Lt. Pat O'Brien

The amazing true story of a nearly forgotten World War I flying ace from the United States who flew for the British before America joined the war is told in this significant historical novel by Kevin McNulty Sr. Fatherless at 15, Pat O’Brien left his home of Momence, IL seeking to learn to fly at a time when aeroplanes were mere kites.

He was among the very first pilots of the Army Signal Corps to test early Curtiss flying machines in 1916 on North Island at San Diego. North Island is now the U.S. Naval Base. Impatient with America’s slow acceptance of the aeroplane as a weapon of war, he left the Corps to join the Canadian Force being trained in Toronto to replace thousands of British pilots who were losing their lives in France at the hand of the advanced Hun flying machines.

Shot down over Belgium in 1917, he crashed from 8,000 feet and survived. German doctors removed a bullet from his throat in a  dilapidated field hospital. One month later he jumped from a moving prison train and escaped. He was the first British pilot to escape The Germans in World War I. He walked seventy-two days, over 250 miles behind enemy lines to freedom at the Holland border where he dug under a nine-foot electrified fence and escaped. Arriving in London one week later, he visited King George in a private audience that lasted nearly one hour.

During his six months recovering in London, he penned a best-selling book about his escape and spent all of 1918 speaking all over the United States, replacing William Jennings Bryant as the top speaker that year. He later crashed a second time from 2,000 feet in Dallas, Texas and survived again in a demonstration for new U.S. recruits. Unsatisfied with his contribution to the war, he returned to France one month before Armistice to join the U.S., British and French Legion but was denied. He, therefore, pursued Russia, going undercover to assist the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia in President Wilson’s effort to remove Czechoslovakian troops and other “pro-White” forces from the advancing Red Army during the Russian Revolution.

Home again in late 1919, his betrothed who had asked him to married her and not go to Russia, had become impatient with his constant pursuits and left him, sending the Lieutenant into the whirlwind of the Roaring ’20s where he starred in a Hollywood silent film as the leading man in Shadows of the West, an anti-Japanese film that warned of America’s next threat. This film was one of the first projects of the newly-formed American Legion in 1919. Pat was a natural choice as the leading man since he was already famous..

Rejected by his fiancée upon returning from Russia, Pat mysteriously married his young leading lady in Havana, Cuba in 1920 after only a three-week engagement. She had conspired with Sara Ottis a woman from Springfield, Illinois to capture his wealth and take advantage of his fame.

Sara had followed Pat during his touring years. Ironically, she was the wife of  Dr. Daniel M. Ottis, who was indeed a top regional physician and a highly influential figure in the World War I military medical response. The two women followed Pat through his tour of America and when he moved to Hollywood in 1920 with half a million dollars in the bank, both women followed. Busy with the film, Pat did not see how his new wife and Ottis were spending his money. It all came to a head the night he was found dead in the Hamilton Hotel.

Known to the rich and famous, and every man and woman in the United States, Pat O’Brien was found dead in December of 1920 in his hotel room with what appeared to be a suicide note and a discharged weapon.  Newspapers nation-wide declared his death a suicide and the O’Brien Family buried his body in the Momence Cemetery—avoiding attention by not placing a stone on his burial site. He was buried at the foot of his father’s grave,

Pat’s father Danial O’Brien was a Civil War Veteran.  In 2007, local Momence residents, never believing Pat died of his own hand, formalized his grave with British military honors. Sometime around 2010, long-time retired Mayor of Momence Rex Rowe, himself a POW from World War II, asked local author Kevin McNulty Sr to “write the real story of Pat O’Brien. Rowe’s goal was to determine if Pat ever served in the U.S. Military.

The challenge behind military records from World War I was that nearly all were destroyed in the great fire in St. Louis in 1957. A tenacious researcher, McNulty found the voting record of 25 pilots in San Diego who were testing aircraft for “military purposes” in 1916. O’Brien’s name appeared on this list—proving he was in the Army Signal Corps of the United States who were overseeing the experimental use of aeroplanes before the formation of an American Air Force.

Find out why this world-famous hero was nearly forgotten until the few who remembered him in Momence, Illinois saw to it that his grave was marked with a Military Marker. The most remarkable story you’ll ever read, his life and accomplishments were nearly forgotten due to the circumstances of his death. Lt. Pat O’Brien by Kevin McNulty, Sr. is the first complete story of O’Brien’s life. It contains previously unknown facts about his life and his ultimate demise. McNulty and local Momence native Marcia Tedford spend six years finding Pat O’Brien. War, fame, love of two women, the exotic travels to Russia, Siberia, China, Cuba, Europe, and Japan—plus all the excitement of the early Roaring 20’s—comes alive in the Story of Lt. Pat O’Brien.