Gervais Raoul Victor Lufbery (March 14, 1885 – May 19, 1918) was a French and American fighter pilot and flying ace in World War I. Because he served in both the French Air Force, and later the United States Army Air Service in World War I, he is sometimes listed alternately as a French ace or as an American ace. Officially, all but one of his 17 combat victories came while flying in French units. Early life and service Raoul Lufbery was born at Avenue de la Poudrière in Chamalières, Puy-de-Dôme, France to American Edward Lufbery and a French mother. Lufbery's paternal grandfather was Charles Samson Lufbery, who had emigrated to the United States from Great Britain in the mid-19th century and settled in New York. Lufbery's father, Edward moved to Chamalières in 1876, joining his elder brother, George and soon met a local Frenchwoman, Anne Joséphine Vessière, who would later become his wife. Raoul was the youngest of their three sons. Edward was an American chemist working for a Parisian chocolate company. When Lufbery was one, his mother died and his father returned to the United States, where he lived in New York, New Jersey, and then Wallingford, Connecticut in the United States, leaving him to be raised by his maternal grandmother, Madeline Vessière Greniere in France. Lufbery worked in a chocolate factory in Blois and Clermont-Ferrand until 1904. While working in France, Lufbery sent money to his father, who had started a second family in the United States. He ran away from his grandparents' home at 19, and travelled to such places as Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, the Balkans, and Turkey. In 1906, Lufbery, along with his middle brother, Charles took a trans-Atlantic liner to the US to search for his father, not knowing that his father had just left for business on an ocean liner heading to France. However, he managed to visit other family members in Connecticut. He then stayed in Walllingford with his relatives for two years, working at a silver-plating factory. Lufbery served in the United States Army from 1907–1909 as a rifleman and saw service in the Philippines. He was first assigned from the recruit depot of Fort McDowell, Angel Island to Company F, 20th Infantry Regiment, at the newly established Fort Shafter, Territory of Hawaii on 13 December 1908. On 1 April 1909, he was stationed with Company M, at the Presidio of