Local History: WWI Pilot Ronald Wood Hoskier

With the election behind us, the nation can look forward to Veterans Day, when we honor those who have served in the military. It’s a fine and fitting time to consider the memorials around our town, and to learn the story each represents.

Hoskier Road, in the Newstead section of town, has a family of heroes for its namesake. The Society Notes of the May 18, 1888 New York Times announced the forthcoming “quiet wedding” of Miss Harriet Wood to Mr. Hermann Hoskier of London. (His name is correctly spelled Herman.) On May 27, the event was described as a “country wedding” that attracted “many people from New-York.” 

Herman C.  Hoskier was from a prominent English family. When his father died in 1904, the news made The New York Times. The senior Hoskier, also named Herman, was the oldest member of the Union Bank of London,  a partner in the Guinness Brewery, and a founding partner of Brown, Shipley & Co., in London. His son became a financier and author, who lived, at least for a time, on Ridgewood Road.

Herman and Harriet Hoskier’s son Ronald was born on March 21,1896. He was educated at St. George’s School in Newport, R.I., and began college at Harvard in the fall of 1914. 

At the same time, Ronald’s parents traveled to France to serve in Richard Norton’s Ambulance Service. Ronald spent time between semesters training to fly airplanes at Hendon, England. In February of 1916, Ronald left college to join his parents in Europe. He served first in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, then transferred to the Foreign Legion. He earned his “brevet,” or commission, on Aug. 13, 1916. 

On Dec. 11, 1916, after several months of flying, Ronald Hoskier joined the elite “L’Escadrille Lafayette,” an air corps of Americans previously known as N. 124. With the Escadrille, Hoskier flew many sorties from French to German territory.

Hoskier—who “often claimed that a two-seater could do more damage in a dogfight that a single-seater,” according to Lafayette Escadrille: American Volunteer Airmen in World War 1 by Jon Guttman—asked to pilot a Morane Saultier 3 on its final sortie in April 1917 on the French-German line near St. Quentin, France. Hoskier flew in the rear of a small formation and became separated from other fliers, who had faster planes. When he emerged from a cloud, he spied an enemy’s Albatros D III below him. He dived on it and was attacked in return. It was an ambush.

Ronald Hoskier fought for 15 minutes, while his co-pilot manned the rear Lewis guns. When his ammunition was gone, Hoskier was struck in the head. His airplane’s wings folded and the Morane struck the earth just inside French lines, near St. Quentin.

Hoskier was buried two days later, on April 23, near Genet at Ham. On May 1, he was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre. The New York Times described him as “one of the best of the American flying corps... [who] had distinguished himself for daring and brilliancy of operation.”

The United States joined the Allied side of the war on April 6, 1917, nearly a year after Ronald Hoskier volunteered. Americans who were moved to the cause generally became “Friends of France,” assisting with ambulance duties. None were drafted before the American entry into combat; all were compelled by reasons personal or political.

I suspect that for the Hoskier family, their reasons were both. I am grateful to South Orange resident and historian Don Thomas, who told me about the Hoskier family and led me to a likely reason for their service. A public letter written by Harriet Hoskier appeared in the March 18, 1917 New York Times. Her brother, J. Walter Wood, introduced the letter by noting, “One of Mrs. Hoskier’s sons is a member of the Lafayette Squadron of the French Aviation Corps, her husband recently received the French War Cross as a ‘model of devotion and bravery’ in ambulance work with the American Red Cross, and she herself has been nursing in French hospitals.”

Harriet Hoskier’s letter describes “an American woman, who married a Serbian and a few of France’s choices savants have taken on their shoulders and to their hearts the cause of their Allies, the Serbians.” I have been told that Harriet Hoskier was writing of herself, and that her husband’s family was of Serbian background, by way of England. Herman Hoskier’s reason for joining the fight was that a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, thus setting in motion the forces of war. Hoskier was setting right a wrong, to the best of his powers.

Harvard University collected memoirs of alumni killed in World War I. Ronald Hoskier’s writing describes the joy of flight. “Had I crossed to France merely to learn to fly, I could have fallen upon no more wonderful opportunity,” he wrote. His father completed the narrative by describing his son’s pleasure at the United States entry into the war. Herman Hoskier wrote that Ronald had, at the very end of his life, "the satisfaction previously of knowing that he was at last fighting under an unfurled flag." He was the second American pilot to die in World War I, and the first resident of South Orange to do so.