WW1 United States Army enlisted service coat of the M1917 pattern, olive drab wool, standing collar, five bronze eagle buttons and four patch pockets, insignia’d to a sergeant of the Air Service. Commercially supplied rather than drawn from stores: the neck carries the woven label of W. Stokes Kirk, Army and Navy Goods, of Philadelphia, and the lining is inked in period hand with the wearer’s name, F. Woock.

The branch is established by the collar disc. Opposite the national U.S. disc is a bronze disc bearing a winged propeller, the device of American military aviation. The organization behind that emblem changed three times in eighteen months. Army flying began as the Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps in 1907, became the Aviation Section, Signal Corps in 1914, and stood at that designation when the United States entered the war in April 1917 with 131 officers, 1,087 enlisted men and roughly 280 aircraft, none of them fit for combat. On 20 May 1918 President Wilson removed aviation from the Signal Corps by executive order, dividing it between the Division of Military Aeronautics and the Bureau of Aircraft Production, and on 24 May 1918 General Order No. 51 placed both under a single umbrella as the Air Service, United States Army. There was no Army Air Corps until 1926, and the winged propeller on this collar belongs to the earlier organization.

The name is a research lead rather than a completed service history. Secondary sources associate an F. Woock with Air Service duty at San Antonio, Texas, and give the first name as Frank. That has not been confirmed against primary records and is not represented here as established, but it is entirely plausible, because San Antonio was where the American air arm was built.

Kelly Field opened five miles southwest of the city on 27 March 1917, one of thirty two Air Service training camps stood up after the declaration of war. Seven hundred men arrived on 7 May 1917 and there were four thousand within the week. Across 1917 and 1918 Kelly organized roughly 250,000 men into aero squadrons and formed 326 squadrons, while its Enlisted Mechanics Training Department turned out an average of 2,000 mechanics and chauffeurs every month and its advanced flying schools graduated 1,459 pilots and 398 instructors. Almost none of those 326 squadrons stayed. They were formed at Kelly, filled at Kelly, and sent on, to the other fields of the training establishment or across the Atlantic.

That is the arc this coat belongs to. The pipeline ran from the drill fields of south Texas to the ports, to England and France, and finally to the aerodromes behind the Western Front. By the Armistice the Air Service numbered 195,024 men, 20,568 officers and 174,456 enlisted, with 7,900 aircraft, forty flying fields, eight balloon fields and five schools, amounting to five percent of the entire United States Army. Its component with the American Expeditionary Forces put forty five squadrons over 137 kilometres of front between Pont-a-Mousson and Sedan, flew through Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne under Billy Mitchell, and was credited with 756 enemy aircraft and 76 balloons destroyed, producing seventy one aces. The contraction afterward was as violent as the expansion. By 22 November 1919 the Air Service had fallen to twenty two flying squadrons, 1,168 officers and 8,428 enlisted men.

The wearer of this coat belonged to the enlisted majority of that establishment, the 174,456 mechanics, riggers, armourers, drivers, clerks and ground crew without whom no aircraft left the ground. Rank is sergeant, three chevrons points up in olive drab wool on wool backing, applied to the left sleeve in the manner of the period. The cuffs are bare of overseas service chevrons and the sleeves carry no unit insignia, which is consistent with service in the United States or with a coat worn outside the period of a man’s overseas entitlement. Stated plainly, the garment documents an Air Service sergeant, not a passage to France, and the buyer is invited to take the research further.

The label is the second document on this coat. W. Stokes Kirk was among the best known army and navy goods houses in the United States, operating out of Philadelphia and dealing in arms, uniforms, accoutrements and government surplus on a scale that produced illustrated catalogues now collected in their own right. The wartime expansion of 1917 and 1918 outran the Quartermaster Department’s capacity to clothe the force, and commercial houses like Kirk filled the gap, supplying service coats to soldiers who needed a second uniform for walking out, for furlough and for the studio photograph sent home. Coats bought through that channel survive in better condition than issue garments precisely because they were worn on occasions rather than on duty, and they retain features the issue article lacks, here a full cotton twill lining and hooks and eyes at the throat. Retailer labels of this kind are frequently lost when linings are replaced or coats are cleaned. Finding one intact, and a period name in the same garment, is uncommon.

The surname is rare enough to reward serious work in WWI draft registration cards, Texas Adjutant General service records, San Antonio city directories and the Kelly Field Eagle, the post newspaper published at South San Antonio in 1918 and 1919 and held by the Library of Congress.

The uniform is offered as found. No insignia has been added, removed or repositioned.

CONDITION AND DETAILS

M1917 pattern enlisted service coat, olive drab wool, standing collar, four patch pockets
Chest measures approximately 19 1/2 inches across laid flat, approximately a 39 inch chest
Sleeve approximately 21 inches from shoulder seam to cuff
Named F. Woock in period ink on the interior lining, clearly legible, with the figure 19 beneath
Woven retailer’s label at the neck, W. Stokes Kirk, Army and Navy Goods, partially rubbed but identifiable
Wool sound throughout, good body and color, no significant moth damage
Light overall soiling with scattered small stains to the front panels
Sergeant’s chevrons on the left sleeve, secure, light nap wear
Bronze U.S. national collar disc and bronze winged propeller Air Service collar disc, both present and secure
All five front buttons present, together with pocket flap and shoulder strap buttons, bronze with the Great Seal
Collar hooks and eyes present
Cotton twill lining complete and sound with age toning
No overseas service chevrons, wound chevrons or unit insignia present
No holes, tears, repairs or alterations noted

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