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LESTER HARTER He had a high sense of honor and integrity. He gave his life in the interest of humanity and for his country. —Aurora News Register Archive, July 6, 1921 the scribbled note Lester Harter came from a family in the heartland of America. He was born on the family farm in Stockham, Nebraska, on January 9, 1890. His parents, Jacob and Ester, had ten children, and Lester was the youngest. He graduated from Aurora High School in 1911 and for a short time worked with his brother at a family-owned Buick dealership in Keokuk, Iowa.1 Lester was a tall young man with light brown hair and brown eyes.2 When the United States called for volunteers to ‹ght in the war, he wanted to become a pilot. He initially didn’t inform his mother of his decision—she was aged and sickly, and he didn’t want to worry her. Ester found out about her son’s intentions when he went to Princeton, New Jersey, for his ›ight training. Like so many of the American pilots, he received his ‹nal combat training after he arrived in France.3 On August 27, 1918, Lester Harter was sent to the front, attached to the 11th Bombardment Squadron. Bombing was done mostly out of instinct ; precise aiming of payloads was something that was an entire war away. The plane he ›ew was a two-seater DH-4, a lumbering beast of an aircraft. Lester was credited with a single combat victory in the month that he ›ew for the 11th Aero on the second of his four successful bombing missions. His ‹fth mission, on September 18, 1918, was destined to be his last. Harter’s ›ight leader was another experienced member of the 11th, Cyrus Gatton. He was ›ying with his usual observer, Lieutenant MacRea 87 Stephenson, on a bombing mission over Vittonville and Arnaville.4 Their target was enemy troop concentrations near Mars-la-Tour. The mission went awry, the result of bad weather, lack of ‹ghter escort , and the temperamental DH-4s. Many of the aircraft failed to reach their target altogether, forced down by mechanical failures. Those that did make it found heavy clouds obscuring the target, and the bombers went after their secondary target at Con›ans.5 As the DH-4s turned to make their return trip to the aerodrome they were pounced on by seven to ten Fokkers of Jasta 12 led by Staffelführer Leutnant der Reserve Hermann Becker. Leutnant Becker angled in behind the DH-4 piloted by Lieutenant Harter. Harter never stood a chance. His plane was riddled with bullets and erupted in ›ames as it went down. In those last few horri‹c moments Harter must have been torn between the misery of the ›ames lapping at him and the knowledge that bailing out of the DH-4 meant just as certain death. His decision : avoiding the slow, agonizing, and ‹ery death by climbing out of his cockpit and jumping. He was so sure of his fate that he took one quick moment to ensure that his remains would be identi‹ed. Lester’s last moments were not with himself and the plight he faced but ensuring that his family would see his remains. No one alive will understand the thoughts of Lester Harter in those moments, with ›ames whipping into his face and body, facing his death thousands of feet above the ground. Just extracting himself from the burning cockpit had to have ‹lled him with ripples of pain. Harter had become Becker’s ‹fteenth victory, recorded as a Bréguet XIV from the 11th Aero Squadron.6 When German ground troops came upon the wreckage they found the nearby twisted corpses of Lester Harter and his observer. Harter held a slip of paper in his lifeless hand that had his scribbled name on it, which was how he was initially identi‹ed.7 The writing was barely legible and done in pencil, indicating that in his last moments alive, before his jump, he had scratched the note and clasped it in his hands so that his remains could be identi‹ed. In those last moments before he jumped, Lester made sure his body could be identi‹ed. The Germans carried the two aviators to the nearby village of Jarny and buried them with the German dead in the French Civil Cemetery. There was little formality, Harter was interred with his fur-lined ›ight suit, though someone took...

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