While agreeing that Immelmann was dead, for he had crashed on their side of the line, the Germans ascribed his end to structural failure of his machine, which was seen to break in two in mid-air. His brother Franz maintained that eyewitness reports confirmed the fatal sequence of events were similar to structural failure suffered by another machine flown by Max on 31 May; an incident which he was lucky to survive. Oswald Boelcke believed that malfunction of the interrupter gear led to Immelmann shooting off his own propeller, arguing further that a piece of the fractured propeller had torn through the bracing wires to the fuselage, which disintegrated. Whatever the reason, there was no doubt that one of only three airman holders of the Pour le Mérite at the time had been removed from the fray. Immelmann’s mother recorded how moved the family was by ‘the hundreds of telegrams, letters and poems which poured in daily for a period of many weeks’, including messages of sympathy from the Kaiser and King of Saxony. Thousands lined the streets of Dresden as Immelmann’s funeral cortège passed, but the fact remained that like so many other mothers in other nations, his must cope with grief for a son lost in action. In operational terms the RFC had achieved a major coup.
Immelmann died a fortnight before the Battle of the Somme, in preparation for which Trenchard established an advanced HQ at Fienvillers, where the Ninth Wing had three squadrons and two flights. Attached to each of the four British armies was an RFC Brigade with its own Aircraft Park. In total, twenty-seven squadrons were deployed with 421 aeroplanes exclusive of a further 216 at the depots; a substantial increase over the twelve squadrons available in October 1915. In his post-war reflections on this period, Maj Gen Sir Sefton Brancker claimed that one No 15 Sqn BE2c of IV Brigade had been fitted with armour plating for the pilot ‘to some purpose’. Indeed, a ‘bullet proof seat’ had been available earlier, but the ‘general practice’ was to discard it even if installed on the grounds that the added weight adversely affected speed and manoeuvrability.
The principal role in the British infantry attack on the Somme would fall to Gen Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, comprising five corps to which 110 aeroplanes were allocated in direct support. The Fourth Army was to advance on a 14-mile (22km) front and initially penetrate 1.5 miles (3km), allowing the Reserve Army to exploit the gap created, take Bapaume and swing north towards Arras. The preliminary bombardment made the ground shake violently at Bertangles, 40 miles (64km) behind the front line, where Algernon Insall who had travelled from Paris with his brother Gilbert and future VC winner to volunteer for the RFC had been appointed adjutant to the 3rd (Corps) Wing. When a lull occurred on the appointed day, he knew that the troops were about to go over the top. ‘It was a moving experience,’ Insall reflected.
The Battle of the Somme, which would in its various phases continue for four and a half months, began on 1 July and on that opening day claimed 57,470 British casualties, approximately one-third of them killed. Newspaper headlines the following day were fanciful: ‘The Big Advance’, ‘All Goes Well for England and France’. Readers learnt that ‘the nation was thrilled [that] the great British offensive’ had commenced so well with ‘our gallant soldiers’ overrunning sixteen miles of enemy trenches.
On the opening day and throughout the bitter struggle in the ensuing months, the RFC played the pivotal role that Trenchard intended. During the course of the battle, he reiterated his aim of exploiting ‘the moral effect of the aeroplane on the enemy, but not to let him exploit it on ourselves. Now that can only be done by attacking and continuing to attack.’ Close support, aggressive patrolling, the bombing of enemy rear areas, such as ammunition dumps and railway junctions, were all prominent. Enemy troops likened low-level attackers, which ‘cruised ceaselessly and almost at ground level above our trenches and shell holes’, to ‘buzzards who had fixed on their prey’. During the afternoon of 1 July, bombers hit St Quentin station, causing a massive ammunition explosion and 180 troop casualties. ‘The men were panic-stricken and fled in every direction,’ a German report admitted.
Hugh Chance, who had found himself under Zeppelin attack in Epping Forest the previous year as an infantry officer, joined No 27 Sqn at Fienvillers, 10 miles (16km) west of Albert and approximately 15 miles (24km) behind the front line in July 1916 and during the Somme battle found his Martinsyde Scout detailed for bombing raids. The machine had no proper bomb sight, ‘only a wire contraption fixed to the right side of the cockpit’. Chance got his rigger to make a hole in the floor of the cockpit through which he could pick out the target. Even then, unless flying low and therefore subject to dangerous small arms fire, he found it difficult to identify a specific target. ‘Many of our bombs must have fallen ineffectively,’ he concluded.
Further to discomfort the enemy, Chance revealed, HE bombs were supplemented by rolls of toilet paper and ‘as many china articles as could be found’. He recalled how over one target, the lavatory accessories unravelled as they fell earthwards ‘followed by a “jerry”, which we fondly hoped would fall on the head of an unsuspecting enemy gazing up at our paper streamers’. Broken gramophone records, empty soda water bottles and ‘other rubbish’ swelled the unofficial bomb load.
Canadian-born Ewart Garland, who lived in Australia, reached No 10 Sqn at the front in July 1916 to discover ‘very funny’ wintry weather. Flying on a familiarisation reconnaissance with ‘an experienced observer’, he remarked that the trenches looked ‘like ugly jagged cuts’, flashes and puffs of smoke were ‘all over the place’. When off duty, he swam in a convenient canal and as there were ‘a few horses on the Squadron for our use’ had managed ‘a couple of gallops’. In his letters, he portrayed a casual mixture of operations and social activity. On 26 July, he flew a patrol in the morning and played tennis in the afternoon. He recorded that, at first, in his quiet sector he ‘enjoyed a Battle of Waterloo sort of life, active flying being interspersed with riding, tennis, visits to Béthune for teas, dinners, drinking etc.’ The Mess, too, had
… a Waterloo flavour … meals of several courses, correct wines including port circulated in a correct and proper manner. Liqueurs with coffee were de rigeur. This ‘officer-gentleman’ kind of life did not last long, and before many weeks had passed war conditions set in and life became much less pleasant with a growing fear of death seldom far off.
On 13 August after tennis and a two-hour artillery observation stint, Garland and some others attended the men’s concert. The following day, the highlight of his diary read: ‘Got roller for tennis court from local hospital’. That day’s appended comment was more sober: it was ‘quite usual’ to drop 20lb bombs from 6,500ft on a random target ‘with minimum accuracy’. On one occasion he merely offloaded his two bombs ‘on the large city of Lille, regardless of where they actually fell’. This troubled Garland:
I shudder to think of the innocent French civilians which must have been hit during the war as it was an accepted thing throughout the Flying Corps to bomb in this casual way. I do not recall that complaints ever reached us from French Command.
On another occasion, he reflected that towns were full of troops and frequent raids were ‘meant to upset enemy morale, quite as much as to cause material damage’.
It was not all work: ‘Higher Authority discreetly encouraged occasional binges, which were often pretty wild, ending in such rough stuff as rugger scrums and schoolboy horseplay.’ Garland observed that these parties were ‘a release valve from both boredom and war nerves i.e. fear of being shot down in flames’. One such dinner followed by a party until after midnight occurred on 16 August, ending with singing in which Garland took part. As a result he was nicknamed Harry Piller after ‘a star of light musicals’; and ‘Harry’ became his name for the duration of the war. RFC HQ staff officer Maurice Baring would visit the Mess ‘from time to time … to perform various parlour tricks such as balancing a liqueur glass on his bald pate while relating doggerel verse’. Sholto Douglas, the former Royal Field Artillery officer, independently paid tribute to Baring’s morale-boosting visi
ts, when his entertaining antics were interspersed with community singing of raucous ditties in which he enthusiastically took part. ‘A plumpish, bald-headed, middle-aged man of the intellectual type’, Baring had ‘an endearing manner of his own … One of the great characters of the RFC’, Douglas declared.
Douglas Joy, too, became involved at the Somme. He escorted photographic operations or machines attacking ‘the Hun sausage balloons’, took part in bombing railway targets and troop positions. A ‘special mission’ occurred on 28 July to bomb Mons railway station from 2,000–3,000ft, a location where ‘a great deal of danger’ existed. He wrote to his sister Nina the next day:
Thank heaven it is all over. While it lasted it was exciting and interesting and we did what we set out to do, a bombing show at a very famous place, a long way over the lines. We had an ideal day for the job … huge mountainous masses of woolly clouds with large gaps between them through which we dodged about and through which we came over very low, quite unusually low.
He flew regularly, sometimes leading operations, until he went on a fortnight’s leave to England on 18 August.
Albert Ball, who often took off before dawn and landed for the final time at dusk, need not have fought on the Somme. Awarded the MC in June, he had been offered the opportunity to remain in England as an instructor, but as he explained to his mother, he had volunteered to ‘go out again and have another smack’. It was not that he particularly wanted to go, ‘but every boy who has loving people and a good home should go out and stand up for it’. He continued: ‘I shall fight for you and come home for you, and God always looks after me and makes me strong; may He look after you also.’ Ball did reveal reservations, however. ‘Oh I do get tired of always living to kill. I am beginning to feel like a murderer. I shall be pleased when I have finished … I hate this game, but it is the only thing one must do just now.’ By the end of the Somme battle, in addition to his MC, Ball would have gained the DSO and two bars for his exploits.
During the four and a half months of confrontation along the Somme, reinforced from Dunkirk by No 8 Sqn RNAS flying single-seat Nieuport 17 and Sopwith Pup fighters, the RFC recorded 298 bombing raids ‘with definite targets’. Specifically, 17,600 bombs were dropped, 19,000 photographs taken, 8,612 artillery targets registered following air observation, 164 enemy machines destroyed and another 205 ‘driven down damaged’. Buoyed by the success of the fighter patrols, Sir Douglas Haig optimistically demanded twenty extra fighter squadrons.
Not all aerial activity was confined to the Somme. Elsewhere, fighting continued in the air and on the ground, and the RFC gained another VC. Thirty-two-year-old Capt Lionel Rees from Carnarvon, a regular officer in the Royal Garrison Artillery, at his own expense while on leave took lessons at the Bristol Flying School at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain to gain Royal Aero Club Certificate No. 392 on 7 January 1913. He became attached to the RFC on 10 August 1914, served as an instructor at the CFS and on 25 July 1915 landed at Amiens in command of No 11 Sqn. He had flown ahead of his pilots, who were astonished on arrival to see their commanding officer in overalls repairing his machine, damaged in combat the previous day. In the ensuing three months, Rees shot down three enemy aeroplanes, damaged several others, was mentioned in despatches and then awarded the MC for completing a photographic operation while under aerial attack.
Back in England, he commanded the CFS as a temporary major before returning to France in charge of No 32 Sqn. Contrary to normal practice, Rees continued to fly operationally. On 1 July 1916, patrolling alone in a DH2 with its single Lewis machine-gun, he mistook a group of aeroplanes for friendly bombers returning from a raid, only to discover on getting closer that he had stumbled across ten of the enemy. He immediately dealt with one which attacked him, sending it back over its own line belching smoke. Five more opened fire at long range, but dispersed when he flew towards them. Rees severely damaged two and gave chase to two others, which broke away. As he caught them, he was hit in the thigh (a wound that would leave him with a permanent limp) and temporarily lost control of his machine. He soon recovered to resume the chase and fire all his ammunition at his quarries before setting off home. The VC citation referred to his ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ in turning his own error to such devastating advantage.
Arthur William Tedder was yet another infantry officer to reach the RFC via the trenches. After graduating from Magdalene College, Cambridge, a gifted pianist and landscape artist, Tedder was destined for a diplomatic career. Instead he joined the Army, in January 1915 being commissioned into The Dorsetshire Regiment. Six months later, he married Wilhelmina Rosaline Foster to whom he wrote daily from the Front. When a knee injury threatened his military future, Tedder determined to transfer to the RFC, which he did in January 1916 after regaining mobility. Within four months he had learned to fly and been promoted captain. His life in the air was certainly not without incident: on 21 June 1916, in a letter to his wife, he described how anti-aircraft fire had ‘put a shrapnel bullet through the nacelle of my aircraft, in one side and out of the other, cutting one of the petrol pipes and passing down between my legs. Petrol came pouring out in a continuous stream.’ No fire occurred, but Rosaline Tedder must have been concerned that on another occasion her husband would not be so lucky.
In August 1916, appointed a flight commander with No 25 Sqn, Capt A.W. Tedder painted his two-seater FE2b in Cambridge blue. On patrol during the evening of 8 September, he came across a Roland biplane 1,500ft below him above Mericourt Wood being attacked by a FE2b and FE8. Tedder dived to follow the German machine as it made off towards Douai, caught up and allowed his observer to fire one and a half drums into it from 500ft. Tedder then spotted two Fokker monoplanes to the east and closed on them. One ‘sheered off’, the other flew aggressively towards Tedder. Before he could attack, Lt G. Nelson in the front cockpit of the British pusher opened fire at 200yds, causing the Fokker to dive and make off towards the east. Tedder remained on his tail long enough for Nelson to drill one and a half drums into the enemy aeroplane, where hits were seen on the wings and fuselage before he flew out of range. Such an encounter illustrated the daily work of aerial patrols, which were an integral part of the fighting on the Somme.
Harold Taylor also flew with No 25 Sqn on the Somme. Born at Clapham in 1896, he had a strict Anglican upbringing and joined the Boy Scouts, where ‘we got a very good grounding to be patriotic’. When war broke out, he wrote: ‘I and many others were no doubt fervent patriots through the medium of the Scout movement and writers such as Rudyard Kipling.’ In August 1914, he and three of his friends enlisted ‘to fight for God, King and Country’, initially in The East Surrey Regiment.
Almost two years later, June 1916, Taylor found himself in The Machine-Gun Corps bound for the Somme, delighted to play an active role in ‘the War to end all Wars’. Later he mused: ‘I wonder whether we would have been so confident had we known that we would soon be in a Hell which it would be impossible for any human being to describe.’ Once in the line, his youthful enthusiasm faded fast, ‘As if death, stench and rats were not enough in a few days I discovered that lice had taken possession of me, my clothes were housing hundreds upon hundreds, the whole earth was full of them. There was nothing we could do about it.’ Caustically, he added: ‘Some gentleman invented … “Harrison’s Pomade” for killing lice. Fortunes must have been made with this, but it made very little difference, when applied, in fact they seemed to thrive on it.’
Taylor was highly critical of newspaper censorship, too:
The people at home were told about the Somme offensive but no photos of its horrors ever reached the press. Photos of a few tommies with steel helmets on were shown going over the top, no dead men were around and most of the pictures were taken behind the lines.
Correspondents, he maintained, were not allowed ‘to report the full horrors of this battle where many men were drowned and not mortally wounded by shell or bullet’. When his unit came out of the line, in the rest area t
he Commanding Officer spoke about the RFC’s ‘urgent need’ for gunner/observers. Taylor volunteered and was interviewed at RFC HQ, being told that he would be informed in due course if he had been successful. In the meantime he must go back to his unit, which was again in the front line.
In September 1916, Taylor learned that he had been accepted for the RFC and found himself posted to No 25 Sqn at Auchel. There he met Sgt Jimmie Green, ‘one of the finest pilots I ever flew with’, who arranged a complete change of clothing and new kit: ‘After a bath … I felt a new man.’ Following the discomfort of the trenches, Taylor particularly appreciated the sleeping quarters and meals, ‘although for many days I could not lose the stench from my nostrils, I gradually became a normal being once more’. In the front line, death was faced every minute, he mused, but in the RFC at least between operations he could feel safe.
Taylor’s first flight in an FE2b pusher was with Capt Oscar Grieg. Clambering into his cockpit, he saw an empty petrol can and wondered about its purpose. ‘I found the adventure very exhilarating,’ he wrote, taking peeps over the side and without any preliminary instruction, not giving much heed to the route or the countryside below: ‘I was quite content to enjoy the thrill of the first flight.’ He had a shock on landing, when Grieg told him to write a report of the terrain over which they had flown. Fortunately, Green overheard, told Taylor not to worry because he knew the route, took him into an office and dictated a report which included prominent landmarks in the vicinity of the station. Taylor wrote out this report in his own hand and gave it to Grieg, who declared it ‘bloody marvellous’.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 13