Lorries were seen to collide, one being set on fire, many others being destroyed by direct hits and others ditched. Horse transport was seen stampeding in all directions, and in numerous cases troops endeavouring to get into houses for cover were shot at and many casualties caused.
The end was clearly in sight. That day, 9 November, the Kaiser abdicated and a German Republic was proclaimed. Fighting, though, did not cease for another two days when the Armistice came into force at 11am.
On 10 November the Anglo-Irish pilot Ewart Garland living in Australia and back in action as a flight commander after several months in England recovering from nervous exhaustion, flew No 104 Sqn’s only twin-engine DH 10 to bomb an ammunition dump. He was luckier than Capt Charles Brown, who had returned to action with No 46 Sqn in October after a lengthy spell in England also recovering from exhaustion. That day, too, Brown flew a Camel on a ‘reconnaissance of back areas’, but according to his log book, was ‘wounded in the leg whilst strafing some motor transport on the road between Sauvage and Chinay’. As a result, he spent Armistice Day in hospital. Lt Frank Marsh, who had enlisted in The Hertfordshire Regiment under age in 1915, remained in England and three years later joined the RFC seeking action at the front, was in the air in a FE2b during the night of 10/11 November, when he realised that the Armistice had been agreed. He turned back as ‘coloured (red and white) lights were being fired all along the line and we had quite a job to find our way home’.
A letter to Brown’s parents from Maj Gerald Allen, OC No 46 Sqn, provided yet another example of a thoughtful squadron commander. ‘Your son, Capt C.A. Brown, put up a very good performance this morning, and displayed great devotion to duty’. Carrying out a reconnaissance at low level, he located ‘a lot of Hun transport’ but ‘got a rifle bullet in the right thigh’. It would have been easy for an ‘experienced pilot like him’ to land as soon as he crossed the line or at the first available aerodrome. However, ‘realising his information was very important’, he made for his home base and executed a perfect landing. He was unable to walk unaided, but insisted on making his report to Allen in person. As a result he ‘sent out a bombing raid, which was very successful’. The bullet hole was clean and the bullet was ‘probably out now’, because Brown had been taken to a nearby Casualty Clearing Station. Maj Allen concluded: ‘I have written, as I thought a mother generally likes to have an outsider’s opinion, if her son is hit’, and he assured both of Brown’s parents that the Squadron wished Brown ‘a speedy recovery’.
When the guns fell silent, the RAF on the Western Front numbered 99 squadrons and seven separate flights with a total of 1,799 aeroplanes. This was a far cry from the sparse force, which in August 1914 according to Maurice Baring ‘went gaily as to a dance’.
Conclusion
Peace at Last
‘Lit-up cities’
Shortly after the Armistice, Maj Ranald Reid, commissioned into The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in August 1914 and now in the RAF at Dunkirk, visited the Waterloo battlefield south of Brussels, until November 1918 behind enemy lines. En route, he found ‘the lit-up cities … fantastically beautiful after the long darkness of the blackout’. Further south, Capt Hugh Chance, who joined The Worcestershire Regiment in March 1915 and the RFC the following year, experienced a strange encounter at Gouzeacourt, south-west of Cambrai. He came across a French peasant ploughing in a field, who remembered a particular incident during the war: ‘Yes, brave French aviators dropped bombs on a German troop train. The engine was hit and a bomb fell on the last two coaches, which contained ammunition and blew up. There were over forty casualties and I was ordered to help to clear the wreckage’. The farmhand was surprised, when Chance told him that the attack took place on 15 September 1917, the airmen were British and he was the pilot of the bomber. Lt Frank Marsh, who had enlisted in The Hertfordshire Regiment under age after a chance encounter with a recruiting sergeant in The Strand, went with No 149 Sqn to Namur, where to his amazement all of the sixteen machines fitted into a Zeppelin hangar. ‘And the FE 2b was not a small plane [wing span 47ft 9ins, length 32ft 3ins, height 12ft 7½ins]’, he wrote.
Reid, Chance and Marsh were now part of an organisation unrecognisable from that of August 1914, when aerial warfare had been an unknown quantity, a military leap in the dark. Two small forces attached to the British Army and Royal Navy with little prospect of operating over long distances or far from the native shores had been transformed into an independent third service. The combined strength of the RFC and RNAS in August 1914 was 2,073 officers and other ranks; all stationed in Britain. When hostilities ended, the RAF comprised 291,175 personnel serving with the fleet, in training, deployed for home defence and in the operational theatres of Europe, the Near and Middle East and East Africa. The service included men from many nations, like Norwegian Tryggve Gran and at different times, some 300 Americans such as Lt Allan F. Bonnalie, the pilot in No 211 Sqn who commended Thomas Dodwell’s bravery, and Lt Norman H. Read, who survived the crash which killed William McCudden in Gosport. Much has been written about the Lafayette Squadron of Americans serving with the French before the United States entered the war, comparatively little about Americans who served in the RFC at the same time. On 1 March 1918, approximately 25 per cent of men serving in the British air arms on the Western Front were Canadian, three of whom won the VC.
Assertions that British authorities were inept and negligent pre-war, unduly stubborn in refusing to recognise the military potential of air power, should be treated with some caution. Sefton Brancker’s contention on 25 July 1914 that the RFC was not ready for action represented a light-hearted response from ‘a short, dapper and monocled’ officer ‘with a cheerful approach to life’, energetic and enthusiastic but often ‘tactless’. The number of aeroplanes available at the outbreak of war was undoubtedly inferior to the front line strength of France and Germany, but their strategic responsibilities differed markedly from those of Great Britain. Like Britain, both countries had faced opposition from senior military figures, a press campaign for action and pressure groups such as the German Air Fleet League and the French National Aviation League. Germany had been further hamstrung by friction between the War Ministry and Army General Staff and an initial preference for airships. Like Frank McClean at Eastchurch, a German industrialist Dr Walter Huth sponsored military aviation, yet by the close of 1911 only thirty pilots had qualified to fly, and Helmuth von Moltke’s aim of six aeroplanes attached to each army and corps HQ by 1 April 1914 proved a pipe dream.
Where France, and to a lesser extent Germany, had a distinct advantage was in the size of their aeronautical design and manufacturing base. France, once war commenced, exerted considerable indirect influence over the operational capability of the RFC and RNAS. Inability of the two British air arms to co-operate in matters of design and manufacture, by each having its own dedicated producers at home and competing procurement agencies in Paris created further serious problems. Attempts by the JWAC of 1916 and two later Air Boards, all of which lacked executive power and the political status of a ministry, to resolve this unsatisfactory scenario provided one major reason for creation of the unified air force.
In terms of doctrine, the seed corn of belief that bombing an enemy’s homeland could adversely affect industrial production and civilian morale was nurtured by the German raids on Britain. During the war, 103 airship and aeroplane attacks took place, killing 1,414, injuring 3,416 and causing approximately £3 million of damage. Beyond these bald statistics lay instances of panic, serious interruption to factory work and evacuation of urban areas. Postwar, Trenchard would claim that the moral to the physical effect of bombing was twenty to one. The experience of Britain, which the uproar following the two daylight raids on London in 1917 underscored, gave weight to this argument.
Trenchard was on less firm ground when assessing the achievements of long-range bombers from eastern France. Between June and November 1918, the Independent Force and IAAF flew an impressive 12,906 hou
rs in day and night operations and dropped 543 tons of bombs. In reality, the bombers merely nibbled at the edges of German industry, restricted by the limited accuracy of attacks and range of the aeroplanes. The father of Albert Speer, future Nazi Minister for Armaments and War Production, moved his family just thirty miles from Mannheim to Heidelberg to escape Allied bombers.
For four years after the war ended, the RAF had to fight for its existence as the other two services sought return of their air arms: in effect, recreation of the RFC and RNAS. Trenchard restored as CAS in 1919 had strenuously to defend the independence of the new force in personal confrontations, lengthy memoranda and dreary committee rooms. He used the RAF’s peculiar contribution to warfare, long-range bombing quite separate from tactical support to the Army and Royal Navy, as a powerful tool. In the timely words of a leader in the Manchester Guardian: ‘Air power … is a revolutionary force upsetting established conventions everywhere, creating new precedents … not a trailer on existing military and naval theory.’ Until August 1919, RAF personnel retained the ranks of their original Service (RFC or RNAS). That month, introduction of a new structure (2/Lt, Lt, General/Admiral becoming Plt Off, Fg Off and Marshal respectively) gave an appearance of permanence. Ultimately, after a favourable official enquiry in 1923, the RAF was saved, but it had become virtually wedded to the concept of strategic (long-range) bombing as a raison d’être.
The personal lives of airmen and their families were dominated by the war and its aftermath. Apart from the 9,000 dead or missing, over 7,000 were wounded; many permanently disabled. Those who signed on only for the duration of the war or failed to secure a permanent post later found themselves in a depressed labour market. Peace came after a prolonged period of living for the present and concentrating on mere survival. Re-adjustment, especially for those who had joined up straight from school and had known no other adult life, would prove difficult, often nigh impossible. Harold Balfour dubbed them ‘the untrained graduates of war’, a designation equally applicable in Germany. When the Richthofen wing was disbanded, its last commander, Hermann Göring, had no job. A biographer has observed: ‘He was trained for nothing save only soldiering and flying, and for men of that craft there now seemed to be no place whatever in the defeated Reich.’ Before he pursued his notorious political career with another First World War survivor, Adolf Hitler, Göring eked out a living as a commercial pilot, instructor and stunt flyer.
At first glance, Manfred von Richthofen’s collection of cups to celebrate his aerial triumphs, the striving of Immelmann, Boelcke and Voss to outscore one another and the practice of German airmen describing their separate victories in family correspondence distinguishes them from their British counterparts. Yet British airmen frequently referred at length and in detail to their exploits in letters home. Nor were trophies and ambitions disregarded. Noting his 49th victory, Edward Mannock wrote: ‘If I have any luck, I think I may beat old Mac [James McCudden]. Then I shall try and oust old Richthofen.’ In August 1917, Mannock despatched a parcel to James Eyles, with whose family he had lodged pre-war while working for the Post Office. It contained ‘boots which belonged to a dead pilot … [and] goggles belonging to another pilot’, together with a cigarette holder and case, field dressing and piece of fabric from other downed machines. McCudden took home as a trophy the silk cap from a pilot he shot down.
There were other parallels between British and German airmen. James McCudden and Max Immelmann gratefully acknowledged food parcels from home. Immelmann thanked his mother for sending him boots, McCudden asked his for warm ‘cycling stockings’. Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen steadfastly denied suffering from ‘nerves’, but there was ample evidence on both sides about the effects of prolonged periods in front line action. Battle fatigue, or nervous exhaustion, may well have contributed to the deaths of Boelcke, Richthofen, Ball and Hawker.
Concern about crippling injury, fire and death, whether use of seat belts saved lives and the benefit of riotous parties to relieve tension were common threads in correspondence, journals and dairies. Franz Immelmann, a pilot like his famous brother, pondered ‘was it war we loved or flying’, opting for flying, a sentiment echoed by among others Robin Rowell, Ewart Garland and Tryggve Gran. Manfred von Richthofen likened aerial warfare to the hunting of wild boar, but saw his quarry as an aeroplane, not the man who flew it.
Cecil Lewis agreed: ‘They were simply “the enemy”, their machines had black crosses, and it was our job to bring them down.’ Garland wrote, ‘I would not go so far as to say that flying men on both sides felt less personal antagonism towards their antagonists than, say, footballers in the heat and excitment of play,’ but he held that the term ‘Hun’ was meant to be ‘derogatory not derisory’. In old age, Hervey Rhodes’ memories of his days in action, and one encounter in particular, haunted him. He had intermittent nightmares about the image of a pilot he shot down and the fact that their eyes locked briefly before the German spun away to his death. Dedicating his memoir of the war to British airmen, Algernon Insall added, ‘in some strange way to the memory also of our enemies’. As individuals, British and German aviators had much in common.
The experiences of British airmen who survived the war inevitably varied. William Leefe Robinson, awarded the VC for bringing down the airship at Cuffley in September 1916, had been harshly treated as a PoW and in his weakened state, succumbed to Spanish flu seventeen days after returning to Harrow Weald, Middlesex, where he was buried with full military honours on 3 January 1919. The South African VC, Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor, was killed during an air display at RAF Upavon on 21 June 1921.
Victor Yeates, Sopwith Camel veteran and author of the semi-biographical novel Winged Victory, died in 1934 from tuberculosis, allegedly caused by ‘war strain’ and technically classified as ‘Flying Sickness D’.Yeates himself believed that inhaling gas after a crash upside down in a shell hole on 29 March 1918 brought on his condition. Sefton Brancker, first recipient of the Air Force Cross (AFC) in June 1918, left the RAF in January 1919 to promote civil aviation. He was subsequently gazetted air vice-marshal on the retired list and appointed KCB. Brancker returned to the Air Ministry as director-general of civil aviation in 1922 and eight years later perished in the crash of the experimental civilian R101 airship near Beauvais in France, en route to India.
Some of the First World War participants who remained in the Service would hold influential posts in and after the Second World War. Charles Portal, John Slessor and Sholto Douglas became Marshal of the Royal Air Force; the first two CAS. Arthur Tedder also reached five star rank, was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander to Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Normandy invasion and in 1950 CAS.
Despite having one false leg, the result of amputation following the injury sustained when winning the VC, Freddie West lobbied the former commander in France Sir John Salmond and his squadron commander, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, for support to remain in the RAF. His persistence paid off and he secured a permanent commission. But a desk job was not his aim. Surreptitiously he began to fly again and eventually re-qualified as a pilot. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was in command of No 50 Army Co-operation Wing of Blenheims, which joined the Advanced Striking Force in France, where with characteristic ingenuity West turned a Nelsonian eye on reports that one of his squadrons had arranged to have its washing done at the local brothel.
Invalided home with a perforated ulcer, West recovered to be appointed air attaché to Italy. After its declaration of war in 1940, he took up a similar post in Switzerland, where he became closely involved in assisting Allied servicemen to escape via France to neutral Spain. He left the RAF in 1946 as an air commodore to join the Rank Film Organisation in an executive role and played golf until he was eighty. West counted himself fortunate to have survived two world wars (‘to be old you have to be lucky’), especially as he narrowly avoided death in 1944. His former squadron commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, had been designated Air Officer Comman
ding in the Far East and invited West to be his Senior Air Staff Officer (SASO). West declined on the grounds that he knew nothing about the Far East, knowledge which he considered essential. Leigh-Mallory and his staff were killed when their aeroplane crashed into a Swiss mountain en route to the appointment.
West’s wartime observer, Alec Haslam, secured a permanent commission in the RAF and qualified as a pilot. An accomplished rugby full back, he represented the RAF against the Royal Navy post-war. Professionally, he served in Germany and on the North-West Frontier of India before leaving the RAF as a flight lieutenant in 1927. After completing an engineering degree at Cambridge, he worked for the Aviation Department of the Asiatic Petroleum Company before returning to Cambridge to do research, all the time taking every opportunity to fly. In 1938, Haslam went to the Air Ministry in a reseach capacity before two years later rejoining the RAF as a flight commander at No 18 Operational Training Unit, where he taught Poles to fly the single-engine Fairey Battle bomber. He was soon back at the Air Ministry, investigating engine failure among twin-engine Blenheims on take-off. After spells at the Ministry of Aircraft Production and as SASO to No. 44 Training Group, Gp Capt Alec Haslam finally retired from the RAF in 1945. He returned once more to Cambridge to lecture, before resigning at the age of fifty-three to be ordained as a Church of England clergyman.
Harold Balfour, who had served in the infantry at the Front before transferring to the RFC, left the RAF in 1923 to work as a journalist before entering politics and ultimately becoming Under-Secretary of State for War. Hervey Rhodes would also have a distinguished political career, after one as a successful businessman. Rhodes had recovered sufficiently from the wounds he received on 27 September 1918 to leave King’s College Hospital, London, in February 1921. However, for the rest of his life shrapnel would remain in his body and he would need to wear an uncomfortable leg brace. Aged twenty-five, he had no job and little money. Going back to the only industry he knew, weaving, he set about building up a business by refurbishing a loom discarded on a rubbish tip and fulfilling commissions from firms secured by persistence and hard graft.
Cavalry of the Clouds Page 29