LIEUTENANT ALLAN BOTT, M.C.
Lieutenant Allan Bott, who has been awarded the Military Cross for
gallantry and devotion to duty in the field, is a member of the
editorial staff of the _Daily Chronicle_, and when war broke out acted
for a time as a special correspondent in France and Switzerland. He
went to Lake Constance to investigate the building of super-Zeppelins,
and while at Kreuzlingen, a small Swiss town which is really a suburb
of Constance, made an involuntary trip into Germany by entering the
wrong train. He spent some hours in Constance, and managed to escape
detection at the frontier by travelling under the seat of a cab driven
by a friendly Swiss who was going back to Kreuzlingen.
On his return to England, in November, 1914, Mr. Bott joined the
O.T.C., and after training received a commission in the R.G.A., whence
he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. Since the deeds which have
won Mr. Bott the Military Cross he has been promoted from the rank of
Second-Lieutenant to Lieutenant. The story of his flight on a blazing
aeroplane has been told modestly by the young officer in a letter to
his parents:
‘All at once our fuselage shivered, and looking down it, I saw that
Archie had left his card in the form of a piece of burning H.E.
‘“Fuselage burning—pass the fire extinguisher,” I shouted down the
speaking-tube to my pilot. But the pilot’s earpiece had slipped from
his cap during the dive, and he heard nothing. I stood up, leaned
across and shook his shoulder. “Pass the fire extinguisher,” I yelled.
‘“Hun down on the left,” he shouted back, my words having been lost in
the roar of the engine.
‘“Fire extinguisher,” I called again.
‘“Why don’t you fire at that Hun?” was the reply.
‘Seeing that the flames were licking their way back to the tail, I
abandoned the attempt to get the extinguisher, and crawled down the
fuselage to the scene of the fire. I managed to beat out the flames,
which had eaten half-way through one of the longerons.
‘Meanwhile, the pilot had been attacking one of the enemy machines, and
a bullet had gone into our petrol tank. Confronted with a diminishing
pressure, we decided to make for Allied territory at once, and turned
west.
‘Five minutes later, by which time the number of revolutions had
dropped alarmingly, we found the way barred by two more Boche machines.
My gun having jammed, the pilot did the only thing possible—he went
straight at the nearest German, firing all the time. The Boche swerved
just in time to avoid a collision, but had obviously been hit, for
his machine all but did a nose-dive, and he only landed with great
difficulty.
‘Then our engine petered out altogether, and there was nothing for it
but to do a long glide and try to reach the lines. We were at 4,000
feet when we started to glide, and for a long time we didn’t know if we
had sufficient height to get us across.
‘But the pilot took advantage of a small salient, and we managed to
glide over the trenches at a height of about 400 yards, fired at by
machine-guns and rifles, besides dear old Archie. We landed just
behind the second-line trenches of a certain part of the French line,
and, to our joy and astonishment, we were not shelled on the ground.’
It was an exciting adventure, showing the mettle of our aviators. There
have been many such thrilling incidents on the various battle-fronts,
some coming to light and winning well-deserved awards, others going to
make up the great and glorious number of unrecorded deeds of gallantry.