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PHILLIP E. HASSINGER At 3 o’clock our patrol was over the Salmson rendezvous going towards the center group of the Boche. —Gorrell’s History of the American Expeditionary Forces Air Service, 1917–1919 a parent’s hunch At six foot ‹ve and a quarter, Phillip “Phil” Hassinger was tall by the standards of the U.S. Army Air Service. He lived on Broadway in New York City. He enlisted in August of 1917, ‹ve months after the United States declared war on Germany. First Lieutenant Hassinger was assigned to the 22nd Aero Squadron in France. He was not an inexperienced pilot. He was involved in at least three air battles with an uncon‹rmed victory and one that was con‹rmed as his on September 7, 1918. On his ‹nal ›ight, on September 14, he was part of a group of Spad XIIIs from the 22nd Aero Squadron that were supposed to be providing cover for an observation mission. Hassinger’s Spad XIII was marked with tail number S.7580 that day.1 The Salmson 2A2 they were supposed to be protecting could not be found, but three groups of German aircraft were present; one patrol of ‹ve, another of six, and another of twelve.2 According to one account, “The patrol was ‘jumped’ by the last collection of twelve. All except two members appeared to be safe and dived to approximate safety. Lieut. Kimber was engaged and his plane unreasonably shot to pieces, himself surviving by several miracles. Lieut. Hassinger disappeared entirely from the ‹ght at its beginning, and it is practically certain that he fought a glorious ‹ght against large odds, for if he did remain above to continue the struggle, the number against him be105 came overwhelming due to the approach of the middle group of E.A. [enemy aircraft].”3 Phil Hassinger remained missing in action when the war came to an end, making his case one of the more dif‹cult ones that Fred Zinn was to research, mostly due to the number of false trails. The ‹rst of these was a grave site marked “Hassinger.” Someone in the Graves Registration Service had sent word of the grave to the family, somewhat prematurely. Somehow the family felt that this was not their son, perhaps some intuition that cannot be fully explained. Hassinger was not a common name, but somehow the family suspected that this was not their son. Fred received a letter from the Columbia University, Paris Bureau, from a friend of the Hassinger family who was hoping to validate the remains . As the author of the letter, Director Horatio Krans, wrote, “I am making this inquiry on behalf of the parents of Lt. Hassinger, who are in great distress because they are not sure whether the Phillip Hassinger buried in the Fère-en-Tardenois is their son or another man of the same name who was in the army and who has been killed.”4 It was unfortunate that the Graves Registration Services of‹cer had contacted the family. Fred had heard of the grave site but felt it was too far away from where Phil had been last seen to be his. Still, it was a lead, and he followed up on it diligently. In March of 1919 he led a team to the site. The grave was opened, and the remains of Philip Hassinger of Battery D of the Field Artillery were properly identi‹ed from the tags found with the body. The suspicions of aviator Hassinger’s parents in New York were validated—these were not the remains of their son. Matters became even more complicated a week later. One former prisoner of war, a Sergeant Robert Rose, forwarded a story to Zinn’s attention that indicated he had seen Hassinger in the company of lieutenants Sperry and Weber at a base hospital. “Lt. Hassinger seemed to be in good condition and had recovered from his wound,” he wrote.5 Lieutenant Sperry, however, rebutted this account, indicating that at no time had he seen Lieutenant Hassinger. Having shaken out the red herrings, Fred returned to his traditional research methods to attempt to ‹nd Hassinger. He had identi‹ed the remains of three aviators in the Toul sector where Hassinger went down, one of which might be Phillip. Most of these were partial remains, a few bones and bits and scraps of uniform, hardly complete corpses. One was rejected because his dental chart was so dramatically different from Hassinger ’s...

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