Him I sent down in flames.
Then I found a scout.
Him I crashed.
Then I found another two-seater and sent him down. He crashed.
Cunningham-Reid also got a Hun and Springs, Gilder and Canning got one between them. That’s five today. Squadron total 30. Mine 65.
If Bishop was annoyed, his pilots were apprehensive. A rumour circulated through the squadron that McCudden was being considered as Bishop’s successor—and McCudden had a reputation for being not only an exceptional pilot, but very discipline-minded and “regimental.” The Flying Foxes were an easygoing crew, and they feared there would be friction.
Bishop’s own choice was the slender Irishman he had met with Grid Caldwell—Mick Mannock of 74 Squadron. He was a superb aerial tactician who would probably be popular with the Foxes—and all hands were delighted when Bishop’s recommendation was accepted by headquarters. With the appointment settled, Bishop knew that his own transfer was imminent.
“I imagine I’ll hear this afternoon,” Bishop told his brother-in-law, Hank Burden, glumly at lunch. “Anyway I got two more this morning, and if this damned weather clears I’ll go up again this afternoon.”
But the weather did not clear. It got worse. Hank decided to get back to his own aerodrome before it closed in completely. It was a wise move. By mid-afternoon a storm swept in over St. Omer and all machines were grounded. To add to Bishop’s gloom the news he had been dreading came at tea time: he must leave for England at noon the following day. That still left him the evening and the next morning in which to have one more look at the war. But the weather was even worse by evening, and it seemed that Bishop had already had his last look at the war.
So instead of flying, the Foxes organized the most glorious party of their career in honour of Bishop’s departure. Springs and Grider excelled with their finest and most lethal cocktail bowl. Callahan proved worthy of his renown as a pianist and Bishop’s tap dance on the piano was surely his most spectacular. After the second encore the overburdened instrument collapsed, and even a generous quantity of Springs’punch couldn’t revive it. The clothes-tearing ceremony was notable—Grider lost his shirt as well as his tunic—and there was not a single record left intact by the time the celebration ended at half-past three in the morning.
The morning of June 19, 1918, barely dawned in the gloom of a heavy drizzle. It had rained all night. The field was soaked. It was as rotten a day for flying as Bishop had ever seen when he looked out the window of his quarters. His head pounded from the festivities of the night before, but he had to leave the airport by noon and it was past nine when he sat down to bacon and eggs and tea.
One last flight? Why not? After all, you could get to a thousand feet and it might be clearer to the east—the wind was blowing from that direction.
“It’s probably worse over the lines,”Springs said,“and chances are there won’t be any Huns up in this stuff anyway.”
Bishop shrugged and sloshed his way across the field to his plane. At half-past nine he climbed into the cockpit of his gaudily decorated S.E. 5A for the last time. Once aloft, visibility was not nearly as bad as he had anticipated. As he headed east towards battered Ypres, Bishop could see the ground distinctly. Then at the trench lines, the broken ditches that scarred the landscape, he climbed into the clouds at eighteen hundred feet to hide from the ground fire.
He casually decided to fly to Passchendaele, seven miles east of Ypres, before coming down from the clouds to cut a wide arc to the north. After ten minutes he dropped out of the clouds to check his position. He had not paid enough attention to his compass, and his plane had veered south. He was directly over Ploegsteert Wood—the landmark the pilots called “Plug Street.” And he was not alone.
Three hundred yards to his left, flying away from him, were three Pfalz scouts with black and white tails. The German fighters began to turn as Bishop swept in behind them. From one hundred and fifty yards he took aim—then the Aldis sight oiled up. He shifted to the auxiliary ring and bead sight, which was not as accurate, but better than a blind shot. But by then he was too late. The Pfalz scouts had come halfway around in a turn and now they dived head-on at him. Ugly orange flashes blossomed from the muzzles of their guns and Bishop heard the bullets streak past. There was a rending crunch as his left lower wingtip was shredded by tracers. Bishop got away only a short return burst as the enemy fighters slipped by underneath him. He banked left to try to get behind them again, meanwhile taking a quick look behind. It probably saved his life. Two more Pfalz scouts were diving out of the clouds at nearly two hundred miles an hour.
The three enemy planes in front were now only four hundred yards away. Bishop decided to risk a quick attack on them before the two others could join in. He had no time to get at close range, and opened fire at one hundred and twenty yards. The burst was brief but destructive. It struck the rearmost plane and killed the pilot. The machine turned over and fell nose-forward in a vertical dive. Bishop had no chance to see it crash, then the second pair of Pfalz scouts began to fire at him.
He slammed the left rudder bar hard and pulled into a steep turn. His attackers slipped past and below.
The other pair of Pfalz machines had begun to climb. Bishop knew they intended to hide in the clouds until he was fully occupied with the other two German planes, then pounce on him. But they never made it to the clouds. Just under the layer, where it was misty and hard to see, they drifted too close to each other, locked wings with a splintering crash, and for a moment hung there suspended. Then the planes fell apart. Bits of wing, fuselage and tail fluttered away, and they joined the first Pfalz, which was burning on the ground a mile east of Ploegsteert.
It had all happened in the space of three minutes. The remaining pair of enemy fighters now tried to climb into the security of the clouds. But one was too slow making his escape and he presented a perfect target. Bishop had a dead shot from fifty yards. From behind and below, he watched his tracers hurtle toward the belly of the Pfalz and tear a gaping hole in the wings. The plane nosed forward, went into a spin, and crashed.
Bishop, now alone in the sky, noticed that the clouds had dropped lower, and the ceiling was now less than a thousand feet. His compass was not working—the violence of his manoeuvring in the dogfight had put it out of kilter, and Bishop had only an approximate idea of his location, somewhere between Ploegsteert Wood and Neuve Eglise.
As he flew in the misty drizzle, the outline of another machine emerged, a ghostly apparition. Then the outline became clearer. It was a two-seater with black crosses.
It wallowed in eccentric shallow turns and the observer in the rear seat peered over the side. Both pilot and observer were obviously unaware that they were seen and pursued. Bishop easily slipped into the ideal position—the blind spot, behind and beneath. When he got within forty yards of the enemy machine he tilted his nose upwards and took aim. The tail skid, the two wheels, the crossbar between them, all seemed to be within grasp. Bishop aimed at the spot where the pilot’s backside would be. Ten rounds from both guns tore into the bottom of the enemy plane. It wobbled for a second, then skidded violently. One of the wheels fell off and spun past Bishop like a huge twirling plate. Then the two-seater fell earthward, and Bishop could see that the pilot he had aimed at was alive and fighting to keep the plane under control, while the observer was slumped limply in his seat. Seconds later the plane crashed into a hillock and burst into flames.
Bishop circled once, watching the tumbling pall of smoke rise from the hillock. The sky was now clear of planes. He knew he had fought his last fight in the air. He knew he should be feeling some strong emotion—triumph at his seventy-second victory, resentment at being recalled from the front, pity for his final victim, burning to death on the earth beneath. But he felt nothing—only a dull automatic reaction that made him turn toward his home airport for the last time.
He was barely aware that he had achieved his greatest triumph—five planes within fifteen minut
es. Only later would he learn that his final month in France had earned him yet another decoration, the Distinguished Flying Cross, an award he could not have won before because it had only recently been created. The citation read:
A most successful and fearless fighter in the air whose acts of outstanding bravery have already been recognized by the award of the V.C., D.S.O., a bar to the D.S.O., and the M.C. For the award of the D.F.C. now conferred upon him he has rendered signally valuable service in personally destroying twenty-five enemy machines in twelve days . . . five of which he destroyed on the last day of his service at the front. The total number of machines destroyed by this distinguished officer is seventy-two and his value as a moral factor to the Royal Air Force cannot be over-estimated.
Soon after Bishop left France, General Morrison, commanding the Canadian artillery in France, wrote to General Turner, Chief of the Canadian Forces in England: “I was particularly interested in meeting Major Bishop and am glad that he has been selected for an administrative appointment. The more so because Major McCudden, V.C., was killed yesterday afternoon. While Major Bishop’s services were invaluable to the army as a fighting man, I believe he can do more good by training others than continue to risk the almost inevitable on the firing line.”
Bishop became the first commanding officer designate of the Canadian wing with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. The wing was to be composed of two squadrons, which in turn were to be part of a tactical force in support of the Canadian Corps in France. Selection of pilots and observers presented no problem. There was an abundance. Finding suitable men to be trained as ground mechanics, however, was another matter. They were to be recruited from Canadian army units in England. But Bishop soon discovered that the applicants fell into two categories: those who were decidedly unhappy in their regiments, and others whose commanding officers wanted to get rid of them.
By mid-August, however, a school for the technical training of Canadian “volunteers” had been formed and an extensive training program made it possible to select suitable applicants. But the role the Canadian wing was expected to play appalled Bishop. General Sir Arthur Currie, the commander of the Canadian Corps in France, believed the wing could help win the war by strafing ground troops. He had been immensely impressed by the success of the RAF in killing and pinning down surface forces during the summer offensive. But Bishop, who had a horror, based on his experience in the Arras and Vimy battles, of getting any nearer to ground fire than was absolutely necessary, protested bitterly against this idea, and it was abandoned. Next it was proposed that Bishop lead a bombing raid against Berlin. Bishop was tempted. At least the project would get him back into combat flying. But he remembered the arduous reconnaissance of his days as an observer, back in 1916, and he said bluntly: “I don’t want the job.” (Among the jobs he did want was designing the insignia of the Canadian wing. He sketched the maple leaf emblem which became the symbol of the flying Canadians.)
Meanwhile with Margaret, Lady St. Helier and Princess Marie Louise, Bishop returned enthusiastically to the social life of London.
During a Canadian military demonstration at Windsor Park, Bishop had his third meeting with King George. The monarch looked at him quizzically and said, “Bishop, I’ve been telling everyone that you shot down seventy-two planes, and now I read in your own book that you shot down forty-seven. Are you a liar or am I?”
“Neither of us, Sir,” answered Bishop. “When I wrote the book I had forty-seven, since then I have added twenty-five.”
The King seemed satisfied with the explanation, and for his part Bishop was gratified that among the readers of his book, Winged Warfare, was George V.
But Bishop had little cause for satisfaction in other respects. It was becoming more and more obvious that the war was coming to a close, that the German armies were beginning to crumble and the Allies were preparing to deliver a death blow. But the Canadian wing was not ready to participate. Bishop was ordered to return to Canada to report to the prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, on progress, and at the same time assist in recruiting. He and Margaret left England in October, 1918.
His homecoming this time was, if anything, even more enthusiastic than his reception the previous year. The newspapers did not fail to headline the fact that he was the leading killer of German pilots and was, moreover, the most decorated fighting man alive (the French government had added to his laurels the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre with two palms, bringing his total awards to ten).
After a meeting with government leaders and a series of speeches urging enlistment in the air force, he was again ordered to return to England. This time he decided to leave Margaret behind. He did not think his absence in Great Britain would be a long one. The end of the war was obviously imminent. In November he went to New York to sail for England. During his three days in Manhattan he met Lee Keedick, an enterprising booking agent, who suggested a lecture tour on air fighting throughout the United States. Bishop agreed to the attractive terms Keedick offered.
He was halfway across the Atlantic when the ship’s wireless brought the news of the war’s end. “How did I react?” Bishop recalled many years later. “I thought of how the boys at the front and in England would be celebrating the news. And here were we sailing under war regulations—which meant that there wasn’t so much as a blasted bottle of beer aboard.”
TWENTY
THE TWENTIES
THE FIGHTING was over—but not for Bishop. When he took off his uniform at the beginning of 1919 he was immediately involved in a struggle to readjust and stay on even keel. As a soldier he had achieved something of the acclaim accorded a Wellington, a Nelson or a Marlborough. But there was a shuddering difference. Bishop was twenty-five, and in many ways immature and unsophisticated. When he started his lecture tour, Carnegie Hall and Lexington Hall in New York were packed to capacity. The audiences were comparatively as large as the tour moved through the eastern states, but it was a gruelling trip. Bishop would often lecture in one city at night and by noon the next day would be addressing an audience two hundred miles away.
It was tiring, but the money was good. And sales of Winged Warfare were at their peak, perhaps because Bishop managed to mention the book casually in his lectures. But the money was spent as fast as it was earned. Bishop was simply continuing the habit of not counting the cost—a habit he and thousands of other men who daily faced sudden death had come to accept as a way of life. Why ask the cost of a meal, a drink, a hotel room, an automobile, a suit of clothes, a gift, a tip—when money might have no value next day because its owner had joined the company of the dead?
The answer to that collective question came to Bishop with stunning impact. In March,1919, he collapsed on the stage during a speech at Roanoke, Virginia. He was publicized as the first patient admitted to the new Jefferson Hospital in Roanoke. The doctors diagnosed appendicitis, and operated. Bishop’s war service and the rigours of the lecture tour had taken a toll that even he was unaware of, and it was a month before the Roanoke doctors would let him resume his journey. But by then it was too late. In a month too much had happened in the world of mid-1919 for the Canadian air ace to maintain his popularity. On the first night of his resumed lecture tour exactly ten persons were in the audience.
Margaret was dismayed, but Bishop was philosophical. “It had to end sooner or later,” he told her comfortingly, “and perhaps it was better sooner.”
He cancelled the rest of the speaking tour, took the several thousands of dollars he had earned, and returned to Toronto. Characteristically, he rented a large house on fashionable Poplar Plains Road before giving serious thought to how he would pay the rent, to say nothing of supporting himself and his wife in the manner she had always—and he had recently—become accustomed to.
Upper Canada College, a well-endowed private school, offered him a teaching post, and Bishop was seized with the romantic idea that his future might lie in the training of the next generation. But when he heard the modest figure the j
ob offered he turned it down. An enterprising automobile dealer decided he could cash in on Bishop’s fame by making him a super-salesman. “I’ll give you a salary of three thousand and commission,” he told Bishop.
“A month?” asked Bishop.
“Hell no, a year,” said the auto magnate, and Bishop walked out of his office in scornful silence.
Bishop was still living on the avails of speech making (and not to put a fine point on it, had no compunction about using his wife’s allowance from her wealthy family if his own funds were sparse) when a Canadian air hero of stature second only to Bishop blew into Toronto. He was William George Barker, a tall, rangy man from Brandon, Manitoba, whose exploits deserve a book all of their own. Although the two men were physically as dissimilar as could be imagined, they shared a few important things. Both were winners of the coveted Victoria Cross. Less important historically, but possibly more significant in the subsequent events involving the two men, they both were dedicated to the proposition that champagne, cognac, Scotch or old rye whiskey were superior beverages to tea or coffee.
The Bishop-Barker Company was best remembered for two things: it was a commercial failure and it was a great deal of fun.
To finance the undertaking, Bishop and Barker appealed to leading businessmen in Toronto and Montreal, liberally offering stock in the enterprise. More out of sentiment for the two young V.C. airmen than from cautious financial judgment, many of these giants of commerce generously proffered substantial sums to get the business started.
In the winter of 1919–20 the partners sold aircraft for the Sop-with Company of England. In the spring of 1920 they acquired for their own company three clumsy pusher-type seaplanes known as H.S. 2L’s, which had been used in the latter stages of the war for submarine hunting. As surplus war material, Bishop bought them for $1,000 each.
The Courage of the Early Morning Page 20