Can anyone explain how those young men leared to fly a Sopwith Camel in 18 hours? None of the books I've read come close, and several explain how far beyond the skills of a modern PPL it would be.
Answer: they crashed a lot. Mostly, they survived, quite often they didn't. The ones who did survive went on to squadrons in France where they then didn't survive. It was a grisly business with a huge attrition rate which would be unacceptable today.
The two most beautiful books from the period which I've read are the classic 'Sagittarius Rising' by Cecil Lewis and the less well known but almost equally as good 'Wind in the Wires' by Duncan Grinnell-Milne. The writing in these is lovely and highly evocative, which distinguishes them from much of the literature of the period.
QDM