In an interview, James’ proud mother revealed that ‘he tells us hardly anything in his letters about what he has done. Sometimes, he just puts in a line – “brought down two more Huns to-day” – but nothing more’. He had written: ‘Hear I’ve been recommended for the DSO’ without telling them what for. Few of McCudden’s letters to anybody exceeded a single page. On 24 December 1917, he had thanked his elder sister Cis for her Christmas present, but gently chided her for getting something ‘so expensive’. He hoped she had ‘a nice Christmas’, before briefly noting that he had done ‘very well lately’, receiving congratulations from ‘several generals’ on receiving the DSO and raising his total number of victories to thirty-two. He wrote a postscript: ‘I believe mother thinks that a DSO is the same value as a Band of Hope Medal’ (an award from the temperance movement which discouraged alcoholic consumption).
Writing to Kitty on 5 January 1918, McCudden expressed concern that his mother was ‘not up to the mark’ and hoped ‘this letter finds her better’. He dismissed ‘all the bosh in the papers about me’, wondered how London was ‘looking at present’, wished Kitty ‘good luck and plenty of fun’ before apologising for such a short letter. A stern postscript followed: ‘On no account whatever are any particulars or photos of me to be sent to the papers, as that sort of thing makes one very unpopular with one’s comrades.’
The letter arrived too late to prevent what McCudden feared. He wrote to the Air Ministry protesting his innocence, and on 11 January Sir Hugh Trenchard replied: ‘I do not for one moment think you had advertised yourself in the paper knowing you and your work.’ He asked McCudden to call on him when next in London. ‘I have watched your career for a long time now, and I look upon you as one of the people who are making their weight felt with a vengeance on the Hun.’ Now Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), and preparing for establishment of the independent RAF, Trenchard wrote: ‘Sorry I am severing my immediate connection with you all in France, but I hope that you and all your brother pilots will still look upon me as a personal friend to help you if I can.’ At the Front, by 30 January 1918 McCudden’s total of victories had risen to forty-seven, making him the highest-scoring British airman.
As the New Year dawned, far-reaching changes were in motion for the British air arms. The intense military debate and political manoeuvring, which had followed the publication of Lt Gen J.C. Smuts’ two reports, resulted in passing of the Air Force Act on 29 November 1917, which paved the way for a separate Air Ministry (created on 3 January 1918) and in due course the Royal Air Force – an amalgamation of the RFC and RNAS. As a result, in 1918 there would be dramatic events both in, and away from, the field.
In January 1918 extension of the British line on the Western Front by almost 30 miles (48km) to the south further strained RFC resources. Following the devastating Italian defeat at Caporetto in October 1917, which put Venice at risk, five squadrons had been sent south of the Alps at a time when campaigns in the Near East, Middle East, East Africa and Salonika also required support. Pressure to mount more long-range bombing operations was also rising, to Trenchard’s dismay. He warned about relying too heavily on a weak bomber force: ‘I want to bomb Germany, but please remember that if we lose half our machines doing so, the good moral effect which is three-quarters of the work will be on the German side and not ours.’
Writing to Lloyd George on 13 January 1918, he returned to this theme. There was ‘in some quarters very serious misapprehension’ as to what could be done. At present, three squadrons were operating from an aerodrome at Ochey ‘temporarily lent to us by the French’. During the winter ‘this limited force’ had dropped 20 tons of bombs on Germany, but the proposed reinforcements due to be sent out quickly were ‘meagre and disappointing’. Only the RNAS’s HP O/100 machines had the ability to reach Mannheim ‘unless the weather is very favourable’. The DH9, a longer-range version of the two-seat DH4, due to be the mainstay of the bombing force had not yet proved itself, particularly at heights over 13,000ft. Charles Callender, air mechanic with No 27 Sqn, agreed. While acknowledging that there had been ‘bags of snow and ice’, he referred to ‘a rough winter’ with the Squadron’s DH9s. ‘A bigger machine for bigger bombing … and a hell of a lot of trouble they brought too’.
Arrangements were in hand for twenty-five squadrons to be based around Nancy from May, with provision for a further fifteen two months later. But, realistically, given the need for sorting out teething troubles, special training of crews and always assuming that delivery dates were met, Trenchard estimated that at the end of May only four additional squadrons would be operational. By 31 October 1918, he hoped that eleven Handley Page and nineteen DH9 squadrons ‘will be actually at work’, a figure to which Gen Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, British military representative to the Supreme War Council at Versailles, added a DH4 squadron to make a total of thirty-one.
Capt Orlando Beater, a No 55 Sqn observer, illustrated the nature of the limited bombing operations from Ochey, near Nancy, as winter closed in. On 1 November 1917, during a bombing raid his formation clashed with enemy fighters. As one of the Germans attacked another DH4:
I fired two magazines into him, on which he made an almost vertical turn, nose-dived for the ground and a few seconds later his wings fell off and the whole machine broke in pieces to our great gratification and relief. It was a wonderful sight to see him dropping like a stone, leaving a trail of smoke and fire behind him, then his wings fluttering and finally disintegration and death 14,000ft below.
A triumphant reaction not always expressed by aircrew responsible for an enemy loss. On 5 November, Beater practised dual control, taking over the ‘bus for a short time … I made some turns, pretty bad ones they were too’. On landing, he learnt that a friend was missing after seven weeks on a Bristol fighter squadron, ‘and so my old pals go, one after another, and I wonder which of us will be the next to go.’
The Squadron moved two days later to a new aerodrome close to Tantonville ‘of brewery fame’, and Beater’s experience there suggested that Trenchard’s optimism might be a trifle overstated. His arrival was not auspicious: ‘We walked over to the mess hut through a sea of mud, which reminded me of Bally Hooley [in Ireland] at its worst, and scarcely tended to raise our rapidly sinking spirits.’ The quarters were in a wood for camouflage purposes, and Beater constructed his own bed out of stray pieces of timber. He also ‘knocked up a few shelves for my things’ above the soaking wet floor in a large hut ‘like a big horse barn minus the stalls’.
When landing, many of the aeroplanes sank up to their axles, and it took up to twenty-five men to drag one machine free. ‘How they expect us to take off with bombs on board beats me.’ Beater thought it would be ‘hopeless’ until the frost came. It rained steadily on 9 November, so that everything in the hut was ‘saturated with moisture’. Four days later, Beater was still trying to get his cubicle finished ‘before we all freeze to death’.
Others, he recognised, had their own problems, reflecting on the ‘poor beggars’, who had reached Victoria station in a leave train only to be returned to Folkestone at once because of ‘the Italian situation’ – the perilous plight of Italian troops in the face of the German and Austrian onslaught in the north-east of Italy. Depressingly, too, he had heard that the Russians were suing for a separate peace ‘and incidentally that Kerensky had got the chuck’, a reference to the Bolshevik Revolution under Lenin.
Shortly afterwards, Trenchard visited the Squadron and addressed its members in one of the hangars. ‘He told us not to get bored or fed up with our surroundings, but to keep our spirits up and prepare for great things next Spring.’ Trenchard had assured the Prime Minister that from Nancy, in co-operation with the French, ‘the big industrial centres on the Rhine and in its vicinity’ were to be hit. When the weather was unfit ‘for long-distance bombing’, closer targets in the Saar would be targeted. Short-range bombing ‘in immediate connexion [sic] with the army’ would take place too, as well as FE2b bombers carrying ou
t night attacks on enemy aerodromes in Belgium.
On 16 January 1918, Trenchard reminded the whole RFC of its day-to-day role on the Western Front: ‘The first and most important of the duties of the Royal Flying Corps … is to watch for symptoms of attack,’ which involved reconnaissance and photography and crucially, accurate interpretation of the results. To establish the scope of any such impending enemy assault, the construction of the following should be particularly noted: railways and sidings, roads, dumps, aerodromes, camps and gun positions. Once activity of this nature had been detected, increased co-operation with the artillery would be needed, so would ‘extensive bombing attacks to hinder the enemy’s preparations, inflict casualties upon his troops and disturb their rest’ and ‘an energetic offensive’ be mounted ‘against the enemy’s aviation’.
If a major German assault did develop, the RFC should attack enemy reinforcements ‘a mile or two behind the assaulting line’, harass troop concentrations on roads and at assembly areas, and fly low level operations in co-operation with infantry combating advancing troops. The next stage, assuming the enemy advance had been checked, would be support for a counter-attack by low-flying machine gun flights against enemy trenches and artillery positions.
Trenchard emphasised that superiority in the air must be secured and maintained, adding that a reserve of four squadrons would be based at RFC HQ to reinforce a particular area under threat. Only by consistently attacking the enemy’s air force could ascendancy be assured. Even if the ground forces were temporarily on the defensive, the RFC would ‘always remain essentially offensive’. This was the declared aerial doctrine in France for 1918.
With reports of increasing enemy activity in the vicinity of the Fifth Army in the south, on 2 February Maj Gen J.M. Salmond, who had succeeded Trenchard as RFC commander at the front, ordered additional reconnaissance flights, which identified extension of light railways, unusual concentration of air units and signs of greater action in the rear areas at night. Clearly something was afoot. From 16 February, day and night bombers attacked aerodromes, railway stations, barracks and troop concentrations based upon photographic and reconnaissance information.
On 12 February, 20-year-old former bank clerk Victor Yeates joined No 46 Sqn flying Sopwith Camels from Filescamp Farm, 10 miles (16km) west of Arras. His journey to France had been neither swift nor smooth. He had volunteered in November 1915, stating a preference for the RFC, but not until 24 February 1917 did he commence his service with the Inns of Court OTC. Exactly three months later, he progressed to RFC instruction at Oxford, then Reading, enduring drill sessions interspersed with study of aero engines, navigation and Morse. Graduating to flying as a probationary 2/Lt at Ruislip, Middlesex, he encountered the Farman Shorthorn, mastery of which involved ‘a mixture of playing a harmonium, working the village pump and sculling a boat’. Reputedly its nickname ‘Rumpty’ evolved from the rumpus caused by its air-cooled pusher engine as the machine rattled over the ground while taxiing.
While at Ruislip, Yeates married Norah Richards, five years his senior, whom he had met before joining the RFC. After Ruislip came spells at Northolt and Croydon, where he delighted in flying the Avro 504J and Sopwith Camel. On 2 February 1918, Yeates completed his pilot training following 11 hours 50 minutes dual and 52 hours 30 minutes solo (including 13 hours 10 minutes on Camels). Five days later he sailed for France and Filescamp Farm, one of three airfields collectively known as Izel-le-Hameau, and was there assigned to a Nissen hut, with an officer’s bed in each corner and temperamental stove in the centre. It was the depths of a freezing winter, which lessened operational activity after the Battle of Cambrai. Yeates, therefore, had ample opportunity to practise formation flying and carry out low-level bombing exercises with the four 20lb Cooper bombs, which each Camel carried.
Before Yeates saw action, he had a domestic concern to address: Norah was pregnant with neither her parents nor parents-in-law close enough to give support. Her aunt, Florence Bard, filled the breach which Yeates appreciated. In thanking her, he wrote: ‘I am afraid she is having a lonely period just now, and she needs companionship … She seems to feel the need at the week-end chiefly.’ Yet another family affected by wartime separation.
As a means of strengthening the RFC on the Western Front, in February 1918 the establishment of squadrons was raised to twenty-four aeroplanes and the number of pilots from twenty to twenty-seven with the aim of putting up eighteen machines at any given time. That month Salmond re-emphasied the thrust of Trenchard’s doctrine: ‘offensive tactics are essential in aerial fighting. The moral effect produced by an aeroplane is … out of all proportion to the material damage it can inflict … the moral effect on our own troops of aerial ascendancy is most marked.’ In addition to attacks on ‘centres of military importance’ close to and further away from the front line, offensive patrols were ‘to drive down and destroy hostile aeroplanes’.
Even as the RFC was preparing for the war’s fifth calendar year in France, enemy air attacks on England were causing renewed unease. By the close of November 1917, the Germans had 144 twin-engine machines available for long distance bombing. On 28 January 1918, a night raid by one Giant and three Gothas on London killed 51 and injured 136; 11 more were injured by spent anti-aircraft shells. At the Odhams Printing Works in Long Acre, which was being used as a shelter, thirty-eight were killed and eighty-five injured. Panic in other shelters, where warning maroons (rockets) were thought to be falling bombs, added a further fourteen killed and fourteen injured to the list. Overall, £137,000 of damage occurred to buildings, 311 of which were hit by falling shrapnel. On 16 February, bombs fell in the grounds of Chelsea hospital. These were timely reminders that the homeland remained vulnerable and that the bombers’ bases in Belgium must not be neglected in the pressure to support ground forces elsewhere. One observer recalled ‘the tension, the overworked nerves, the horror’ caused by ‘the noisy, droning winged monsters’. Years later, the Air Ministry would claim that the German air raids on London in early 1918 ‘had a strong effect upon our air policy, and deserve to be remembered for that reason alone’.
Whatever the other pressures, the primary concern of Salmond and the RFC in the field was to identify the strength and location of the German offensive in the offing, and help to frustrate it once launched. As feared, disintegration of the Russian theatre had allowed the Germans to transfer ground and air forces to the Western Front. All the signs were that a massive attack could be expected before American units reached France in strength.
As February 1918 drew to a close, the precise area of the anticipated assault remained uncertain. RFC HQ therefore laid down contingency plans for deployment of squadrons in one of three sectors covered by the four British armies: north, centre and south. Within days, the sector most likely to bear the brunt of the onslaught would become clear, and movement of designated squadrons to it would begin.
11
German Offensive, March–May 1918
‘Backs to the Wall’
On 3 March 1918, Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany and Austria-Hungary at Brest-Litovsk in Russian-held Poland. Within four days, Romania and Finland had also made peace, opening the way for further enemy reinforcement of the Western Front.
By the beginning of March, it was believed that the expected attack in France would most probably fall in the south, where the British Third and Fifth armies were spread thinly for 70 miles (112km) astride the Somme from Gavrelle near Arras in the north to Barisis just south of the Oise river. The Fifth Army front covered 42 miles (67km) of this distance, with French troops on its right (south).
Including reserves, Gen Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army had fourteen divisions, Gen the Hon Sir Julian Byng’s Third Army sixteen (three of them cavalry divisions), amounting to approximately 440,000 men. Opposite them, including reserves, in their Seventeenth, Second and Eighteenth Armies the Germans deployed seventy divisions (about 840,000 men) and enjoyed roughly three to one superiority in artillery. Ge
neral Erich Ludendorff, deputy to the 68-year-old German Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, and in practice commander of the armies in the field, calculated that American troops would not be fully effective until the summer, and that the British had not recovered from their heavy losses at Passchendaele and Cambrai nor the French from their failed offensives in 1917. With an additional twenty-three divisions available to him from the east, Ludendorff reasoned that a decisive breakthrough could be achieved on the Western Front in Spring 1918 by driving a wedge between the British and French before sweeping north towards the Channel ports.
Within five days of Russia’s formal withdrawal from the war, three single-seater Sopwith fighter squadrons (two of Camels, the third with Dolphins), a reconnaissance squadron of Bristol Fighters and two DH4 day bomber squadrons flew as reinforcements to aerodromes behind the southernmost of the two British armies, the Fifth. One night bombing squadron of FE2b machines was already there and another moved to the Third Army area on 5 March. This left two FE2b night bombing squadrons to support the RNAS against enemy airfields in Belgium.
Mist over the likely area of attack between 17 and 20 March restricted air activity. However, limited air reconnaissance together with captured documents and debriefing of prisoners pinpointed 21 March as the fateful date. Gough wrote home on 19 March: ‘I expect a bombardment will begin tomorrow night, last six to eight hours, and then will come the German infantry on Thursday 21st’. British squadrons were required to carry out ‘extensive bombing attacks to hinder the enemy’s preparations, inflict casualties upon his troops and disturb their rest’. So, during 20 March, DH4 bombers attacked Cambrai and other railway centres in a bid to disrupt German troop movements.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 22