The German prisoner's wife is described by her husband as "the daughter of a musician who wass peasant" (418). She lives in Bayreuth with their son, whom her husband has never seen. She keeps her husband informed by letter of significant changes in the family.
The rioters at the Cloche-Clos in "Ad Astra" include these "three poilus" - i.e. French soldiers (423). "Poilu," originating in the word for "hairy," was a common name for French infantrymen in World War I, since many of them did not shave or get their hair cut.
The residents of Amiens who gather in the Cloche-Clos to celebrate the end of the War have had to endure great destruction and loss of life. They are "astonished" and "outraged" by the presence of a German aviator, even as a prisoner, in the bistro, and their resentment eventually boils over into violence (411).
Monaghan's father's wealth enables his son to attend Yale and to become acquainted with well-to-do people. The senior Monaghan charges his son to remind these "fine friends," these privileged individuals, that "every man is the slave of his own refuse" and that "your old dad," who made his money working with sewers, "is the king of them all" (415)
Two military mechanics were required to "shoehorn" the exceptionally large Comyn "into the cockpit of a Dolphin, like two chambermaids putting an emergency bolster into a case too large for it" (410). (The Sopwith Dolphin was one of the standard British fighter planes during the First World War.)
William Avery Bishop (1894-1956) led all Canadian aviators during World War I, being credited with shooting down 72 German planes. The captive German aviator of "Ad Astra" reports that one of his younger brothers, and already an ace aviator himself, "iss killed by your Bishop . . . that good man" (419).
The man the American M.P. refers to simply as "your president" when he's arguing with the French officer is Raymond Poincare, who was President of France during World War I.
The "kaiser" whom the German aviator refers to without naming is Kaiser Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Victor Albert von Hohenzollern); he ruled Germany as emperor from June 1888 to November 9, 1918. On that date, having lost the support of the army, he abdicated, and fled the country a day later. The German prisoner says he does not serve "baron and kaiser" (418), but he is proud when his brother Franz is declared "ace iron cross by the kaiser's own hand" (419).
The "damned king" of England whom Monaghan refers to contemptuously and whom the Irish Comyn denies is "his damned king" was George V (416). King George V ruled the United Kingdom from 1910 to 1936. He was also Emperor of India during this period.
This is one of Faulkner's characters who are defined by absence and indeterminacy. When the aviator Monaghan explains his "Shanty Irish" origins, he gives a memorable description of his father, but he cannot trace his ancestry before that: other than saying his father came "out of a peat bog," which suggests the Irish peasantry, Monaghan claims, "I don’t know what my grandfather was. I don’t know if I had one. My father don’t remember one. Likely it could have been one of several" (415).
