons - the 27th included - were equipped with the Nieuport 28. A radical design departure from its forebear, the Nieuport 27, the N.28 was a light, nimble scout with a 160-hp Gnome Monosoupape 9N rotary. American pilots, not knowing any better, loved it. The French, on the other hand, refused to even take delivery of the N.28, sloughing them off on an American Air Service desperate for combat aircraft.

Several things distinguished the N.28 - most memorably, its tendency to shed the fabric from its lower wing in a stressful dive. Diving out of harm's way definitely was not a recommended tactic with this airframe, but Hartney's 27th never had the same problems with this design flaw as did the pilots of the 94th and 95th. Hartney personally tested the dive limits of the plane and trained his pilots in maneuvers that emphasized other forms of attack and evasion.

Its frailty aside, the N.28 had some distinct advantages. It was easy to fly, had a reliable, easy-to-maintain powerplant, mounted two .30-caliber Vickers machine guns (in an odd arrangement that placed the first gun on the left side of the fuselage and the second gun on top of the engine cowling, but still on the pilot's left). Depending on the mechanic that tuned it, the plane had a top speed of about 130 mph and a service ceiling of 20,000 feet. Pilots felt their N.28s could out-maneuver anything the Boche put in the air, and their record indicates they often did.

The 27th took its first shipment of Spads on July 21.

Luke, the Orly ferry pilot, had logged plenty of N.28 stick time before he arrived at Saints. But he was sure to have put some time in the cockpit of the Spad 13, the controversial plane that was to replace it.

In 1918, the expected operational life of a combat aircraft was about 20 flight hours. Many, of course, were shot down long before, but those that survived were often ready to fall apart after much more than a week of intense fighting.

According to Hartney, the 94th and the 147th disliked the N.28s, which were beloved by the 95th and the 27th. The 27th began receiving its Spad 13s in earnest the first week in August. Most of what gets written about the Spad 13 (a beefed-up Spad 7 with two guns and a big daddy Hispano Suiza in-line) is downbeat, but Williams remembers it fondly: "Some were of the 150 and some were of the 220 Hp motors. The 150s were counter- geared for the prop and were not safe as the gears would strip when motor accelerated. The 220 were direct driven and were Really Great Plane, High Ceilings, Fast...and quick maneuverable (sic)."

Training with Hartney
One thing Frank Jr. and Joe had going for them was Hartney. The little Canadian trained rookie fighter pilots by putting them in the air and attacking them, proving over and over the maxims learned in two years of aerial combat: When you see one Hun, look for the second. Watch for the Hun in the sun. Keep your head moving. Don't dive to shake a Boche on your tail. Shoot to kill.

Hartney was a nifty pilot, but he understood better than most that air-to-air combat was not really decided by whiz-bang stunts and aerial slight-of-hand. Combats were determined by machine-gun marksmanship, by surprise, by nerve, by ganging up, by taking advantage of an opponent's weakness - no matter how momentary.

Hartney claims he engaged each of the replacement pilots in mock dogfights and repeatedly bested each. He makes no special comment about how Luke flew when the two trained over Saints.

Joe and Frank Jr. got right to work on the 25th. After an uneventful 12-plane patrol at 8 a.m., Joe got the first "testing" flight at 10:48 a.m.. Frank took off for his turn15 minutes after Joe landed. That afternoon the two went on a 30-minute tour of the sector with Grant, Harkins and Whiton.

Let me interject here with a reminder: it's easy in reading an account like this to imagine a comfortable, extended training period. Not true. We're talking about arriving someplace at midnight, catching a few hours sleep, getting a talk from your commander, flying a mock dogfight or two with the C.O., taking a "cook's tour" of the front - all within the first day. On the sixth day you fly with your comrades over the lines and watch as six of them are shot down.

So when you read that the other pilots didn't take to Luke, remember this: we're talking about quick impressions, not long-smoldering resentments. The 27th must have decided pretty quickly it didn't like Frank.

After the war, Hartney described Luke as "bashful, self-conscious, and decidedly not a mixer...his reticence was interpreted as conceit. In fact, this preyed on his mind to such an extent that he became almost a recluse, with an air of sullenness, which was not that at all.

"Luke's self-confidence caused most of the pilots in the group to regard him as a boastful fourflusher and many of them never liked him, even to the end, in spite of his extraordinary accomplishments. You could not altogether blame them. Frank was unfortunate in frequently giving the wrong impression.

"One day George Jordan, a veteran sergeant of the 147th, told me he had been chatting with Luke as a German plane flew over. Looking up, Luke said, "Gee, that plane would be a cinch for me." This and many similar remarks would certainly indicate a high degree of boastfulness but I really believe they were nothing of the sort. I think they were simply the honest confidence of a zealous but not-too-diplomatic boy."

Nevertheless, his squadron quickly took to calling him "The Arizona Boaster," according to Quentin Reynolds.

Only weather kept the new recruits out of the sky. On the 26th they practiced formation flying with Donaldson, Harkins and Roberts in the morning, then flew their first combat patrol at 4 p.m. as part of a 14-plane formation. July 27th was washed out by rain, but on the 28th they flew a pre-dawn patrol in a 20-plane formation and a 5:17 p.m. patrol with 13 other pilots. On the morning of July 29 they flew an extended patrol with 17 others - the first combat patrol from which Frank Jr. absented himself. Citing engine trouble, Frank Jr. landed at Leuvre before returning to Saints at 1 p.m. - exactly an hour after the rest of the patrol.

It's worth point out here that while Frank is frequently criticized as a pilot who would drop out of formation and return late, numerous pilots in the 27th have records equally bad - or worse. A pilot who drops out, lands, and returns late was a routine entry in the 27th's operational log.

On the 30th Luke flew a recon protection patrol with 20 other pilots and witnessed his first 27th squadron casualty - Lt. Harkins cracked up on landing and had to be taken to the hospital.

Both Joe and Frank flew a subsequent 19-plane protection patrol at lunchtime on the 31st, then refueled and flew "testing flights" all afternoon. Joe went on his first voluntary patrol that evening with six others, including Grant.

Not a single combat report was filed by the squadron during the week. Aug. 1 would make up for the inactivity.