When the war broke out, Alan Bott was one of the younger set of
newspaper men in London. Soon after England cast in her lot with
France, Bott was training with the airmen. Right speedily he became
a fighting flyer and anon an Ace, with seven German planes to his
credit. He won the Victoria Cross, and the rank of Captain. Readers may
remember having heard him lecture when he made a tour of this country
early in 1919, and gave very impressive pictures of adventures in the
air. Not many aviators had the varied experiences that fell to the
fortune of Captain Bott, for though he was for a time with his fellows
of the Royal British Air Force operating in France, he was transferred
to the East later and many of his thrilling adventures were in the Holy
Land. He gave an account of one of these soon after his arrival in this
country. He said:
“It all began when I fell out of the clouds from a height of six
thousand feet and bumped my nose after a fight with a Boche plane. It
wasn’t exactly a fight with one plane, either. I was chasing a Boche
who had a machine nearly as fast as mine, and by the time I caught up
with him we were forty miles behind the enemy lines and above some
rough, rocky, partly wooded hills.
“I was just beginning to pepper the Boche when two enemy scout planes
I had not seen literally dropped from the clouds right above and shot
me up, especially the petrol tank. I whirled and crashed down, and the
next thing I knew it was moonlight and my leg was paining like the
deuce, held down by part of my engine. It was a very lonely, desert
spot, and I figured that hill would be my last resting-place. I figured
they would name it after me.
“Whether fortunately or not a bunch of Arabs came along, sort of
bandits, I suppose, and found me. As far as I could make out, after
they lifted the engine off me they were tossing up whether they should
kill me or turn me over to the Turks and get some bakshish, which is a
popular pastime in that part of the country. They used to say that with
£1,000 you could bribe the Grand Vizier himself.
“While they were drawing lots to see whether I would live or die, a
party of Turkish soldiers came along and chased the Arabs off, but
detained me. In fact, they were decent enough to take me to an Austrian
hospital at Afion-Kara-Hisson, about seventy miles from our base at
Jaffa. It was three weeks before I could get around much, and then I
foolishly tried to escape. My leg was so bad that the attempt was a
foozle, as the guards caught me up before I had gone very far.
[Illustration:
_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._