A NOVEL OF THE IMPERIAL GERMAN AIR SERVICE A TALE OF AERIAL ADVENTURE set in France during World War I. Willi Wissemann, an impetuous Bavarian officer, joins the German Air Service in 1916 to escape the drudgery and hardships of trench warfare. He is sent to the Front after a brief stint in flying school and begins his career as a recon-bomber pilot, excelling at the seemingly menial tasks of aerial bombardment and photographic reconnaissance. But Wissemann soon realizes that flying single-seat fighting scouts is his true destiny. When the German High Command reorganizes the Air Service into specialized hunting-squadrons and re-equips them with their latest scout, the Albatros D.III-the air war takes on a fiercer and more deadly course. Finally, after many months of pestering the Army High Command, Willi Wissemann gets his chance to take command of a Jasta-a fighter squadron. Once he arrives at the airfield in the Champagne sector, he realizes he has his work cut out for him. He must reorganize an insubordinate bunch of misfits, misanthropes, castoffs and drunks, into a real fighting-squadron. Then during the height of the French spring offensive of 1917, Wissemann is asked to fly a special mission to Paris, transporting a Secret Service agent. What happens next will have a profound effect on his life, his career, and his outlook on the war, changing him forever, scarring his soul for eternity.
DEKE D. WAGNER was born in Mississippi and raised in Georgia. The son of an American Air Force sergeant and a German mother from Hesse-Darmstadt, Deke grew up having a keen interest in aviation and his German heritage. At the tender age of ten, he read Manfred von Richthofen's autobiography, Der Rote Kampfflieger (The Red Air Fighter) and has ever since been enthralled with tales of air aces and air combat. After high school and a stint in the Army Reserve, Deke attended art school but made little progress. He spent the next two decades pursuing a semi-professional musical career as a singer/songwriter before attempting his first novel-The Eagle and the Albatros. Deke also enjoys playing guitar and recording original music. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. This is his first novel.