The rioters at the Cloche-Clos in "Ad Astra" include these "three poilus" - i.e. French soldiers (423). "Poilu," originating in the word for "hairy," was a common name for French infantrymen in World War I, since many of them did not shave or get their hair cut.
The patronne in "Ad Astra" is the manager and owner of the Cloche-Clos. An old woman who wears steel spectacles and knits, she thoroughly understands the threat posed to her business by the Allied aviators and their German prisoner. She loudly expresses her outrage that this German - whom she calls a "Boche!" (422) - has been brought into her bistro: "Eight months since the obus I have kept them in a box against this day: plates, cups, saucers, glasses, all that I have had since thirty years, all gone, broken at one time!
According to the narrator of "Ad Astra," two military mechanics were required to "shoehorn" the exceptionally large Comyn "into the cockpit of a Dolphin, like two chambermaids putting an emergency bolster into a case too large for it" (410). (The Sopwith Dolphin was one of the standard British fighter planes during the First World War.)
The Indian subadar in "Ad Astra" refers to the colonial troops brought to Europe from India to fight for England during the First World War as "my people" (424). It needs to be said, however, that as they are described, they are not people so much as stereotypes, and the racial assumptions behind the stereotypes are clearly Faulkner's. The subadar also calls them "children" (425), who thought of the rifles they were issued as "spears" (424). When a "whole battalion" went into battle without loading those rifles, less than twenty survived (425).
In "Ad Astra" the captured German aviator explains that one of his brothers was shot and killed by this resident of Berlin, presumably after the man discovered his wife's affair.
According to the captured German pilot in "Ad Astra," this unnamed soldier assassinates his brother Franz, a General serving on the army's general staff, in the revolutionary fighting that breaks out in Berlin at the end of World War I.
The wife of the German prisoner in "Ad Astra" is described by her husband as "the daughter of a musician who wass peasant" (418). While he is at war, she lives in Bayreuth with their son. She keeps her husband informed by letter of significant changes in the family.
In "Ad Astra" the captured German aviator says his own aristocratic family profoundly disapproved when he told them "I haf married the daughter of a musician who was peasant" (418).
Bandaged and "sick" in "Ad Astra," the German pilot whom Monaghan has shot down on the day Germany surrenders is nonetheless described as wearing the appearance of "a man who has conquered himself" (412). Born into a noble family in Prussia as the oldest of four brothers, he repudiated his hereditary title. He studies music at the university in Bayreuth, marries a woman beneath his privileged class, and fathers a child with her. Over time, however, the loss of each of his three younger brothers sends him back to military service.
