The Courage of the Early Morning

by William Arthur Bishop

  There were good reasons for Bishop’s condition. It was just over forty days since he had first flown across enemy lines as a pilot, and in that time he had fought nearly forty battles. He had watched half a dozen men with whom he lived—with whom he had eaten breakfast the same day—shot down. He himself had destroyed fourteen planes and the men who flew them. He had played hard when he wasn’t fighting—few RFC pilots took more pride than Bishop in the Allied airman’s traditional ability to perform on a minimum of sleep and a maximum of social drinking.

  There was another and less romantic reason for Bishop’s indisposition. Like other Nieuport pilots he suffered chronically from stomach upsets known as “the complaint”—the result of spending several hours a day in an atmosphere partly composed of castor oil fumes.

  When rotary engines like the Le Rhône were first introduced it was discovered that petroleum oils were not suitable because the rotary design caused excessive dilution of oil by gasoline. Castor oil, however, proved to be almost insoluble in gasoline and for this reason it was used in the Le Rhône.

  Jack Scott, who kept a paternal eye on his pilots, recognized the signs of nervous fatigue in Bishop and ordered him to take two weeks leave at the end of the first week of May.

  That was all the tonic Bishop needed. That night he wrote to Margaret: “It will be wonderful to have the feeling that there is really a good chance of living for a few days.” He had five days of flying left before he went on leave, and he made a secret resolve to bring his score up to twenty before he left for England. On May 2 his flight escorted a covey of photo-reconnaissance planes into enemy territory without resistance.

  It was not until they were on their way home that Bishop sighted what appeared to be the only German machine in the sky that day. With a wave of his arm he signalled Fry to take over the patrol, and dived to the attack. But the German pilot saw him in time to get out of range.

  Bishop was climbing to rejoin the patrol when he saw five two-seater machines across the Drocourt-Quéant Switch. He turned in their direction and closed the gap without being observed. As usual the reconnaissance machines were flying in line. Bishop singled out the rear one and attacked from underneath in the “blind spot” where neither the pilot nor observer could see him. He was twenty yards away when he fired his first burst, and no more than five yards from the enemy when he pressed the button again. The second burst killed both the pilot and observer. The machine spun down with the engine full on and buried itself nose first in a field near Monchy-le-Preux.

  As he climbed away he heard the rattle of machine-gun fire underneath him. Bullets ripped through the fabric of his wings. He banked steeply and saw that one of the two-seaters had manoeuvred into position to give its observer a good shot at him. Bishop tilted his Nieuport, got the gunner into his sights, and opened fire at twenty yards. His bullets struck the side of the German machine but missed the observer. Another burst struck the engine. The enemy plane plunged down, trailing smoke, but Bishop was forced to break off his attack as three Albatros scouts suddenly appeared above him. With his ammunition nearly spent, Bishop decided to be content with his two victories. With a quick half-roll onto his back he dived west with the throttle wide open, levelling off at reduced speed once he had crossed the lines, and twenty minutes later landed at Filescamp Farm.

  His double kill banished his fatigue. Half an hour later with his plane refuelled and with fresh drums of ammunition aboard, he was back in the air again. On that flight and on another sortie that afternoon Bishop got into seven fights, four of them while doing “lone stuff.”

  These are Bishop’s official reports of the first afternoon flight:

  (1) At 12.15 east of Lens at 8,000 feet I attacked two hostile aircraft doing artillery-observation, firing twenty rounds into one. They then escaped. Watching five minutes later I saw only one H.A. there, the other evidently having been forced to land.

  (2) At 12.15 east of Monchy at 6,000 feet I attacked two H.A. doing Art-Obs [Artillery Observation] but only succeeded in driving them away.

  (3) At 12.40 over Monchy at 9,000 feet I attacked from underneath a two-seater returning from our lines; I fired a whole drum into him but there was no apparent result.

  (4) At 1.05 over Pelves I attacked the same aircraft as in (2) and fired a drum at one of them from long range. No apparent result. I returned to the aerodrome as I had no more ammunition.

  After lunch Bishop stretched out for a rest and was annoyed to find when he awoke that he had slept “all the way to tea time.”

  Fry, as deputy leader of C Flight, offered to take the evening O.P., but Bishop insisted on leading it himself. For the fourth time that day C Flight took to the air. The five Nieuports climbed towards the Drocourt-Quéant Switch. It was a beautiful evening for flying. From Drocourt at twelve thousand feet the pilots could see the glistening dark-gold Channel, and beyond it the coast of England. Below the checkerboard pattern of what had been farm fields in peacetime was slashed by zigzag lines that were the trenches.

  Two Albatros scouts abruptly intruded into the pleasant scene, the sun glinting on their red wings. Bishop and Fry dived, Bishop taking the rear machine. But his shooting was at long range and ineffectual. Then his gun jammed. He pulled at the toggle furiously and freed it just as an Albatros closed in on his tail.

  He banked in a turn to the right and the Albatros overshot. At once Bishop banked to the left, dived and pulled up underneath the enemy plane. He fired twenty rounds wide of the mark and the German nosed down swiftly out of his reach. Even with the throttle pushed all the way forward his Nieuport couldn’t match the Albatros’s speed.

  The patrol had split up in the fight and Bishop now found himself alone. But not for long. As he peered into the sun, he caught a flash, the reflection of a wingtip, and in a moment another Albatros fired at him. Bishop turned left and climbed, the Albatros shot by him, and with a quick manoeuvre he dropped back under its tail. But the speed of the Albatros took it out of effective range of Bishop’s long bursts. Bishop cursed the comparative slowness of the Nieu-port as he flew north toward Drocourt, changing ammunition drums as he went. His search for the rest of his patrol was interrupted by a mêlée of airplanes several thousand feet below. He hurried to join the fight.

  Six Albatros scouts were attacking a trio of lumbering British observation planes. Bishop’s attack dispersed the German fighters and they stayed out of effectual range. Bishop continued to fire in the general direction of the Albatros scouts to prevent further attack on the reconnaissance planes. He circled over them for fifteen minutes. No enemy scouts returned, and when the two-seaters finished their job Bishop escorted them back across the lines.

  The sun was beginning to set as Bishop touched down at Filescamp Farm, but that was no excuse for his unusually clumsy landing. Bourne looked disgustedly after Bishop as he jauntily walked away from his machine to the mess. “An hour’s work,” he muttered, examining two damaged wheels.

  The rest of the patrol had returned, safe and triumphant. Fry and Horn had each shot down an enemy machine. Bishop was delighted at the news; the achievements of his Flight meant almost as much to him as his own success. In any case he had accounted for two enemy planes himself that morning, and during the day had engaged a total of twenty-three German aircraft.

  TEN

  A PLAN

  IS HATCHED

  IN THE MESS that night, the pilots of 60 Squadron were entertained by a troupe of professional performers from the London variety stage, who were touring the battlefields as part of an Army Service Corps program to maintain the morale of British fighting men. The presence of a bevy of pretty and merry young girls certainly had that effect on the battle-weary pilots of 60 Squadron. When the party broke up a couple of hours before dawn a few more purple garters had been added to the growing collection on the walls of the mess.

  Unfortunately for C Flight it was its turn to take the dawn patrol. Bishop and his men, operating under the handicap of monumental hangovers,
were grateful for once that the only incident of the patrol was an indecisive skirmish with a flight of five enemy scouts. But there was one thing about the enemy group that caused the weary eyes of the RFC pilots to open wide in astonishment: leading the four red Albatros planes was a silver Nieuport—with the black crosses of the German air force painted on its sides. At first they thought it must be a Nieuport the Germans had captured and adorned with their own insignia. Later they learned that the “Nieuport” was the first model of a new German machine, a Siemens-Schuckert, a faithful copy of the Nieuport in almost every detail.

  Twice more that morning Bishop led the flight on uneventful patrols. At lunch Jack Scott had welcome news. The all-out effort was over. “Only one or two jobs a day for a while. The colonel has decided to give us a slight rest.”

  For the first afternoon in two weeks Bishop did no flying. He decided to spend it at target practice—lately he had been dissatisfied with his aim. But Jack Scott persuaded him to take a drive up to the line to “see the war.”

  From the air Monchy-le-Preux was merely a dark spot between the Scarpe and the Cojeul rivers. At ground level it was a shocking sight to Scott and Bishop, a dead ruin of jagged remnants of buildings and streets deep in rubble. The only indication that peaceful people had once lived there was a lone building, a tavern, that somehow still stood intact and defiant. On its wall was a huge faded poster proclaiming the virtues of Aperitif Byrrh.

  Monchy had seen the fiercest fighting of the spring push. The British infantry was still clearing the town. The dead lay everywhere. On the side of a road the two airmen came upon the body of a German soldier unceremoniously propped up against an abandoned cart, still fully dressed in battle regalia—greatcoat, bucket helmet and a rifle clutched in one hand. Bishop nudged Scott: “What a trophy!” he said. “If we take him back it will prove to the mess that we were really at the front.”

  Before Scott could react to the ghoulish suggestion, shells whined and burst all about them. The Germans were laying down a barrage. Bishop and Scott took cover in the nearest dugout. For an hour and a half they did not dare move from the shelter as shells whistled overhead, some exploding not more than fifty yards away. When the barrage ended they agreed that they had seen enough of the war from the soldier’s viewpoint and hastily returned to their car.

  “You’re a bloodthirsty one, Bish,” Scott said as they drove back along the narrow road to Arras, “wanting to haul that body back.”

  Bishop retorted, “I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.” But Scott’s distaste for the idea made Bishop aware of his own callousness. He had been completely unmoved by the lifeless form of the German soldier. It was to him simply an enemy who was dead—the best condition for an enemy.

  “I sometimes wonder if you will approve of the bloodthirsty streak that has appeared in me this last few weeks,” he wrote to Margaret. “I simply can’t help it. I detest the Huns and they have done in so many of my best friends; I hate them with all my heart.”

  But this feeling of bitterness was not deep-seated. It was a mood that came upon him when he was depressed and brooded on the friends he had seen shot down. Usually he respected the tradition of chivalry among the airmen of both sides. Germany’s first great ace, Max Immelmann, had been known to break off a fight when he saw his adversary was wounded. When Oswald Boelcke, the German ace, was killed in October 1916, British airmen flew over Cambrai where the funeral was held and dropped wreaths inscribed: “To the officers of the German Flying Corps in service at the front: We hope you will find the wreath but we are sorry it is late in landing. Weather has prevented us from sending it earlier. We mourn with his friends and relatives. We all recognize his bravery.”

  Similarly the Germans paid their respects when Major Lance George Hawker, one of the first British airmen to win the Victoria Cross, was killed in a fight with Richthofen. The Baron himself dropped a message behind the British lines expressing the wide admiration of German airmen for him as “an exceptionally brave airmen and a chivalrous foe.”

  “We have a wonderful arrangement with the German Flying Corps,” Bishop wrote his mother. “If a machine goes down behind the German lines, as soon as possible a German machine will come back and drop a message telling whether the pilot is killed or wounded and how badly. We do the same for them.”

  The reality of this spirit was illustrated that night at Filescamp Farm. A German oberleutnant who had lost his way was shot down by Fry close to the aerodrome. He was taken prisoner and escorted to 60 Squadron officer’s mess. There he was royally entertained, served copious quantities of champagne, and although he spoke no English, and Bishop and his comrades were reduced to classroom phrases of “Mein Herr” and “Ja wohl,” the fallen enemy joined whole-heartedly in the festivities. Ruefully he showed his captors a pair of tickets for a show in Cambrai that very night. Some m’am-selle in that city would not be guilty of consorting with the enemy, at least on this occasion. Sixty Squadron and their captive both seemed sorry when a British army squad came to take the German pilot away. Fry, as his conqueror, promised to drop a message over the German’s aerodrome announcing that he was unhurt.

  At one o’clock Bishop and Fry, who had returned from his errand, were having lunch when Jack Scott hobbled into the mess dining hall.

  “Just got a phone call,” he said, “couple of Huns over Monchy shooting things up. Off you go, you two, and chase them off.”

  In a few minutes Bishop and Fry were over the ridge at twelve thousand feet. They spotted a pair of two-seaters in the distance. The Germans saw the two Nieuports and went into a shallow dive towards Vitry. Bishop and Fry gave chase with engines under full power. From fifty yards away, both opened fire on the rear plane. The observer’s gun went silent. One more short burst from Bishop and the enemy machine nosed over, performed a weird cartwheel and crashed in a field. The Nieuports now turned their attention to the second enemy machine, but it had fled far out of range.

  Bishop and Fry returned to the aerodrome to resume their interrupted lunch. Bishop took a mouthful of mutton. “This meat is cold,” he complained. “We weren’t gone that long.”

  The brief encounter brought Bishop’s score up to seventeen. With less than three days left before he went on leave, he spent as much as five hours a day in the air. For the first time since he had joined 60 Squadron, there wasn’t an enemy plane to be seen for two days in a row.

  On the evening of May 6, when Bishop returned from the last O.P. of the day, a strange dark-green single-seater plane was parked on the Filescamp field. It was the latest British fighter, the S.E. 5 (Scout Experimental). It was longer and heavier than the Nieuport and reputed to be much faster. The new plane was equipped with a Hispano engine, which was stationary and liquid-cooled. What interested Bishop particularly was the plane’s two guns—a Lewis mounted on top over the wing like the Nieuport, and a Vickers over the engine cowling in front of the pilot. The important difference between these two guns was that the Vickers was belt-fed, the Lewis drum-fed.

  The pilot of the S.E. 5 was waiting for Bishop in the mess, a short dark-haired man who carried neither goggles nor flying helmet. Bishop recognized him at once—Albert Ball, the highest scoring British pilot. Ball had flown over from his own aerodrome at Vert Galand, twenty miles south of Filescamp, especially to talk to the young Canadian. Ball hoped to enlist him as his partner in a daring scheme.

  Bishop, sipping a brandy and soda, listened with mounting fascination as Ball, who had waved off the offer of a drink, unfolded his plan: “It’s occurred to me that it’s awfully inefficient always to wait until enemy planes are in the air to attempt to destroy them. My idea is to pull off an attack—you and I, on the aerodromes around Douai. We’d go at first light, when the Hun planes are out of the hangars and being prepared for takeoff. It’s never been done before so the surprise element should let us get away with it—I think. I’ve been hearing quite a bit about what you’ve been doing lately and you’re the chap I’d like to have alo
ng.”

  It was a long speech for Ball, usually a man of few words. Ball was introspective and deeply religious, but in aerial combat he was a coldly calculating and ruthless enemy. After shooting down a plane (he was officially credited with forty-three but the total was probably much higher) he used to retire to his hut and play mournful airs on his violin for hours. Sometimes he could not sleep for the agonizing memory of killing his fellow men, and he would emerge in pyjamas and walk in a circle around a flare on the aerodrome, playing the violin as if performing some weird religious rite.

  By coincidence, Ball and Bishop devised identical battle tactics. The official history of the RFC in World War I relates: “Ball relied above all on the surprise that comes of daring. He would, single handed, fly straight into a formation, throw it into confusion, shoot one or two opponents down, and be away before the others had time to recover. A few pilots exceeded his score, but none achieved his successes with such calculated indifference to the odds against him.” Like Bishop also, Ball did not wear goggles in the air. Both men were convinced that their shooting was more accurate without goggles.

  That night in 60 Squadron’s mess Bishop eagerly agreed to Ball’s proposal. They would draw up final plans when he returned from leave. “I wish I had an S.E. 5 like yours, though,” said Bishop.

  “Don’t,” said Ball. “I’d prefer a Nieuport any day. The S.E. isn’t as hot as it looks. Too heavy, doesn’t get up as quickly, and its extra speed never got off the designer’s blueprints.”