The Fledglings relates the maturation of three young men in the crucible of the terrifying and bloody Great War, World War I. Of course, their loss of innocence is not unique to war alone, but such an arena accelerates the process and is a much harsher forum than any other. The time period is one of revolutionary change throughout the world but nowhere is the transformation in the early Twentieth Century more pronounced than in warfare and here the curtain has opened on the aerial theater and rapidly become more refined day by day. Flight techniques, combat philosophy and the planes themselves evolved at a breathtaking pace over scarcely more than a decade following the first controlled and successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Only the extremely high mortality of fledglings and the specter of sudden, violent death, even for seasoned airmen, remained unchanged.