Early Life and Service
Festner was born in Holzkirchen, Kingdom of Bavaria on 30 June 1894. He originally served with, and was wounded with, the infantry before switching to aviation. He was a mechanic with Flieger Abtleilung Nr. 1 in October 1914. Posted to FA 7b in February 1915 as a Gefreiter, Festner learned to fly unofficially, and then underwent training with FEA 2b and FEA 5b.
He served briefly with two seater units FA 18 and FA 5b, arriving at FA 18 on 10 September 1916 and FA 5b five days later. His next posting was to Jasta 11 on 10 November 1916.
Under the command of Manfred von Richthofen, Festner quickly claimed 2 victories in February 1917 before claiming another 10 during 'Bloody April'.
Read more about this topic: Sebastian Festner
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or service:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)