On June 25th at the Issoudun Air Base and Third Training Facility in France’s Loire Valley, the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the U.S. Army Air Corps was celebrated to honor those brave airmen who joined their French allies in the third year of the Great War (later referred to as World War I). Among the honorees was a son of Connecticut, Hiram Bingham III, who from August to December 1918 served as commandant at Issoudun, the Allies’ largest airbase and aviation training school in the European theater.

The pilots who poured into Issoudun in the summer of 1917 were not the first Americans to join the Allies in the increasingly deadly air war. But the U.S. Army Air Corps, which occupied the Issoudun facility until after the end of the war, was the first under American command.

So why was Hiram Bingham — a middle-aged father of seven sons, a distinguished college professor, and an explorer fresh from his rediscovery of Machu Picchu, the fabled Lost City of the Incas — girding himself for battle? What drove him to take on such a different and dangerous challenge? Perhaps it was genes (his father and grandfather had been missionaries in the Gilbert and Sandwich Islands, respectively), comingled with a restless vision of new quests, new horizons, new peaks to scale.

Hiram Bingham III was born in the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1875 and raised during the reign of King David Kalākaua. He completed his secondary education in the U.S. before earning a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in South American History from Harvard University. Bingham taught at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities prior to his archaeological expeditions to South America.

In 1916, he began to take a keen interest in the fledgling technology of aviation (only 13 years old). After receiving a commission in the Connecticut National Guard, he learned to fly, and foresaw the importance of aviation in both its civil and its military applications. In 1917, as a major in the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, he organized the United States Schools of Military Aeronautics (precursor to Air Force ROTC programs) at eight American universities. After the United States declared war on April 6, 1917, Bingham answered the call.

In March 1918, on the eve of his departure for Issoudun, Lt. Col. Bingham wrote a poignant letter to his seven sons, adjuring them to honor and obey their mother and to “fight for truth, justice and mercy, [and] fear nothing except to do wrong.” His final paragraph reads, “Thank Heaven we do know we are fighting on the right side ... I do not ask to live through it. It is enough that I have been given the chance to help in it.”

Bingham did come home safely after the war, having been awarded the prestigious Order of the Black Star by the French government. As president of the U.S. National Aeronautics Association he lobbied for a separate service for the Air Corps (at that time part of the U.S. Army), though this would not happen until 1947. He pressed the point in his seminal manual on aviation that was published in 1920, "An Explorer in the Air Service."

He went on to a distinguished public career as governor and senator of Connecticut, while continuing to pursue his lifelong dedication to all aspects of aviation. He died in 1956 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

In 2014, the Yale University Air Force ROTC Program established The Hiram Bingham III Leadership Award, presented each year to its top graduating cadet. Fittingly, the prize is a copy of "An Explorer in the Air Service."

At last month’s observance at Issoudun, Hiram Bingham III was honored with a commemorative avenue named for him, Allée Hiram Bingham. Accepting on behalf of his family were his great-grandson, Hiram Bingham VI, and a grandson, Douglas Knox Bingham.

Hiram Bingham III never forgot those to whom he owed an incalculable debt of gratitude: his parents and grandparents, those stalwart old missionaries by whose example he learned to value faith, integrity, moral courage, intellectual vigor, and modesty above all other qualities.

These are virtues we could use a lot more of today.

Anne Carr Bingham is a granddaughter-in-law of Hiram Bingham III.

Salem