[1][2] He is credited with downing four enemy aircraft[3] This was at the beginning of American aviation when the United States had not yet organized their own air service and defense.
His wife was Margaret Samuels with whom he had two sons: navy captain / submarine commander and Congressman, George William Grider of Memphis, Tennessee.
[12][13] After advanced training in Ayr in Scotland[14] John M. Grider, Elliot White Springs and Lawrence Callaghan were hand picked by the Canadian pilot, Billy Bishop[15] who was in England to organize the No.
[citation needed] In a few entries, he writes about his psychological state of mind and we see an early glimpse of signs of what is known today as PTSD.
[20] There is also speculation that there was even a third diary[21] The playwright and novelist William Faulkner, who had won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949,[22] based his screenplay A Ghost Story/War Birds, which he wrote from November 1931 to May 1933, on Grider's book/diary.
[19] Howard Hawks of MGM was planning to adapt the diary of Grider and asked Faulkner to write the screenplay.
[24] The story of a young aviator, shot down in WWI, had the heroic destiny Faulkner dreamed of.
[28] The book was republished in 1988 by Texas A&M University Press with John McGavock Grider as the author.