After Sartoris' trick in "All the Dead Pilots," "the brigadier and the Wing Commander" arrive at the squadron's aerodrome to investigate (527). Historically, brigadier generals were the second highest ranking in the R.A.F. That the high command would personally see to the Sartoris-Spoomer rivalry speaks to the influence of Spoomer's uncle, also a brigadier general.
In "All the Dead Pilots" this Australia and New Zealand Army ("Anzac" in the story) unit is "resting in the ditch" when Sartoris returns from Amiens, but four of them are willing to forgo rest to help him with his "tight take-off" (526).
In "All the Dead Pilots," Sartoris and Spoomer, enemies in love, both belong to the same Royal Air Force unit, identified only as the "-- Squadron" in Kaye's letter to Aunt Jenny (530). The "whole squadron" is referred to several times by the narrator, also a member of the unit, but it is never made explicit how many men and planes this adds up to (521). (By 1918 there were 150 squadrons in the R.A.F.)
Spoomer's uncle in "All the Dead Pilots" is the "corps commander, the K.G." (513). "K.G." stands for Knight of the Order of the Garter, the most prestigious of Britain's chivalric honors. He is thus clearly a member of the upper class, and according to the narrator, a snob who predicts that the war "will be the making of the army" (513). The narrator seems to attribute his nephew's rank to his influence.
According to the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots," Spoomer is a snob from a family of snobs who owes his rank to the influence of his uncle, a general. Spoomer's snobbery is displayed when he tells his dog not to eat the trash behind the enlisted men's mess hall: "You mustn't eat that stuff," he says; "That's for soldiers" (519). Spoomer also uses his rank to impress women; he has taken one from Sartoris before the story begins.
In "All the Dead Pilots," this R.A.F. aviator was flying below Sartoris when the latter was "shot down while in pursuit of duty over enemy lines" and witnessed his death (530).
As England's Secretary of State for War, a cabinet minister, Kitchener expanded the British army from twenty to seventy divisions between 1914 and 1916, hence the reference in "All the Dead Pilots" to "a mob of soldiers" (514).
Major Kaye is the commanding officer of the R.A.F. squadron in "All the Dead Pilots." His letter to Aunt Jenny about Sartoris' death reveals him to be a compassionate man but even more, a very military one. Calling Sartoris Jenny's son instead of her great-nephew, he writes that "The E.A. outnumbered your son and had more height and speed which is our misfortune but no fault of the Government which would give us better machines if they had them which is no satisfaction to you" (530). He takes it for granted that a woman in Mississippi would know what E.A.
Ffollansbye, a British officer who also appears in Faulkner's non-Yoknapatawpha short story "Thrift," is the source of much of what the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" tells us about Sartoris and Spoomer. He doesn't seem to be a malicious gossip so much as a sardonic one. For example, commenting on Spoomer's Mons Star, an honor awarded for service in France or Belgium, he says, "it was one decoration you had to be on hand to get" (513), implying that Spoomer's uncle is responsible for his other honors.
