DOB/DOD: February 4, 1895 (Stamford, CT) – October 21, 1977 (Norwalk, CT); 82 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Married Carol M. Sawyer (1899-1985) on November 15, 1919 in Montclair, NJ
CHILDREN: One son, Richard (1921-1998). Two daughters, Ruth S. Billard Morrill (1923-) and Grace G. “Gigi” (1928-2015).
LOCAL ADDRESS: 319 Rowayton Avenue, Norwalk
ENLISTMENT: April 6, 1917
DISCHARGE: February 23, 1919
UNIT: 13th Aero Squadron
FAMILY: Born to Frederick J. (1870-1901) and Jesse M. Cudlipp Billard (1867-1945). One sister, Ruth M. “Beth” Billard (1893-1916).
From the Montclair (NJ) Times February 9, 1918
DID WELL ON FIRST FLIGHT
“I HAVE ACTUALLY STARTED TO FLY,” ARTHUR BILLARD WRITES MOTHER
Montclair Boy, Training to be Aviator in France Expects to Get “Brevet” by April — He and His Companions Going to Show Uncle Sam That They are Worth All That Has Been Spent On Them — Reports Discipline Strict
The letters printed below are from Arthur M. Billard, of No. 172 Summit Avenue, to his mother Mrs. C. H. Gaston, He has been “over there” nearly four months, and is now in the first squad of U.S. cadets to train in their particular Militaire Aeronautique training school.
His First Flight.
December 30, 1917.
Dear Mother: — Just a note to let you know that I’ve actually started to fly – I had my first flight today, and it was certainly great. I had two “hops,” a total of fifteen minutes altogether; on the first hop, I simply rode as a passenger, but on the second, I took
the controls and guided the machine awhile in the air; the Moniteur (or instructor) told me I did very well.
I’m beginning to learn a little French, and hope to be able to converse well in a few months. Due to the fact that I changed my location on the twenty-sixth, I have received no mail since Christmas and consequently no packages. I hope to receive some of your packages before long, although I’m afraid someone must be very fond of the brand of cigarettes you are sending to me!
Johnny Wood is not with us now but all the rest of the boys are together except one fellow by the name of Hope who is sick in the hospital, with pneumonia, so there are now only fifteen members of the lucky seventeen remaining.
Jake and I, being nearly the same size, stand side by side in ranks, and “Hank” Spaulding is right behind Jake, so we have three Princeton boys in our squad. Benny Cushman is in the fourth squad and consequently in the next barracks. But that’s all right, so long as he’s here.
Although we’re pretty busy throughout the day—we have lots of sleep here. Lights are out at 8:30 and reveille at 6:45; these are the best hours we’ve had since we left the States. The discipline, however, is very strict, it is even more so than at ground school. We don’t mind it now, though, because we’re flying.
They tell us we ought to get our “brevets,” in about three months, if the weather is fairly good. A brevet is worth a commission in the U.S. Army; the men who are commissioned in the States don’t have to be as good fliers as the men who get their brevets.
The weather over here in very cold we have almost zero weather every day. That makes the flying pretty cold, but we manage to bundle up well, and with our leather suits and booties — and thanks to our knit helmets and mufflers — we manage to keep fairly warm. We wouldn’t kick at the cold anyway, because we’ve waited too long for the great opportunity which we now have, and we are all going to show the government that we’re worth every cent that has been spent on us.
I must close now, as I have another letter to write tonight.
With lots of love to all, and hoping we’ll all be home soon.
Your loving son,
ARTHUR
—————————————————————————————–
Whole Squad Doing Well.
January 3, 1918.
Dear Mother: On New Year’s Day, a package arrived from you containing cigarettes. writing paper, chewing gum, and a harmonica. The harmonica came just in time, as the one I had was “lifted” by some light-fingered foreigner a week ago. While writing this, the mail came in, and I had five packages — three from you and two from Mrs. Cary — which I was very glad to get, as good things from home are always welcome.
I had my feet frost bitten, and have just been to the hospital where they gave them a hot bath, which makes them feel much better. Now that it is a little warmer. I hope they will be all right soon.
I have had six flights in the air and am getting along nicely. The Moniteur says our whole squad is doing very well. I gave one of my knit helmets to a French boy across the hall. In return he gave me a compass, which naturally, I prize very highly. He is only twenty years old and has won the Croix de Guerre three times. I will send you a picture of him, soon. His mother and sister are in Belgium, and his home has been in the hands of the Germans since the war started. We’re all having a great time now, as Jake just received a fruit cake and some candy. This has surely been a big day!
New Year’s Day we all had a holiday, and went to —–censored out—— which is about three miles from here. We had a fine dinner there — oysters on the half shell, omelet, lamb chops, potatoes, and cheese, all for four francs, which is remarkably cheap. Yesterday we had to go to the hospital at and be examined physically. This is the first time since leaving the States. I guess I’ve told most of the news, except that mail only leaves here once a week, so I won’t be able to write oftener. I’ll write again next week.
Lots of love to all. ARTHUR.
From The Norwalk Hour September 30, 1972
ROWAYTONITE’S SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
A Jet Flight Back Into The World of Spads
The last time he saw Paris, the streets weren’t bright and gay; they were dark and sad under the pall of World War I raging a few kilometers away. As one of the 600 American pilots and observers who flew in combat during World War 1, Arthur M. Billard of Rowayton is expecting a vastly different atmosphere when he lands at Orly Field Sunday for the first time in 53 years.
It’s been that long since he took off from that field in a Spad airplane for service at the front in August of 1918. He’ll be landing this time as a member of the World War 1 Overseas Flyers Association, a group of American, French, English, and other Allies of that “war to end all wars” who saw action in the air.
Mr. Billard remembers only the solemn aspects of Paris because he wasn’t fortunate enough to get there after the Armistice in November of 1918. He was out near Verdun when that occurred, and his 13th Squadron went by a somewhat circuitous route around Paris on the way home.
“We were at Orly for a few weeks before we went to the front,” he remembers today. “But we didn’t get to see much of what Paris is famous for. We were getting ready for the front. It was serious business.”
The Overseas Flyers Association is a somewhat new organization that wasn’t formed until after World War II. There have been reunions in Dayton. Ohio, at Wright-Patterson field and in Washington, D.C. attended by upwards of 200 members of the association. It is believed that 600 Americans flew in France during World War I.
When Mr. Billard enlisted in the Army on March 25, 1917, the day Germany and America broke diplomatic relations, he was one of eight members of a Wall Street brokerage house numbering 10 who did so. He was a 22-year-old runner at the time. Since he lived in Montclair, New Jersey, at the time, he joined the First New Jersey National Guard.
“The only two who didn’t enlist,” he recalls, “were an old man and a handicapped individual.”
Mr. Billard remembers his 13-month stay in France with almost minute accuracy. He still has the log book which earned him his wings and there are numerous other little anecdotal materials his possession.
“I was in officer’s training camp when I learned that they weren’t going to commission any more lieutenants under 25 years of age. Not wanting to return home, a buck private, I took a test for Ground School in the flying division of the Signal Corps at Princeton, New Jersey, and passed. One aspect of the test was to be spun around in a chair several times until they thought you were dizzy. Then they’d have you walk a crack in the floor.”
Mr. Dillard was in ground school for two months until September 8, 1917. Thereupon, he was transferred to Bedloes Island in New York Harbor for shipment overseas. “There were no flying schools in the U. S. at the time,” he recites. “We were sent first to Chateauroux for initial training and later to Issoudun for advanced flying in French Nieuport planes. We engaged in acrobatics, formation flying, and simulated combat using cameras instead of guns. The cameras wouldn’t lie, and a lot of aspiring pilots became observers.”
The Rowaytonite had his wings in three months after proving he could take a plane up to 600 meters (1,700 feet) stall it into the wind then land it on the field below. Another test was to fly a 2,000-meter triangle course.
Later, after advanced training, came gunnery school at Cazan near Bordeaux, where the pilots fired at towed sleeves and dove on balloons with five-foot diameters.
The 13th Squadron reached the front near Toul and the Sainte Mihiel district on August 26, 1917. They were composed of 21 pilots and planes in three flights of seven. The commander was Charles J. Biddle, and one of the pilots was Major Carl “Tooey” Spatz, later to become the chief of the Air Force in World War I.
The squadron was based about 30 miles from the front so that at the 120 miles-per-hour cruising speed of the Spad, it would take 25 minutes to reach the lines. The tanks on the Spad held about two hours fuel, allowing pilots to remain at the at the front for about an hour providing cover for bombers, observation balloons or planes and supporting ground troops.
There were many days when the weather kept the planes on the ground, but there were still other days when the planes just wouldn’t start.
“I always thought the French gave us the worst planes,” Mr Billard says today. “There were some days when I’d still be on the ground trying to get started when the squadron returned.” Of course, there were days when Mr. Billard would have been happy not to have taken off. “One day, I developed engine trouble over the front and was unable to maneuver the plane. Three Germans spotted my plight and moved in for the kill. One of our boys knocked down one of them and chased off a second, but the third kept right on my tail most of the way home. There wasn’t a thing I could do to shake him off. I still wonder why he didn’t fire. Maybe he had no ammunition. Maybe his gun jammed, God only knows. We had no chutes in those days, you know.”
Another vivid memory is the crack-up of No. 18, the plane he had all the time at the front. “I busted a connecting rod one day and had to crash into the side of a hill. Buried the nose three feet into the dirt. Didn’t even get a scratch,” he chuckles. Evidently, all those hairy experiences didn’t enhance Mr. Billard’s love for flying. He never flew a plane after his last mission in the repaired No. 18 and he didn’t fly as a passenger but three times since then.
But he’ll be flying Sunday, and if his feet don’t touch the ground when the plan lands at Orly with 80 other Overseas Flyers and their wives, it will be understood.
From The Norwalk Hour October 22, 1977
ARTHUR M. BILLARD DIES AT 82, LONG ACTIVE IN CIVIC AFFAIRS
Arthur Munroe Billard, patriarch of the Sixth District of Rowayton, died Friday in Norwalk Hospital at the age of 82. Since its incorporation in 1921, hardly a political or civic undertaking in Rowayton escaped his attention and participation. “He was an outstanding leader with a broader, more varied interest in the community than anyone else I can think of, said former State Rep. Frank E. Raymond today. ‘‘He was a vital force in just about everything we ever did down here.” Mr. Raymond also pointed out that Mr. Billard’s interest extended to the Norwalk community as a whole since he was one of the founders of the Norwalk YMCA and a forceful advocate of scouting in Fairfield County for a long period, serving as a scout commissioner.
Born in Stamford in 1895, the son of the late Frederick J. and Jessie Cudlipp Billard, he had spent a good part of his boyhood after his father’s early demise in Upper Montclair, N. J., where he held a full-time job while attending school. Things got tough for the family for a period, and he was shunted to an uncle’s farm in Michigan. Meanwhile, his older sister, Ruth, had matriculated at Syracuse University, where she became close to Dorothy Thompson, later to become a journalist and wife of Sinclair Lewis. The girls insisted that young Arthur join them at the university despite the fact that he had no high school diploma. He took an entrance exam, passed with flying colors, and spent two years at Syracuse studying a pre-medical course.
Unfortunately, Ruth died in that second year, and young Arthur returned to Upper Montclair. He acquired a job on Wall Street before World War I and, during the period, struck an acquaintance with a willowy beauty named Carol Sawyer, daughter of a well-to-do importer whose home was the center of social activity in the town. The World War interrupted the courtship and sent the handsome six-footer into the Army Flying Corps, where he saw action in France and was awarded a Purple Heart by Commander-in-Chief John J. Pershing. The Purple Heart was awarded for “exceptionally meritorious and conspicuous service” in those days and not for wounds as it is today,
Not that the young lieutenant didn’t suffer a few scrapes and bruises during 15 months in France. He did. In fact, one day, he broke a rod on his #18 Spad and ran it into a hill on the way back from the front. He escaped without broken bones; however, he recalled in a September 30, 1972, interview in The Hour just before taking off for a reunion in Paris with other members of the Overseas Flyers Association.
He and Carole were married upon his return, and they came to Rowayton soon after to establish a home in Pennoyer Street. They moved to their permanent home at 317 Rowayton Avenue in 1923. Mr. Billard became very ill in 1927 from complications arising after an appendicitis attack, and a headline in the November 24, 1927, Hour indicates that he was rushed to a New York Hospital that day in a coma some three months after his appendix had been removed. He battled for his life for several weeks before being discharged in February of the following year. A few years later, he left Wall Street and joined the Equitable Life Insurance Co., becoming a chartered life underwriter, a career he pursued until his death.
As an active participant in the community, Mr. Billard was commissioner of the district from 1929 to 1935, the clerk in 1938 and 1939, Chief of the volunteer fire department from 1925 to 1928, president of Rowayton Hose Co. No. 1 from 1965 to 1970, treasurer of Union Cemetery Association for 20 years, chairman of the Fairfield County War Bond Payroll Deduction during World War II, a member of the Norwalk Ration Board during the same period, president of the Norwalk Club, chairman of innumerable United Fund and Community Chest committees (“He always turned in his pledge cards first with the most,” recalled Mr. Raymond.), a member of the Norwalk Board of Tax Review for 20 years and a volunteer recently for the Senior Personnel Placement Bureau.
With civic affairs as an avocation, his family remembers him in the living room talking on the phone almost every evening that he wasn’t attending a meeting. What little other time he had, he devoted to the daily crossword puzzle in the New York Times, which he normally filled within 15 minutes without a mistake, they recall.
Always an advocate of physical exercise, he was the founder of a rifle club for boys in Rowayton during the 20s and the founder of the baseball team sponsored by the Hose Company. He was also one of a group that organized the first Labor Day Swim Meet in the 30s. Two of his own children, Richard and Ruth, were both Rowayton and Norwalk champions in swimming. Richard is now a guidance counselor at Brattleboro (Vermont) High School. Ruth, a retired wildlife biologist with the State of Connecticut, was named the first recipient a few years ago of the Biologist of the Year Award. Another daughter, Graham Billard, is a piano teacher. Also surviving are three grandchildren and a sister, Mrs. Ward C. Green of Wilton.
Services will be held Sunday at 1:30 P.M. in the United Church of Rowayton with Rev. Donald W. Emig, pastor, officiating. Interment will be in Rowayton’s Union Cemetery. Friends may call at the Raymond Funeral Home, 5 East Wall Street, on Saturday between 7 and 9 P.M.
The Rowayton Hose Co. will meet in special session at 7 P.M. at the firehouse then proceed to the funeral home in a body. Past and present officers of the company and the fire department will serve as pallbearers. Contributions to the Ambulance Squad of the Rowayton Hose Co. will be appreciated by the family.
Buried in Rowayton Union Cemetery, Rowayton Avenue, Norwalk, Connecticut; Section and plot number unknown. Photo from FindAGrave.com.
END
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