Altogether I spent four months in France as an observer. How I longed
during all that time for a fight in the air! But no real chances came,
and, finally, I quitted my seat as a passenger without having fired a
single combat shot from the tidy little machine-gun that was always
near me and seemed to yearn as much as I did to have a go at the enemy.
I injured my knee after an observing trip one day, when the pilot
crashed the machine in landing; and while I did not have to go to
hospital with it, it gradually grew worse until May 1916, when I had to
lay up several months for repairs.
My sick-leave over, I reported for duty again and got a real
surprise--I was told I could learn to fly! This made me happier than
I can express. I pictured myself in one of the swift little fighting
planes I had seen in France, and I felt in my heart of hearts that
I would make good. I already knew what it felt like to fly; I knew
the language of the air, the esprit of the Corps, and some of the
heart-palpitating peculiarities of our best-balanced engines. But all
this time I had been a sort of innocent bystander. Now, at last, I was
going into the air “on my own.”
The first step was to go to a school of instruction--a ground
school--where the theory of flying and the mechanical side of aviation
are expounded to you. I went through these courses, and by special
permission was allowed to take my examination three weeks earlier than
would have been the case in the ordinary course of events. I worked
like a Trojan, and passed without much difficulty. Then was to come the
real part of it all, the part for which I had waited for over a year.
On November 1st, 1916, I was sent to another school for elementary
training in the air. This consisted, first of all, in going up in
another old machine--a steady type called the Maurice Farman, and
fitted with a dual set of controls, so that the instructor could
manage one while I tried to manage the other. Never will I forget those
days of dual control. I tried very hard, but seemed to me I just could
not get the proper “feel” of the machine. First the instructor would
tell me I was “ham-handed”--that I gripped the controls too tightly
with every muscle tense. After that I would get what you might call
timid-handed, and not hold the controls tightly enough. My instructor
and I both suffered tortures. So when suddenly one day he told me I
could go up alone, I had my doubts as to whether it was confidence or
desperation that dictated his decision. I didn’t worry long as to which
it was; I was willing to take the chance.
Then followed my first solo! This is, I think, the greatest day in a
flying man’s life. Certainly I did not stop talking about it for the
next three weeks at least. I felt a great and tender pity for all the
millions of people in the world who never have a chance to do a solo!
An ambulance stood in the aerodrome, and it seemed to me, as it has
to many another student-pilot, that all the other business of flying
had suddenly ceased so that everybody could look at me. I noticed with
a shiver that the ambulance had its engine running. Were the doctors
at the hospital expectantly fondling their knives? Everybody looked
cold-blooded and heartless. But I had to do it: so into the machine I
crawled, trying to look cheerful, but feeling awful lonesome. How I got
off the ground I do not know, but once in the air it was not nearly
so bad--not much worse than the first time you started downhill on an
old-fashioned bicycle.
I wasn’t taking any liberties. I flew as straight ahead as I could,
climbing steadily all the time. But at last I felt I had to turn, and I
tried a very slow, gradual one, not wanting to bank either too steeply
or too little. They told me afterwards I did some remarkable skidding
on that turn, but I was blissfully ignorant of a little detail like
that and went gaily on my way. I banked a little more on my next turn
and didn’t skid so much.
For a time I felt very much pleased with myself circling above the
aerodrome, but suddenly an awful thought came to me. Somehow or other I
had to get that machine down to the earth again. How blissful it would
be if I could just keep on flying! At last, however, I screwed up all
my courage, reached for the throttle, pushed it back, and the engine
almost stopped. I knew the next thing to do was to put her nose down.
So down it went at a steep angle. I felt it was too steep, so I pulled
her nose up a bit, then put it down again, and in a series of steps I
had been told carefully to carry out, descended toward the ground.
About forty feet from the ground, however, I did everything I had
been told to do when two feet from the ground. So I made a perfect
landing--only forty feet too high. Eventually I realised this slight
error, and down went her nose again. We rapidly got nearer the ground,
and then I repeated my perfect landing--about eight feet up. This
time I just sat and suffered, while the now thoroughly exasperated
old machine, taking matters into its own hands, dropped with a
“plonk” the intervening distance. There was no damage, because the
training-machines are built for such work, and can stand all sorts of
hard knocks.
After doing my first solo, I progressed rather rapidly, and in a few
days was passed on to a higher instruction squadron and began to fly
more warlike machines. I found that to qualify as a pilot I had to pass
certain tests in night flying. This awed me to a certain extent, but it
also appealed to me, for just two months before the first Zeppelins had
been brought down at night on English soil by our airmen. I was very
anxious to get taken on for this work, and eventually succeeded.
Night-flying is a fearsome thing--but tremendously interesting. Anyone
who has ever been swimming at night will appreciate what I mean. All
the familiar objects and landmarks, that seem so friendly by day,
become weird and repellent monsters at night. It is simple enough to
go up in the dark, and simple enough to sail away. But it is quite
something else to come down again without taking off a chimney-pot or
“strafing” a big oak tree. The landing tests are done with the help of
flares on the ground. My first flight at night had most of the thrills
of my first solo. I “taxied” out to what I thought a good place to
takeoff from. The instructor shouted a few last words to me above the
noise of the motor. I turned the machine to face down the long line of
lights, opened out the engine, raced along the ground, then plunged up
into utter blackness.
I held the controls very carefully and kept my eyes glued on the
instruments that gleamed brightly under little electric bulbs inside
the machine. I could not see a thing around me; only the stars
overhead. Underneath there was a great black void. After flying
straightway for several minutes I summoned up courage enough to make a
turn. I carefully and gradually rounded the corner, and then away off
to one side I could see the flares on the ground. I completed a big
circuit and shut off the engine preparatory to landing. Suddenly, in
the midst of my descent, I realized I had misjudged it very badly, so
quickly put the engine on again and proceeded to fly around a second
time. Then I came down, and, to my intense surprise, made quite a good
landing. This was only the beginning. I had to repeat the trick several
times.
On the final test I had to do a given height. I left the ground as
before, and just as I did so could see the reflection of the flares
on the tin roofs of our huts. It made a great impression upon me, as
I climbed away into the darkness. Then my thoughts went to my engine
and I realized it was as important as my own heart. I listened to its
steady beat with an anxious ear. Once or twice there was a slight kick
or hitch in its smooth rhythm. No matter how many cylinders you have
whirring in front of you, the instant one misses your heart hears it
even before your ears do. Several times my heart seemed to stop. The
tension became very great as I toiled and struggled up through the
night. The lack of anything upon which I could put my eyes outside the
machine gave me a very queer feeling.
One other machine was up at the same time, doing its test, and somehow,
although the space in the air is very wide, I had a great fear that
we might collide, so I gazed anxiously out into the darkness trying to
see the little navigation lights we carried on our wings. It is hard
to look into jet blackness, and the strain hurt my eyes, but I was
afraid not to look for all I was worth. I continued to fly as much as
I could in a dead straight line. Whenever I had to make a turn I made
a very gradual one, hardly daring to bank, or tilt, my machine at all.
It is funny, this feeling at night that you must not bank, and a most
dangerous instinct to follow. The feeling that you are off an even keel
upsets you, as you have no horizon or apparent ground below you to take
your bearings by, and you have to go by the instruments, or tell from
the “feel” of the machine itself, whether you are level or not.
However, at the stage of learning I had reached I knew nothing of the
real feel of a machine and was entirely dependent upon the instruments.
This is not a very reassuring state of mind, so when the instruments
at last indicated I had attained the required height, it was with a
happy heart that I throttled back my engine to come down. I was afraid
to shut it completely off for fear that it would get too cold to pick
up when I put it on again. When you come down with your engine running
it takes a much longer time to reach the ground. Every thousand feet
or so, as I lost height, I would carefully try out the engine, and do
a complete circuit. Underneath me I could see the little twinkling
flares, and kept them in sight as much as possible on the downward
journey to make certain of not losing myself. Finally, I reached the
ground and made a careful landing.
When I stepped out of the machine I had at last qualified as a pilot.
I was sent to a home-defence squadron near the mouth of the Thames. I
spent hours practising in the air both by day and by night. Several
times we had flight manœuvres at night, and that was ticklish work. We
would go up to patrol a certain area with lights showing on all the
aerodromes in that section of the country, so that you could steer
by them. I don’t know of many greater tests of a pilot’s skill than
this flying in the dark, with a lot of machines about you in the air,
their little navigation lights looking for all the world like so many
moving stars. The cold of the higher altitudes at night is agonizingly
intense. After half an hour or so in the frigid zone you get sort of
numb and then for a long while the cold doesn’t seem to affect you any
more. The real nasty part is when you have landed and begin to thaw
out. It is really worse than the original freezing.
In spite of the discomforts and the dangers of night-flying you could
not fail to admire the great beauty of the scene below you when the
lights were on and sparkling. These lights would mean nothing to a
stranger, but to us in the air they were friendly beacons of safety
and gave us a feeling of absolute security. On such nights the skies
would seem full to overflowing with myriad stars. We finally became so
accustomed to flying in the dark that nothing troubled us except ground
mists or light fogs that would occasionally slip in from the sea,
obliterate the lights, and make landing a difficult and perilous task.
My luck as a Zeppelin hunter was very poor. I used to dream
occasionally about stalking the great monsters in the high thin air,
pouring a drum of blazing bullets into them and gloating as they
flared into flame. But no real Zeppelins ever came my way. The cold
nights that we stood by on duty waiting for them were very long, but
not without their compensations. There would be two of us at a given
station. We would play cards, strum on some sort of instrument, read
for an hour or so, play cards again, and all the while hoping for an
alarm that would send us aloft in pursuit of a marauding gasbag from
over the sea.
Christmas Day we cooked our own turkey and the rest of the meal. Then,
in a burst of Yuletide hospitality, we telephoned to a local hotel and
told the manager to send anybody he wanted to out to the aerodrome
for dinner. Alas for our ten-pound turkey! The guests from the hotel
kept coming until there were actually twenty of them. However, in some
miraculous way, we managed to feed the hungry score. Having partaken of
our food, they did not tarry long. Night shut in early and once more
we took up our wintry vigil.
Toward the end of February word came through from the War Office one
night that I was to go to France. I had become convinced that the
winter would not offer much opportunity at Zeppelin hunting, and had
applied several times for duty at the fighting front. Before I went,
however, there was another course at a special school, where I learned
to fly the smallest of our single-seater machines. Now, I felt, I had
reached the height of my ambition at last; actually to fly one of these
tiny, wasp-like fighting machines seemed to me the most wonderful thing
in the world. A few days later, when I reported for my orders to cross
the Channel it was with a gay heart, and a determination to reflect as
much honour as I could upon the double wings on my left breast.