The Courage of the Early Morning

by William Arthur Bishop

  On June 29 the moderately good weather came to an end and rain, mist and heavy low clouds made flying impossible. As usual on such occasions, a sort of wet-weather madness seized the occupants of Filescamp Farm. The protesting farmyard animals were seized and painted in assorted colours, and the largest pigs were smuggled into comrades’ sleeping quarters.

  The well-decorated mess at Filescamp Farm was as much of a “home away from home” as anyone on the Western Front could ask for. On the east wall, which was covered with brown canvas, Old Young had practised his artistic skill by sketching life-sized figures of the alluring m’amselles from the French magazine La Vie Parisienne in charcoal. And to further overcome otherwise Spartan surroundings, there was a large fireplace at the south end with a two-foot railing supporting a padded seat around it. And the bar, ably attended by one Corporal Dayne, was open at all times. It was an ideal arena for comfort or frolic.

  As the bad weather continued the pastimes in the mess became increasingly violent. The gramophone endlessly ground out the hit tunes from “Chu Chin Chow,” the musical that had become as much part of life in wartime London as air raids and rationing. Bishop endured “Chu Chin Chow” for three days and nights and then, in desperation, invented a new game: smashing gramophone records over the nearest head. Everyone joined in willingly and the game soon had to be suspended for lack of ammunition.

  The rain persisted, and the mess games became even more destructive. There was a nightly uniform-tearing contest. The rules were simple: the aggressor sneaked up behind his victim, grasped his collar firmly, gripped the flange of the uniform coat, and ripped the garment neatly up the back seam. The only members of 60 Squadron who were less than enthusiastic about the game were the officers’ batmen who were required to work overtime mending the ripped jackets.

  Old Young’s garments suffered irreparably. He insisted on wearing the tartan trews of his erstwhile Highland regiment as part of a colourful but unauthorized flying uniform, and those plaid trousers—or portions thereof—became coveted prizes of the game. (When flying weather returned Young had to go into battle in his tennis flannels for several weeks until replacements arrived from a London military tailor.)

  On a murky afternoon toward the end of the week of foul weather the occupants of Filescamp Farm heard the drone of a plane overhead and all hands hurried outside. Perhaps the Germans, knowing that all the Allied machines were grounded, were staging a hazardous surprise raid in retaliation for Bishop’s recent stunt. But the plane that dropped hesitantly through the overcast bore French markings. The pilot landed smoothly.

  He explained that he had taken off from his own aerodrome with the intention of flying around for a few minutes at low altitude to test repairs to the plane’s controls which had been damaged by anti-aircraft fire during a patrol the previous week. But the clouds had descended and swallowed his plane, and soon he became hopelessly lost. He had flown around aimlessly for hours, seeking a break in the clouds. Then with fuel running low he had been forced to come down and take a chance on finding a reasonably level place for his forced landing. By merest chance he had emerged directly over the Filescamp aerodrome.

  The French pilot was ceremoniously conducted to 60 Squadron’s mess and established as guest of honour of a riotous party. He was introduced to—and thoroughly approved—the squadron custom of pouring part of each bottle of champagne into the mess piano’s works “to improve the tone. ”With the instrument thus lubricated, the assembled pilots serenaded their guest with the squadron’s favourite toast, a somewhat lugubrious ballad rendered to the tune of “The Lost Chord”:

  We meet neath the sounding rafters,

  The walls around us are bare;

  They echo the peals of laughter—

  It seems that the dead are there.

  So, stand by your glasses steady,

  This is a world of lies.

  Here’s a toast to the dead already;

  Hurrah for the next man who dies.

  Cut off from the land that bore us,

  Betrayed by the land that we find,

  The good men have gone before us,

  And only the dull left behind.

  So, stand by your glasses steady

  This world is a web of lies;

  Then here’s to the dead already,

  And hurrah for the next man who dies.

  More champagne, and suddenly the “game” erupted. Bishop selected the French officer for the ceremony, whereupon the latter cheerfully but firmly declared that the honour of his country’s uniform had been despoiled, and challenged Bishop to a duel in the form of a flying contest. Everyone trooped on to the field and, the French pilot’s plane having been refuelled, he and Bishop took off into the early dusk. Each tried to outdo the other in a series of wild manoeuvres which were all the more hazardous because they had to stay within a couple of hundred feet of the ground for fear of losing their way in the low clouds—as the Frenchman had done once before that day. The latter climaxed his performance by scraping a wingtip through the grass of the field, but even he admitted that Bishop outdid him by rolling his wheels on the roof of the mess building as he came in for his landing. Honour having been satisfied, the squadron repaired to the mess to resume the party.

  One of the more disciplined pastimes in 60 Squadron mess was a ritual instituted by Jack Scott: that of speech-making at dinner. Each night one of the pilots would be called upon to give a peroration on anything, from his current combat experiences to his latest adventures in Amiens. Scott (who at this time was still on leave) regarded speech-making as part of moulding a man’s character. Serious though this intention was, the inevitable highjinks became a part of the ceremony. If a speech was poor or dull or pompous, it was celebrated with a derisive round of jeers, and a shower of buns, cutlery, and even plates when the occasion seemed warranted, all of which were aimed at the errant orator of the evening.

  Jack Scott returned from leave just in time for the resumption of combat flying with the return of good weather, at the end of the first week of July, 1917. He brought Bishop word from London that Lord Beaverbrook was increasing his pressure on the government to form a separate Canadian air force. Scott also reported what was good news for himself, bad news for 60 Squadron: he was to be promoted to command an RFC wing. In one way it was bad news for Scott too. With his new and increased responsibilities as wing commander his flying days would be over.

  As leader of a squadron Scott was under orders to confine himself to test and “recreational” flights on his own side of the front lines. General Higgins had to try to suggest diplomatically, because Scott’s legs were severely crippled, that he refrain from all flying. But Scott ignored both the order and the suggestion, and from time to time he joined one of his flights, either as an extra man or to replace a regular pilot who might be ill, injured or on leave. No matter how many fights he got into he always logged his flights as “recreation” so that on several occasions pilots received full credit for victories to which Scott had contributed.

  As a leader Scott was bold and aggressive, but as a fighter pilot he lacked blood lust, the killer instinct. On one “recreation” sortie with Bishop, Scott manoeuvred a German Albatros directly into his gunsight, but did not fire, and the enemy escaped. Afterward Bishop asked him:

  “Why didn’t you shoot? You had him cold.”

  Scott grinned. “I was interested in his head.”

  “In his head?”

  “Before the war I studied in Germany, and I’m interested in Germans—anthropologically, I mean. You know, I’d swear that pilot was a Bavarian.”

  Now that Jack Scott had only a week or two left with 60 Squadron he joined one or more patrols every day. A little after eight o’clock on the evening of July 10 the klaxon horn at Filescamp blared. The observer corps had reported that twelve German planes were attacking ground forces near Monchy-le-Preux. Bishop and Soden, a new arrival at the squadron, who was nicknamed “Mongoose,” were playing tennis with two other
pilots. They dropped their racquets and scrambled for their planes, wearing flannels and tennis shoes.

  Scott, who had been watching the match from the comfort of a deck chair, grabbed his canes and hobbled out to his Nieuport, shouting to Bishop that he was joining them. Five planes took off in no semblance of order, then closed into formation at a thousand feet. They reached Monchy just as the enemy planes were turning for home. In a moment seventeen planes were swirling around in a vicious dogfight perilously close to earth. Bishop singled out one of the green enemy scouts and had sighted on the head of the pilot when a burst of machine-gun bullets tore into his own fuselage just behind him. He turned on his attacker, only to have another Albatros pounce on him from the other side. He was trapped. But before the German pilot could open fire a Nieuport dived out of nowhere and set his plane afire with a stream of tracer bullets. As the plane that had rescued him flashed by, Bishop recognized the grinning pilot as his squadron commander.

  “Thank God the Hun pilot wasn’t a Bavarian,” Bishop muttered to himself. Another Albatros dived at him and bullets ripped into the Nieuport’s tail. Bishop pulled straight up and as the German flashed under him he pushed the stick over and went into a rough stall turn that put his Nieuport directly behind the Albatros. Bishop had a dead shot. His burst ripped the German’s fuselage apart. It fell, streaming smoke and shedding splintered wood and torn fabric. That ended the fight. The remaining Germans scattered, using their superior speed to outdistance the Nieuports.

  When Bishop landed at Filescamp, Scott’s plane was already on the ground and he hurried to the mess to thank him for saving his life. Scott wasn’t there, and Caldwell had bad news: Scott had been wounded in the arm and the same burst had badly damaged his motor. Scott, becoming increasingly weak from loss of blood, had barely been able to coax the sputtering machine back to Files-camp. Mechanics had pulled him from the cockpit and rushed him to a makeshift hospital at Izel-le-Hameau.

  That was gallant Jack Scott’s last combat flight. As soon as the report of his injury reached Colonel Pretyman, the latter ordered Scott’s transfer to his new post immediately he recovered from the wound. Bishop blamed himself for Scott’s mishap, since he had been shot while his attention was occupied in saving Bishop from almost certain disaster. But Scott, cheerfully convalescing in a lounging chair in 60 Squadron’s mess, laughed scornfully at Bishop’s melancholy brooding.

  “I was fighting my own fight,” he insisted. “I didn’t even know you were in the vicinity.”

  The day after Scott’s departure, an exciting event occurred at Filescamp: the first of 60 Squadron’s S.E. 5 scouts arrived. It was assigned to Bishop.

  “A most tremendous thing,” Bishop described the event in a letter to Margaret that night. “It’s forty miles an hour faster than our present machines and has two guns. It will be wonderful to be able to catch Huns instead of watching them disappear.”

  FOURTEEN

  THE BEST

  MACHINE IN

  THE WORLD

  THE NEW PLANES took a lot of getting used to. The controls felt heavy and awkward after the small Nieuports. They landed at much higher speed, and in one most important way they were a thorough disappointment to the pilots: the guns would not work.

  Like the Nieuport, the S.E. 5 mounted a Lewis gun on the top wing. But it also had a more rapid-firing gun, a Vickers, on the engine cowling directly in front of the pilot. It was equipped with an interrupter gear designed to permit it to fire safely through the propeller, an advantage German pilots had enjoyed for several months. It was this device that caused most of the trouble.

  “I am thoroughly fed up with life tonight,” Billy wrote to Margaret. “Yesterday we did our first job on S.E. 5’s and my gun was the only one that fired. It shot holes through my propeller. Tonight I put nine holes through the propeller so that makes two machines I have done in. It will take days to get a new one. Tomorrow an expert is supposed to come over about the gear.”

  Bishop remembered unhappily that Albert Ball had spoken scathingly of his own S.E. 5 a few weeks before. Actually the planes 60 Squadron received were improved models, and the interrupter gear, which needed only expert adjustment to work perfectly, was a superior design to Fokker’s synchronizer, which was activated by a series of arms and rods. The S.E. 5’s interrupter gear was operated by a simple, smooth hydraulic mechanism that automatically went into action when the gun button was pressed. It was the invention of an eccentric genius, a Romanian named Georges Constantinescu, who worked on it for many months in a laboratory of the War Office in London.

  While the factory expert sent from England worked on the S.E. 5’s guns at Filescamp, 60 Squadron’s pilots continued their patrols in the faithful old Nieuports. On July 12 Bishop fought the highest battle of his career—nineteen thousand feet above Vitry—against an Aviatik two-seater. His Nieuport wallowed in the thin air and barely responded to the controls. Worse, Bishop’s hands were numbed by cold and he became dizzy from lack of oxygen. Twice he got the enemy within ten yards’ range but his shots went wild. The second time his plane stalled and went into a spin and he had to struggle hard to regain control.

  “I’ll never fight again at that height,” Bishop vowed.

  Later on the same patrol his flight encountered a formation of Albatros fighters that showed no inclination to avoid battle, but turned savagely on the Nieuports. Bishop took aim at an Albatros in front of him just as another of the vivid green-and-yellow enemy planes started a loop directly below. Bishop shifted his sights quickly and raked the belly of the Albatros as it turned on its back at the top of the loop. For a moment it remained poised in its upside-down position. Then its nose dropped and it fell in a vertical dive, streaming smoke, into a field eight thousand feet below.

  Another Albatros closed in behind Bishop and got him in his sights. But before the German pilot could fire, and before Bishop could turn away, a British triplane sent the Albatros spinning down in flames with one short burst. Bishop knew his rescuer must be a pilot from a land-based Royal Naval Air Service squadron—only the RNAS was equipped with triplanes. The three-decker followed Bishop’s flight back to Filescamp, and when the navy pilot introduced himself Bishop realized that the recent dogfight had been a minor historical event. The navy pilot—who explained that he had “just been sightseeing” when he ran into the mêlée of Albatros and Nieuport scouts—was Robert Little, a New Zealander who was second only to Bishop in air victories among living British pilots. In the fight northeast of Douai, Bishop had scored his thirty-third kill and Little his twenty-fifth within seconds of each other.

  That night 60 Squadron’s new commanding officer arrived. He was C. Kennedy “Pat” Cochrane-Patrick, a tall boyish Scotsman who had been flight commander with 23 Squadron. General Tren-chard, commander of the RFC, regarded him as the most brilliant pilot at the front, and that appraisal was borne out by the fact that Pat wore the same decorations as Bishop, the D.S.O. and the M.C. Like Jack Scott, Pat completely disregarded orders prohibiting squadron commanders from flying across the front lines.

  His skill as a pilot was soon demonstrated. Cochrane-Patrick put the new S.E. 5 through its paces, in a series of intricate manoeuvres the other pilots could not hope to duplicate. What he learned he passed on to the pilots of 60 Squadron: “You’ll have to treat her roughly, she’s a heavy-handed machine. Rely on speed for advantage and remember to use all your strength on the stick when you turn or pull out of a dive.”

  Pat’s study of the new machine made the transition from the slower but more responsive Nieuports easier for his pilots. Bishop in particular was happy at his commanding officer’s appraisal of the S.E. 5’s characteristics. For one thing, he was a naturally heavy-handed pilot and for this reason he had never achieved perfect accord with the Nieuport. For another, the method of fighting he had developed needed speed more than manoeuvrability. He could learn how to horse a plane around in the air, but speed was something that was built into a plane. However, the pilots of
60 Squadron could not yet fly their S.E. 5’s into combat. The guns were still not working properly.

  On July 17 Bishop in his Nieuport shot down two enemy planes within twenty minutes of each other on an after-dinner sortie south of Cambrai—not far from the scene of his aerodrome raid two weeks before.

  The synchronization gear was ready on July 20, but the impatient pilots were under orders not to use the new planes. There were other minor adjustments to be made to other equipment. Bishop took off on a lone patrol—his last flight in a Nieuport. He attacked a formation of five Albatros scouts and shot the lower left wing off one. It fell to earth like a dead leaf. The rest of the formation scattered in all directions, leaving Bishop, as he complained later, “standing still.” The frustration of fighting an enemy who could escape almost at will, which he had experienced many times before, made him all the more eager to get his hands on the S.E. 5. When he landed Corporal Bourne told him that his new plane was finally ready to the last detail—a freshly-painted blue nose.

  The S.E. 5’s had been made operational just in time for the Third Battle of Ypres. The offensive was to be launched on the last day of July, and as usual with major attacks the tactical air support began more than a week in advance. Although the 13Wing was far from Ypres it had a role to play. All along the line a curtain of offensive patrols had to be maintained as an integral part of the order of battle.