Long Flight Home

by Lainie Anderson

The Boys’ Brigade movement had its origins in 1883, when a Scot by the name of William Smith started the first group to motivate his Sunday school students with training drills. He believed that by challenging them physically and mentally, he could help them thrive in all areas of their lives.

  CHAPTER 3

  Because there’s no cover in the desert, we taught the horses to lie down in front of us for protection.

  Wally’s horse Bobby is fictional. According to the Australian Light Horse Studies Centre, the 4th Light Horse Brigade actually shipped to Egypt without horses. There would have been a surplus of mounts in Egypt because all the Light Horse boys who served in Gallipoli had to leave their horses behind. I learned about horses being trained to lie down and shield soldiers in a newspaper article on Susan Brocker, author of Brave Bess and the ANZAC Horses: A true story of courage and loyalty.

  CHAPTER 4

  During the evacuation in December 1915, the last soldiers were ordered to wear socks and old rags on their feet so the Turks wouldn’t hear them leaving.

  This was one of many strategies used to successfully evacuate thousands of troops without casualty. Digitised letters held in the Australian War Memorial collection show it’s also true that soldiers felt troubled by leaving their dead mates behind on the peninsula.

  I told the recruiter bits and pieces that I knew … the fact we were the only country in the British Empire to demand its own separate Flying Corps in the war.

  In Australian Flying Corps, Ian Hodges explores why Australia was alone among the British dominions to establish its own Flying Corps in World War I. ‘On such a vast but sparsely populated continent aviation’s potential was obvious and the idea of using aircraft to help in the country’s defence appealed to many military and political figures.’ In Fire in the Sky: The Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, Michael Molkentin explains that until January 1918, No. 1 Squadron AFC was officially named No. 67 (Australian) Squadron, Royal Flying Corps. (I refer to it as No. 1 Squadron throughout for simplicity’s sake.) ‘The British would supply the higher command, organisation and equipment. The Australians only needed to send pilots and ground crews.’

  ‘It’s remarkable, the number of men who mention horses the first time they get up close to a plane … It’s no accident that we’re recruiting cavalrymen from the Light Horse.’

  Official war historian F.M. Cutlack noted this in The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War 1914—1918. ‘Both Britain and Germany found that the best raw material for the making of an air pilot was the accomplished horseman. The demand for good heart, good hands, and a quick eye is the same in each case.’

  I’ve been seeing quite a bit of John of late—we’re working together on the conscription committee.

  Press clippings and a 1951 obituary in the Narrandera Argus show Helena was ‘associated with a number of patriotic bodies’ during the war. She served on the local ladies’ branch of the National Referendum Committee to generate support for conscription, raised money for the Red Cross and worked on campaigns to support soldiers’ wives and children.

  Fred would be in France by now—we’re hoping for a letter any day to hear he’s safe and settling in as well as can be expected.

  Frederick William Albert Alford’s service records show he embarked at Sydney with the 6/55th Battalion on October 7th 1916. Throughout 1917 (and until he suffered gunshot wounds to his left arm, breast and leg in late 1918) his service records show he was in and out of the trenches in France, either wounded in action or suffering from trench fever or ‘gassed’. He was twice hospitalised for a lengthy period after being listed as ‘absent from duty … V.D.’. Venereal disease was common among troops both overseas and in Australia, and without antibiotics was basically incurable. As Peter Stanley explains in The Crying Years: Australia’s Great War, VD ‘put out of commission hundreds of soldiers at any time, and about a fifth of the force through the war’. A 1929 obituary in the Narrandera Argus shows Fred returned from war ‘practically deprived of the use of one of his arms’. He married after moving to Sydney, and died at the age of 38 ‘after an illness of only a few days’.

  CHAPTER 5

  My seat was a wooden crate, but the table had a white cloth on it, and there were candlesticks wedged into old wine bottles.

  Though it’s unlikely that the ranks’ mess would have had candlesticks, Australian airmen were apparently particularly proud of their mess arrangements. In Aces and Kings, Les Sutherland wrote that No. 1 Squadron’s alcohol-fuelled mess nights were extremely popular with all units. ‘In furniture, ours was an excellent show—for a war mess. Souveniring had helped considerably, but the pride of the mess and of the ante-rooms were the home-made settees and arm-chairs, made by members of the mess out of sandbags.’

  Egyptian labour crews put ’em up mostly, but I once saw a pilot attach the canvas to the back of his plane and fly the covering right over the frame.

  I heard this anecdote while interviewing the late Chas Schaedel, a South Australian historian who did a tremendous amount of research on our early wartime aviators. Chas was careful to say he’d heard the anecdote only once, and he couldn’t corroborate it, but I loved the story so much I had to use it.

  ‘But let’s not chance it, eh? We’ll be in all sorts of trouble if Dicky hears we’re not in the trench.’

  ‘Dicky’ was how the men of No. 1 Squadron referred to their Flight Commander Richard Williams. In Aces and Kings, Les Sutherland writes: ‘Dicky was an unusual chap. He did not smoke, swear or drink. His most dashing expletive was “darn me!” … Also, his sense of humour was markedly under-developed.’ For all that, Sutherland also notes that Williams was ‘the soul of fairness’. ‘Dicky was not only popular, but he was also deeply respected throughout his squadron.’ Born in the South Australian town of Moonta, Williams was the first military pilot trained in Australia and is widely regarded as the father of the Royal Australian Air Force.

  One in six British and dominion airmen died, making their odds of surviving even worse than a soldier in the trenches.

  In Fire in the Sky, Michael Molkentin notes that ‘flying corps squadrons suffered the highest casualty rates of any service in the British Army during World War I. In No. 4 Squadron, an airman was killed or wounded every week on average’. In Flight: 100 Years of Aviation, R.G. Grant notes that British-trained pilots arriving on the Western Front in 1917 had an average life expectancy of a little over a fortnight.

  ‘I stowed away on a ship as a kid,’ Benny said.

  On the 13th March 1909, Melbourne’s Age newspaper reported a 15-year-old boy by the name of James Mallett Bennett was missing from his Hawthorn home. It noted that ‘ships had a strong attraction for him’. Subsequent reports—including an interview with his sister Brenda in the wake of Jim Bennett’s death in 1922—reveal he’d stowed away on a ship to Fremantle in a bid to get out of his apprenticeship with printing firm Sands and McDougall.

  CHAPTER 6

  I stood to leave and noticed another bloke just up the beach … I’d met him briefly earlier in the year with some Light Horse boys passing through Kantara. Ross Smith was his name.

  On the issue of Wally’s relationship with Ross, everything I’ve read (with one exception) suggests they shared a mutual professional respect. The only time I’ve seen it suggested they didn’t get along was an interview with former No. 1 Squadron observer George Mills, who was interviewed late in life for The 14—18 Journal, published by the Australian Society of World War 1 Aero Historians in 1968. In that interview Mills said Wally had been serving as his batman (or servant) and initially did not take to Ross. Service records show that Mills and Wally did join the AFC on the same day, but there’s no record to suggest Wally was serving as his batman. At any rate, by war’s end Wally was working with Benny on the giant Handley Page flown by Ross, and invited on the flight down to India. In a private letter to Biffy Borton (after the race), held in the A. Grenfell Price collection in the State Lib
rary of South Australia, Ross wrote: ‘We had practically no engine trouble at all thanks to Bennett & Shiers. They were really wonderful & I’m seeing that they get their fair share of any credit that is due to us.’ In speech notes for a touring moving picture show in 1920, now held at the National Library of Australia, Wally wrote that Ross Smith was ‘our gallant leader, one of the world’s foremost airmen and a great Australian’.

  There was a tattoo of a butterfly on his upper left arm. I wondered why he had it.

  According to Ross Smith’s enlistment papers from 1914, one of his ‘distinctive marks’ was a tattoo of a butterfly crest on his left arm (and another was an appendicitis scar).

  By Christmas Eve 1917 we’d endured three days of determined drizzle.

  The fierce pre-Christmas storm in which an officer died and No. 1 Squadron aircraft were destroyed did actually happen, as highlighted in the book One Airman’s War: Aircraft Mechanic Joe Bull’s personal diaries 1916—1919, edited by Mark Lax. I invented Wally’s plan to use their body weight to anchor the planes, as a precursor to the true event in the air race when Indian cavalrymen held down the Vimy in a raging sandstorm in Ramadie.

  CHAPTER 7

  Captain Ross Smith. He was fearless in his Bristol Fighter that final year of the war … He was the most decent man I ever met, but he wasn’t above the thrill of killing.

  The Australian War Memorial lists Ross Smith as Australia’s most decorated airman of World War I. By war’s end he’d been awarded the Military Cross twice and the Distinguished Flying Cross three times. In the official history of Australian air operations in World War I, F.M. Cutlack wrote that ‘there was probably no better example of what a fighting pilot should be than the Australian, Ross Smith’.

  In letters home to his mother, which have been digitised and transcribed by the State Library of South Australia, Ross had no qualms about killing the enemy. ‘We are taught to believe that vengeance belongs to the Lord I know, but ever since Colin went I’ve felt like killing every Turk I see,’ he wrote. ‘That’s also why I want to meet a few Huns. You’ll think me very bloodthirsty Maw but I can’t help it, it must be some of your Highland blood I think.’ He did, however, believe there was a certain nobility among pilots. Towards the end of the war, Ross won a Distinguished Flying Cross for bringing down an enemy two-seater, before landing beside it, shooting over the heads of the airmen to scare them off and setting the plane alight.

  ‘Takes you up to his rank when he’s speaking to you, if you know what I mean? Maybe because he started out at the bottom like the rest of us.’

  Ross Smith did start out at the bottom, but he wasn’t there very long. He enlisted as a private with the 3rd Light Horse Regiment in Adelaide in August 1914, and within two months was promoted to sergeant. He landed on Gallipoli in May 1915, and by October had been invalided to England with scarlet fever. (On the back of his medical evacuation certificate, now held in the Sir Keith Macpherson Smith collection in the Barr Smith Library at the University of Adelaide, Ross wrote: ‘My ticket when I left Anzac. RS.’) After returning to Egypt he served with the 1st Light Horse Brigade, 1st Machine-Gun Squadron, including in the battle of Romani in August 1916. By the time he joined the AFC as an observer in late 1916, he held the rank of lieutenant.

  Joe Bull’s angry blisters coincided with the formation of a special British air detachment, called ‘X Flight, RAF’ formed to work in the desert with Colonel Lawrence and his Arabs.

  Wally and Jim’s service records show they were both part of this ‘special air detachment’, which is detailed in F.M. Cutlack’s official war record: The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War 1914—1918.

  Within an hour we got word from a recco crew that a massive column of Turks was trying to retreat through the narrow Wadi Fara gorge towards the Jordan River.

  This two-day bombing campaign is well-documented, including a first-hand account by No. 1 Squadron pilot Lieutenant L.W. ‘Les’ Sutherland in his book Aces and Kings. Lieutenant Sutherland wrote that the assault on fleeing Turkish troops ‘was the kind of stunt that every red-blooded flying man longed for; an open go for guns and bombs; a chance to revenge fallen comrades; an opportunity to thrash the enemy into defeat’. Sutherland also wrote that ‘it was not so much war as cold-blooded, scientific butchery. I feel sick even now when I think of it’. Many World War I airmen wrote of vomiting after killing ground troops, however the scene here involving Les Sutherland is fictional.

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘Chivas Regal, sir,’ he said. ‘Compliments of Brigadier-General Borton. Enjoy your evening at the Bengal Club.’

  There are conflicting reports about whether Ross, Biffy and the mechanics learned about the air race when they were in Singapore or India. Interviewed in later years, Wally and Biffy both said it was Singapore. And given the race was announced by the Australian government in March 1919, they could well have heard the news during those months of travelling by ship to scout possible landing sites between Calcutta and Timor (with Ross and Biffy deciding nevertheless to continue with their plans to fly the Handley Page down to Australia from India). In 14,000 Miles through the Air, now republished by Wakefield Press as Flight to Fame, Ross wrote that he heard the news in India. I’ve chosen this version because it fits with the timing of the Handley Page being destroyed on the North West Frontier (and the three Aussies being seconded to fight with No. 31 Squadron RAF at Risalpur—as shown on their service records). It also fits with the men immediately jumping on the next ship to get back to England, which is what I think Ross would have done. And I must admit, for the purposes of writing this story, India works better as a full point on that year between the Armistice and the race.

  I’ve been up all night having a high old time in East Street—the party is still going on over there.

  In Narrandera Shire, Bill Gammage explains how an Argus journalist convinced a friend at the post office to intercept and decode any telegram carrying news of the Armistice, and then arranged to tell the mayor. ‘On the night of 11 November, district people thus heard earlier than most Australians that the long years were over. The mayor said it was too bloody late to start celebrating, but church and fire bells were ringing, railway sirens sounding, skyrockets sailing into the air, and people crowding into East Street … All that night people rejoiced, and next day shops and offices stayed closed to let them continue.’

  Mr McCaughey from North Yanco Station made the funniest speech. He said the plane he donated to your No. 1 Squadron was court-martialled for cowardice for continually breaking down when approaching the enemy!

  A number of Australian individuals and groups raised private funds or simply bought military aircraft for the new Australian Flying Corps squadrons. As Bill Gammage explains in Narrandera Shire, Sam McCaughey was a wealthy pastoralist and one of the most patriotic philanthropists in the district, donating £500,000 to the war effort in 1914 alone. ‘McCaughey’s plane was a “perverse devil” which kept breaking down, especially when approaching the enemy, for which it was solemnly court-martialled for cowardice by No. 1 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps,’ Gammage writes. ‘On 20 January 1918 its engines stopped over Turkish lines in Palestine, and its crew burnt it before being captured.’

  Brigadier-General Amyas Borton was the very picture of a charming British gentleman.

  Les Sutherland writes a beautiful summary of Biffy: ‘He was good to the eye, was Biffy; and good to the ear; and to the soldier’s heart. With his easy, straight-backed carriage, set off by a perfect tunic; with breeches cut as only an English cutter can cut, and field boots that would grace a field marshal, he looked the perfect gentleman-soldier. His voice was the kind one would have expected of him, although it sounded rather “what-whatish” until we got used to it. But when he used to refer to us as “my Australians”, and said it in a way which meant “and I’m damn proud of ’em”, we were Biffy’s to a man.’

  Biffy’s father, who we know as the Colonel, kept a co
mprehensive diary during World War I that included his own day-to-day activities, newspaper clippings and letters from his two sons (the other being Lieutenant Colonel Arthur ‘Bosky’ Borton who was awarded a Victoria Cross for bravery in Palestine in 1917). In 1973, Biffy’s step-grandson Guy Slater edited the diaries into the book My Warrior Sons, which provides a terrific insight into the family and the war. Slater, who remembers the formal dining arrangements that endured at Cheveney well past World War II, kindly gave me some additional insights into the family home and also his blessing to use my own creative licence where necessary.

  ‘Lads, you won’t believe this, but our government has announced an air race from England to Australia.’

  On March 19th 1919, Adelaide’s Observer newspaper recorded the news with a small article on page 36:

  COMMONWEALTH PRIZE OF £10,000.

  MELBOURNE, March 19.

  The Acting Prime Minister (Mr. Watt) announced to-day that with a view to stimulating aerial activity the Commonwealth Government had decided to offer a prize of £10.000 for the first successful flight to Australia from Great Britain on a machine manned by Australians.

  Secret cablegrams held in the Australian Archives (copies of which are held in the National Library of Australia) show Prime Minister Billy Hughes first proposed a race from Paris a month earlier, on 18 February: ‘Australian Aviators are desirous of attempting flight London to Australia in Handley-Page machine,’ the cablegram states. ‘They are all first class men and very keen … In view of existing possibilities and advantages aerial communication between Australia and Europe, it would be a great advertisement for Australia and concentrate eyes of world on us if flight was undertaken.’

  ‘Alcock and Brown received £10,000 in prize money for their first flight across the Atlantic in June. Must be the going rate.’