FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT HAROLD ROSHER, R.N.A.S.
All are conscious of the fact that to our Royal Naval Air Service the
highest praise is due. The service is rich in heroic pilots. Few,
however, are known by name to the wider public. But we must not suppose
that our Navy has not in its service a goodly share of skilful and
heroic pilots.
The letter, for instance, of Flight-Lieutenant Harold Rosher, R.N.A.S.,
written to his family and published by Chatto and Windus, reveals an
aviator of fine character. ‘One wonders,’ a friend writes, ‘whether
most to admire the man in him, the gentleman, or the accomplished pilot
of the skies who took all risks, keeping his head among them, because
that way lay duty and achievement.’ He is well reflected in his quiet,
modest manner of writing. Here is a little picture of the difficulties
of flying at a great altitude, ‘absolutely lost’ and in search of
bearings:
‘I nose-dived, side-slipped, stalled, &c., &c., time after time, my
speed varying from practically nothing to over a hundred miles an hour.
I kept my head, but was absolutely scared stiff. I didn’t get out of
the clouds, which, lower down, turned into a snowstorm and hail, until
I was only 1,500 feet up. I came out diving headlong for the earth.’
Mastery of the air becomes still more difficult when making a raid,
as Lieutenant Rosher did more than once, on the German fortifications
along the Belgian coast. ‘A few seconds passed,’ he writes, ‘and the
shrapnel burst a good deal short of me, but direction and height
perfect. I turned out to sea and put another two miles between me and
the coast. By now a regular cannonade was going on. All along the coast
the guns were firing hasty, vicious flashes, and then a puff of smoke
as the shrapnel burst. I steered a zigzag course and made steadily to
sea, climbing hard.’
Of another time when he was under fire and travelling faster than he
had ever travelled before, he writes: ‘My chief impressions were the
great speed, the flaming bullets streaking by, the incessant rattle of
the machine-gun and rifle fire, and one or two shells bursting close
by, knocking my machine all sideways and pretty nearly deafening me.’
There is inspiration in the letters, chiefly, perhaps, on account
of the fact that they were written for the late Lieutenant Rosher’s
dearest friends. He was killed at Dover, while trying a doubtful
machine before allowing a fellow-aviator to ascend—a hero’s death.
He has been described as one of the most promising officers in the
Service. ‘He was not merely a first-class pilot; he was a born
organizer and leader of men, and, moreover, he had the heaven-sent gift
of being personally popular with all ranks without losing his control
over those below him.’ Knowing personally all the senior officers
under whom he served, they all had the highest regard for his personal
qualities and for his ability as an officer.
‘One may deduce,’ says a writer in the _Aeroplane_, ‘that his letters
may fairly be taken as expressing the views, experiences, and feelings
of the best class of R.N.A.S. officer, and his father, Mr. Frank
Rosher, has done well in publishing them, for they give a vivid and
intimate picture of life in the Royal Naval Air Service during the
early days of the war. The naval censorship is to be congratulated on
having left untouched certain passages which indicate to those who have
understanding some of the mistakes made in those early days in the
supply or choice of the engines, aeroplanes, and landing grounds. There
is no grumbling in the letters themselves, but plain statements are set
down.’
The letters begin with Lieutenant Rosher’s early experiences at the
Bristol School at Brooklands, whither he went to learn as much as he
could between applying for and receiving his commission, and the fact
that he took this course is evidence of the keenness which in his short
flying life carried him so far in the Service.
In one of his letters Lieutenant Rosher describes thus how he came
through a curtain of fire: ‘I found myself across the yards and felt a
mild sort of surprise. My eyes must have been sticking out of my head
like a shrimp’s! I know I was gasping for breath, and crouching down in
the fuselage.’ He was too brave a man to be afraid of admitting that he
was afraid.
Later in the book there is a story like a nightmare of how, when he
went to attack an airship shed at Brussels, he was instead chased by a
Zeppelin, which was already in the air when he got there, and so high
up that his old machine could not reach it: the machine was, in fact,
barely able to go fast enough to keep out of the way of the airship.
Lieutenant Rosher, although highly imaginative and impressionable, was,
as we have seen, of the ‘stuff’ of which heroes are made. All who knew
him join in acclaiming him a young officer of heroic mettle.