24
Christmas is over, 1917 about to begin. I am starting my third year with the British, and where I shall spend my next Christmas is anyone’s guess. I hope it is in good old London. . . . I love the big town, even in darkness. If they could ever turn on the lights, the place would go wild. My leave is almost a thing of the past. I have enjoyed a wonderful rest far away from the fighting front, but I continually think of the boys in the trenches and my old squadron and wonder how many have survived. It is impossible to have been one of them and not remember. I have ordered that once a week a couple of cakes be sent to Number Eleven for teatime — cakes are one thing our mess didn’t provide, so always someone sends cakes, which were shipped and received in unfailingly good condition. I have been to Reading, a beautiful little city a short distance from London, and I have reported to the commanding officer at Wantage Hall, a famous peacetime school now taken over and operated by the ground training school for flyers, both pilots and observers. This is the kind of place I had expected to go for training when I joined the RFC, but evidently there was no such school then and I went direct to action, getting my training on active service.
Now that I’m a full observer, I’m to undergo training for the things I’ve been doing for months, such as map reading, machine guns, bombing, etc. However, these the commanding officer says I can skip, so will concentrate on engines and the new Vickers machine gun, which is the equipment the new ships are to use for the front gun shooting through the propeller. After all, this should be a very easy course for me. It will be more in the way of a rest, not that I need any more, but studying the things I haven’t been using at the front will be interesting. I have my billet with two charming maiden ladies in their home, where I will have breakfast and dinner. My quarters consist of a den and bedroom. It is a luxury, all arranged by the staff of my training center. It seems, according to the adjutant, I am the only qualified observer to attend this school, which may have something to do with the attention I’m receiving.
As my term starts on January second, I have time for one more rendezvous with my friends in London where I shall spend New Year’s Eve, and then my future in 1917 is in the lap of the Gods. If I am half as lucky as in 1916, everything will be just ducky. No one will be hurt except the Hun. Though it is hard to understand with all that has happened, I am not sore at our enemy, the German flying corps. I can honestly say all the planes I knocked out of the air have been downed out of self-preservation and protection. I don’t even know what the hell it’s all about — thousands being killed every day under the guise of Democracy — and I very much doubt if our enemy knows any more than we do, particularly the boys who do the fighting. My one contribution to this war of which I am the proudest is my introducing the buttstock to the Lewis machine gun. It was a lifesaver for Price and me and has become standard equipment on all Lewis guns for observers. If I get knocked off, they can just plant me with a Lewis buttstock on my chest. I’ll be satisfied. Why the Lewis people or someone hadn’t thought of it before I came along, I don’t know, but think of it they had not.
Bogart is back from Eleven for his fourteen-day leave and has his observer’s wing and five jolly Huns to his credit. He is a stout fellow but arrived here too late for me to spend any time with him. After New Year’s Eve, then, I start class and will be back in France in plenty of time for the spring push. With the weather as it is, everything has slowed down at the front till spring, when hell will break loose again.
In the winter the poor infantry catch it from the continuous rain and mud, which causes trench feet, in many cases necessitating amputation, as well as pneumonia and every other disease stemming from exposure, while we of the flying corps have rather a soft time. No matter if his idea was good or bad, you have to give that fellow Ford from America credit: he at least was thinking right in wanting to get the boys out of the trenches.
I have taken my friend Bogart to the embassy to meet our ambassador and Captain Chapman as well as my two special friends in show business, Lee White and Clay Smith. While Bogart is a Canadian, I want him to know my American friends, as he is almost as green as I was when I first hit London. He is staying at my apartment, which I shall keep even when I go back to the front. It will be someplace to store my extra uniforms and things I don’t want to take to France. I shall have a place in London to call home, and the fellows from my squadron who haven’t a home in London can use the apartment when on leave. Last spring, when I went to France, everything I owned went with me. This spring, I shall take only a couple of uniforms, a bed roll and the essentials a fellow needs on active service. I have learned one lesson: to travel light is to travel easy and fast.
My first week of school is grand, no hurry, no worry. My billet is the finest in Reading. There are over a thousand fellows from everywhere taking this course: boys from India, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and naturally from England, all very young with absolutely no training, but the things they learn here will help in the future.
On my third morning when reporting to class, we were told to report on the parade grounds at ten o’clock. This will be my first time on a parade ground since transferring out of the Canadians. Why we should be forming up, I couldn’t understand, and no one else had any idea of what it was all about, unless it was an inspection by some high ranking dignitary.
With the entire school membership assembled in a large square, leaving an opening on one end, a very young lieutenant was marched under guard out in the center of our square, where the crime of which he had been convicted was read, together with the punishment he was to receive. The punishment was to be drummed out of the British Army. His buttons were all cut off, the insignias of his unit removed, and, with his tunic open and cap gone, the drums began to roll and he was marched ahead of our formation with the drums continuing to roll to the outskirts of Reading. This was the saddest and most heart-breaking parade of my military career. What he did, I don’t know, as I was too far away to hear the reading of his crime, but whatever it was, one couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor guy. The disgrace will be with him always.
The course here is two months. Those who qualify are assigned to different advanced schools for more training. By the beginning of my fourth week, I have divided my time with the Vickers machine gun between the Rolls Royce and Beardmore stationary engines and the Le Rhone and Clerget rotary engines.
One Monday morning I am called into our commander’s office and handed orders to report to Waddington Air Field for my flying training for pilot’s wings. For this I am grateful, even if I have been having a wonderful time. It has rained continuously, which hasn’t bothered me any as I have my most comfortable billet since joining the Canadians in 1914. This delightful existence is too good to last and the RFC needs pilots for the spring offensive, so my playing war is really over. I am once again faced with the real thing. Waddington being on the opposite side of London, I shall stop over just to see Jimmy and a few others and sleep in my own apartment for one night and report the next day to Waddington when the preliminary flying begins. Here one does five hours solo, then on to an advanced field for five hours on faster and final training, then to France to see my old enemy the Hun. The solo and flying my own ship have no horror for me, thanks to my observing experiences. Here at Waddington are a large group training to be pilots. Some have had several hours of dual control flying, none have soloed. The weather has been so miserable they have only had time to fly in between rains, which has retarded all progress. One of the principal flying instructors, Darsy, is a former pilot from my first squadron, the Twenty-third. He was invalided back to England with a throat condition and given an instructor’s job. And what a hell of a job it is. Much worse than fighting the Hun, considering the number of dumb kids he has to train.
Have been here five days with no flying, just one hour of ground school where we listen to the theory of flight, as it is a preliminary school whose principal function is to solo their pupils, then send them to a more advanced school.
Darsy has taken an interest in me and promised he will give me priority on the first decent day, and it looks like this is it. For a change the sun is out and it is real early. So to the hangars, hoping for the best. True to his promise, they roll out an awful looking contraption, a Graham White pusher which actually flies. It has an eighty-horse Gnome rotary, with dual control. On Darsy’s invitation to climb in, we finally take off, fly around the field, then land, then take off again. This time after taking off I take over the controls. There is no power to give a feeling of safety, just enough power that if you don’t pull the nose up too much you can stay afloat, but no margin of safety between your power and your flying speed. So, in the event your engine quits near the ground, you never try and turn, but just keep straight and land. After we circle the field and land a couple of times, Darsy says she’s all yours, don’t go far away from the field, land as often as you want to and remember, don’t try to turn her near the ground. He steps out, giving me a wave. I am on my own. My solo was easy, the air field was enormous. I could land anytime, so practiced with the control awhile before trying my first landing, which came off beautifully as I had no fear of the ship, thanks to my many hours as an observer with Captain Price.
After two and one-half hours, Darsy flags me down, telling me I can finish my solo hours in the afternoon while the weather is good and he will okay my transfer to Lincoln for the better ships. This is swell news to me, for the faster ships are what I want, especially the tractors with the engine in front. I’ve had enough pushers for a lifetime. I want one of the fast babies where the gun shoots through the propeller and the pilot does the shooting as well as fly the ship, with a rotary engine preferred.
To say that my start as a pilot was lucky would be a true statement, for I finished my five hours of solo on the Graham White pusher just as the downpour started, which made me eligible for Lincoln. There it takes me twenty days to do what I did at Wadding-ton in one day. It rained, then rained some more.
I got in one hour of solo on a beautiful little ship which was different in every way from any ship I had ever seen or dreamed of flying — the Strut-and-a-Half Sopwith. This was a two-seater tractor with a one-hundred-thirty Clerget rotary. The minute you opened the throttle, you were in the air. It was easy to fly and a delight to land. It had no funny tricks, such as burning in the air on the takeoff like the R.E.8 (another of the Lincoln training ships). How I should be so lucky as to draw the Sopwith for my training, I’ll never know. The only thing to keep me from being a full pilot is the damned weather, and we are in the last of February. It can’t last much longer. I suppose soon I’ll be praying for rain when I get my belly full of the front, though right now this inactivity is driving me nuts.
The fifth of March I am a qualified pilot and have to do away with my observer’s wing and put up the pilot’s wings. Though this is what I have been working for, still the thought of not having my observer’s wing when I have been so lucky doesn’t seem right. While a fellow can’t wear both, I’d carry mine in my pocket. Hell, my observer’s wing was one hundred times tougher to get than the pilot’s, and having been an observer has made the pilot training a breeze. I shall always try to be helpful to any observer that comes into my life, and if I go out on a two-seater, I will try to be as good to my observer as my pal Captain Price was to me.
My orders are for General Headquarters, Cecil Hotel, London, where I will receive transportation and orders for somewhere in France. So tonight I shall see as many of my friends as possible before taking off for the front, where I am a cinch to be for at least three months. These senior officers of our RFC are all swell chaps. They’re always glad to see you, as they have all had service and understand flyers. I have never met a senior RFC officer that I didn’t admire. Headquarters has assigned me to our southern pilots’ pool in France, which means I shall be in some squadron in my old area, back of Arras and between the two famous landmarks, the Arras-Saint-Pol and the Arras-Doullens roads. This is good news, not only because I know the area, but also it means I will be in the Thirteenth Wing, where Colonel Shephard is now brigadier. It is almost like coming home.
Regardless of what squadron I join, there won’t be anyone that I know, though, except for General Shephard of our wing. If they had me assigned to our northern pool, I would be in new territory as well, which wouldn’t make much difference, only I like it best this way. What squadron I go to will depend on fate, as the pilots drawn from the pool take the place of some pilot that has gone west or is fortunate enough to be returned to England for a rest. My train for Folkestone and the early boat to Boulogne doesn’t leave until evening, so I have most of the day to see my friends at the embassy and Captain Price at Gosport just to hear his cheerful greeting. Him I shall miss very much. My friend Lee White gave me a mascot for my plane. It is a duplicate of Bairnsfather’s “Old Bill,”* made in cloth and stuffed with some soft material, which makes it light but durable. This I shall fasten on my plane where it will remain. It will be my good luck omen. The crowd at the embassy treated me like one of their official family. If their good luck wishes just work, I am in clover.
The boat for Boulogne has its usual interesting crowd, but something new has been added. A couple of beautiful silver-colored blimps are escorting our boat. They are flying at about five to seven hundred feet and slightly ahead as our protection from submarines, in the event that some ambitious enemy wants to commit suicide. There is the usual talk of a big push, as there was last spring on my way over, only this time the talk is of Arras and Messines. The Somme seems to be relegated to the ash heap, or just plain forgotten for the time being. I am rather anxious to see what has happened along the line while I have been living the life of Riley (whoever he is). The sun is out in all its glory. Spring is here. The boys in the trenches will be doing their spring cleaning, preparing to go nowhere except over the top to clean out the enemy. We of the flying corps will see action every day. All of the Western Front is coming alive with a bang. All casualty clearing stations are cleaned out and all who can move are being invalided to England to make room for the new crop of casualties. The same old routine is on. Many who are here will be gone tomorrow. This war should put all the celestial clairvoyants out of business. Anyone with guts enough to predict what will happen is crazy. I don’t think they will find anything in the stars about this business, and up to now I haven’t had any member of the cloth tell me the answer. They all seem to be in a shell, just doing their best for humanity and hoping for sanity to return to the world.
I have been in the pool two days and am first up for a scout rotary or the Sopwith two-seater, in which I finished and qualified for my pilot’s wings. Today I have been assigned to Forty-third Squadron, as they need two pilots. Another pilot named Kirby is scheduled to the same squadron, and the usual tender will pick us up in the morning. This squadron is equipped with Sopwith two-seaters powered by a rotary one-hundred-thirty engine. They have their front gun firing through the air screw and the back gun mounted on a Scarf ring. The pilot is in a very comfortable seat between the wings, directly back of his engine, with the Vickers gun and control directly in front in alignment with the ship. The observer is directly back of the pilot, close enough so they can talk to each other. The Forty-third is commanded by Major Sholto-Douglas, to whom Kirby and I report. Here is a typical British commanding officer, only more so. He has the sincerity and the graciousness of all RFC commanding officers, only this fellow has had a lot of service. On his chest are the flying wings with the Military Cross ribbon, which I learn later he acquired as an observer. This puts us in the same category, both having been observers and both having the MC. This fellow I like immediately. He has dignity, with kindness and experience, which go to make up a wonderful commanding officer.
I am assigned to B Flight, which is flying this evening’s show at three P.M. under the command of Captain Collier, who will become one of my best friends. As it is eleven-thirty, almost lunchtime, my major asks me if I would like to take a flight before lunch and make a landing or two. I am glad, so climbing into my new Sopwith, I take off with no uncertainty and all the confidence in the world.
The flying was beautiful. The ship performed grand. I even took a short look at the lines, then came in for a landing. Seeing that I was coming in too fast and overshooting my field, I began to realize that this wasn’t Waddington where I had all of England to land but a very small field with no distance for a runway and that when you touched the ground, you should be down.
After three attempts to land and having to take off again, I remembered how Price used to sideslip to lose height and speed, so on the fourth attempt I am in. I haven’t been worried but know I have to do some practice landings on a small field. In the F.E.2b I was only an observer and didn’t realize what the small landing fields meant to a pilot. Price used to make them so easy. After lunch we make our first reconnaissance over the same territory I had traveled last spring, with nothing different except that I am a pilot.
Forty-third Squadron has the usual eighteen ships in three flights, A, B and C. A Flight is commanded by Captain Harold Balfour, B Flight by Collier, while C Flight is commanded by Major Stanley Dore. Here are possibly three of the best and stoutest flight commanders of any squadron in France. My old luck is sure holding once again. I am in a top squadron with top commanding officers. I have been assigned an observer by the name of Pritchard. Pritchard is a typical Englishman, with a great personality and sense of humor. With this fellow, in the days to come, I have many experiences. Things are most the same as last spring. There hasn’t been much change in the trenches; we have gained some ground at the Somme. The salient has been straightened out some, but at an awful cost. There are only a few of the old flyers left. Ball is back in action and going strong with Fifty-six Squadron in Nieuports, and thank God the kid is in our wing. It’s good to know he is close, because I consider him the best fighting pilot in the RFC.
I am beginning to get the feel of my little ship. It is such a pleasure after the big F.E. When nestled down in the pilot’s seat, I am not exposed to any wind. The change is marvelous, and my observer has a wonderful gun mounting. With some experience, we should do well.
Forty-third has an excellent mess. With a caterer from one of London’s best hotels as mess sergeant, how could we miss? The lounging room has a flock of easy chairs with couch and piano, and we have a boy who is a natural on the piano. With my whiskey tenor, everything will be noisy, if not good. Today a great enemy fighter, Boelcke,* was killed in a collision while fighting some of our F.E.2b back of the enemy lines. He was a fine gentleman and a great fighter, who didn’t build his reputation by picking on cripples. He had the respect of all the RFC fighters and was a good enemy. One of our squadrons is dropping a wreath of flowers over the line as a courtesy to our respected friend and enemy. Many of our RFC boys who are prisoners of war have written home many nice things about Boelcke and his kindness to our flyers. The only courtesy or respect by any combat units on either side seems to be between the two flying corps.
Today Kirby, who came with me from the pool to Forty-third, made his first flight and is missing. No one knows what happened, as the weather was bad. He could have been lost in a cloud and landed safely back of the lines. While Boelcke was alive, we always had reports of our boys if killed or landed safely. With this new gang opposite our front, I don’t know. They seem to be all out for a show. With their highly colored paint job on all their planes, they are called the Flying Circus, commanded by a Baron von Richthofen.† If these babies think the RFC scare at paint, they have a surprise coming. This so-called circus hasn’t a chance. They stay back of their lines. Hell, if the RFC didn’t go over, there would never be a battle, but the British always take the offensive, which does wonders for the infantry morale. Now, with Boelcke and Immel-mann‡ both gone, I have a feeling the new German flying corps will be different. With the loss of their two sportsmen, the standard set by these two great airmen through 1915 and 1916 may exist no longer.
When one thinks that these two great German aces lost their lives fighting F.E.2b, Immelmann having the wings shot off his monoplane by Second Lieutenant McCubbin and Corporal Waller of Twenty-fifth Squadron and Boelcke losing his life in a collision with one of his own ships while fighting a flight of F.E.2b from Twenty-third Squadron over Bapaume, one realizes what a fighting ship the F.E.2b has been for the RFC. Without this group of combat planes in the Somme push of 1916, the RFC would have been in a bad way. The Hun is out with a new Albatros, much faster and better than their 1916 Albatros scout, which caused us such great losses. We have some real competition for them with our Spads and Sop-with Pups, only we don’t have enough. We at Forty-third are holding our own, although the going is tough and our losses are too many. It is rumored that Fifty-six is to be equipped with S.E.5s, our new ship with the Hispano-Suiza motor, which is considered very fast. This may help us against our enemy’s new Albatros. It is also rumored that Bishop is coming back into action with Sixty Squadron equipped with all S.E.5s. Bishop* has been trying to catch up with Ball in number of ships destroyed, with some distance to go, and unless Ball is injured no one will come close.
We of Forty-third have suffered a terrible loss caused by an accident to Major Douglas. He was seriously hurt in my plane, which makes me feel doubly bad. He is a great commanding officer. To lose him in an unnecessary accident is an awful blow to the RFC. We have been standing by to take some photographs of a particular sector that our wing headquarters needs, and the weather has been bad and makes it impossible to do any flying, when suddenly at about three o’clock it starts to clear, we hope enough to do the job before dark. Since the leader of B Flight, Captain Collier, is on leave, I am acting flight commander. The major orders us to try and take the pictures. Out of a flight of six ships only three of us are able to take off. While the three of us who do take to the air are climbing for altitude and hoping the others will get off of the ground, my ship is not flying right. The wires to my stick control seem to be slack. As the ship is sliding and slipping and is in no way answering to my control, I decide to make a quick landing to give the rigger a chance to check my plane.
Landing close to the edge of our field and leaving plenty of distance for a quick take-off, I call the rigger sergeant over to check, when our major comes running out and wants to try the ship for a flight around the field. Leaving my observer in his place, he opens up the engine and starts across the field into the wind for a perfect take-off. Only it didn’t take off. Square in front of where the major is bouncing across the ground at full speed and coming toward the ship is a big Belgian horse weighing at least two thousand pounds, led by a Frenchman, with a plow and another Frenchman on the other end. The horse is so petrified, he squats and stands still, while both Frenchmen jump, just in time to keep from being killed. With the horse standing braced and the plane traveling full-out, the propeller kissed the horse square on. Poor Doug and my observer and the horse are all mixed up together. It was a horrible sight. Landing on the side with their hands waving and their mouths opening and shutting with nothing coming out were two of the most frightened Frenchmen in all of France. Forty-third has lost a good commanding officer, but fortunately both officers will live, although they will be months recovering. Major Dore, our senior flight commander, is now in command of Forty-third. He is a great friend of Major Douglas and an old timer in the RFC.
We have lost Albert Ball, killed in action back of the enemy lines, where it always happens, never on our side. It was a dogfight near the ground. Everyone in the Richthofen circus is claiming victory. We were not in the fight, so have no definite knowledge. I only know that one of the best will be missed by the RFC, and I owed him many a favor, for when we were together in the early days in Eleven Squadron, he and his little Nieuport helped Price and me out of many a tight spot. I shall never forget this boy as long as I live. I wish that Captain Price and I could have been there in the old F.E.2b to give him some help when needed.*
Footnotes
*Bruce Bairnsfather’s Old Bill was a cartoon character representing the typical British soldier in World War I much as Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe did the GI in World War II. Old Bill was a popular figure with the British troops.
*Oswald Boelcke at the time of his death had become Germany’s most revered pilot, having chalked up forty British kills. He died in a midair collision with another German pilot. Germany’s first air ace, Boelcke had been awarded the coveted Blue Max and before his death composed the still famous “Seven Rules of Aerial Combat.”
†Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) became Germany’s most famous fighter ace, shooting down eighty Allied planes before himself being shot down and killed in 1918. It remains disputed whether he was downed by a rookie Canadian flyer or by rifle fire from the trenches.
‡Hans Immelmann, also a Blue Max recipient, was a German ace with only six kills to his credit before being shot down and killed, but he immortalized his name in the aviation world by devising the Immelmann turn. Known simply as an Immelmann, it was an upside-down-inside-out loop which all fighter pilots eventually employed and which has delighted fans at air shows ever since.
*William A. “Billy” Bishop was Canada’s most cherished flying ace, having shot down seventy-two German aircraft. A recipient of the Victoria Cross, Bishop was one of the few big-time aces to survive the war. He died in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1956. After his death, his flying career in France became the subject of a popular book and a Broadway play.
*Captain Ball had been credited with forty-seven victories before his death. He was fighting the enemy in a thunderstorm and there is controversy over whether he was shot down by the Germans or his crash was due to mechanical failure or the weather.