Near the end of the First World War, the assignment of the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" is to read letters going from the front back home to make sure they don't reveal any military information. He seems to have real sympathy for both the soldiers and the recipients of "the scrawled, brief pages of transparent and honorable lies to mothers and sweethearts" (512).
"Saxophone girls and boys" is the label that the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" uses for the generation that came of age in the 1920s, and so are too young to have experienced the Great War, as World War I was called (512). These modern young people know only modern aircraft and not the history of the unstable planes, like the Sopwith Camel, that the pilots flew thirteen years earlier in the war.
These are the "dead pilots" that the title "All the Dead Pilots" refers to, and they are of two kinds: the aviators like Sartoris, who were killed in the First World War, and the ones who physically survived the war but now find themselves alienated from the contemporary society that has moved past their sacrifices. The survivors are said to have "died" psychologically on Armistice Day, living on only in "snapshots hurriedly made, a little dog-eared with the thirteen years" that have elapsed since November 11, 1918.
This former World War I R.A.F. pilot is described by the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" as "ack emma, warrant officer pilot, captain and M.C. in turn" (512). This list seems to summarize his rise through the ranks during the War, though not every term is clear. "Ack emma" was a common abbreviation during the War among British troops for "a.m." - morning - though what it means in reference to a young pilot is obscure.
This senior officer in the R.A.F. squadron in "All the Dead Pilots" seems like a by-the-book kind of soldier; he won't release Sartoris from duty just because Sartoris asks. He does have a sense of humor, though, and at least a working knowledge of history and geography: "the operations officer told him that La Fayette awaited him on the Santerre plateau" (522) - in other words, "get back to work."
In "All the Dead Pilots" this "old woman working in a field" works on through the shelling of the French countryside by the Germans, "stooping stubbornly among the green rows" as Sartoris passes her twice going to and from Amiens (521).
This woman runs and probably owns the "estaminet, a 'bit of a pub,'" in a back street of Amiens where 'Toinette works in "All the Dead Pilots" (516). She and the girl are not related to one another, which raises the question of the exact nature of their business arrangement; she apparently knows of 'Toinette's affairs with Sartoris and Spoomer but does not object to them.
The narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" imagines these boys selling newspapers announcing the England's entry into World War I as Spoomer's uncle predicts war "will be the making of the army" (513).
In "All the Dead Pilots" Sartoris finds a "bill from [a] London tailor" in "his overalls in Amiens that day in the spring" (530-31). Although nothing more is said about the tailor, the sentence provides an interesting juxtaposition of the upper class clothing he wore when off duty and these "overalls." (The overalls aviators wore while flying, of course, send a very different signal than the overalls poor white and black farmers and farm hands wear in Yoknapatawpha.)
This gunnery sergeant tells the narrator of "All the Dead Pilots" about two very different things: the "synchronization of the machine guns" with the airplanes' propellers - and the rivalry between Sartoris and Spoomer over the woman in Amiens (513).
