Fighter Heroes of WWI: The untold story of the brave and daring pioneer airmen of the Great War. Joshua Levine

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       The Combatants

      The following letter was written by a young man to his parents in 1916:

      Last night I was just getting into my bed when a sponge full of water came along the room. At once the place was in a fine mess. I threw a jug of water, but the same was returned with interest. Next the place got so full of water that I ran into the garden, falling into a big hole full of mud. I managed to obtain two onions on my way back, and with these attacked the mob. All our beds are wet through. However, at last all got right again and we got our sleep. It was great sport.

      The young man was not a schoolboy but a fighter pilot. His name was Albert Ball, and within a year he would earn a Victoria Cross, a Military Cross and three Distinguished Service Orders as arguably the greatest British fighter ace of the war. His letter describes the adolescent horseplay common in the squadrons. Situated in comfortable chateaux and farmhouses behind the lines, these squadrons served as a refuge from the realities of life in the air. When a man was killed, the custom was to carry on as though nothing had happened, to drink and sing, to shed no tears. With their outward confidence, emotional reserve and ‘great sport’, these squadrons brought the world of the English public school to France. It is not surprising that so many letters home were childlike. Albert Ball again:

      Am feeling very poo-poo today. Five of my best pals were done in yesterday, and I think it is so rotten.

      In terms of background, if not of achievement, Ball was a typical British Great War pilot. Middle class, public school educated, and keen, the squadrons were full of men like him. Frederick Winterbotham was one:

      I was born in the reign of Queen Victoria, in 1897, and I always remember my annoyance at the age of three, when I was given a prayer book with Queen Victoria on it, and she died, and I felt that I had been done down because I no longer had a queen. I grew up in a normal household in Stroud in Gloucestershire, where my father had a law business. I suppose my great love was always ponies and horses. It went on throughout my life. I went to an excellent school in Eastbourne and then I went on to Charterhouse, in that hot summer of 1911. I loved Charterhouse. It was the most gorgeous place and we played every sort of sport and game. My only trouble was that I was growing rather too fast and after I’d been there for a couple of years, I was well over six feet and I’d outgrown my strength. I was no longer fit to play games properly – so the medical people said that I should go for a sea voyage. I persuaded my father and mother to send me round the world and I was fortunate in that I had relations and friends in various places.

      So it was that I set off in 1913, to Canada, where I helped a man to build a house and clear his land up in the Rockies. Then I went to Vancouver, during the Canadian real estate boom, where I was pestered to buy land. Strange gentlemen would ring me up and say, ‘I see you’ve come from Gloucestershire, you must know the Duke of Beaufort, I’d like to come and see you and sell you some land.’ Actually, I did know the Duke of Beaufort, but I didn’t tell them that.

      Having seen Canada, I crossed the Pacific to China in a big new ship that was full of dead Chinese, going home to be buried, and American missionaries, going out to China. I loved Japan, I had a marvellous time. In those days, the Japanese loved the English, and all the women wore kimonos and walked in wooden sandals. The drains in the villages were all open, you rode in a rickshaw and you drank green tea.

      Leaving Japan, I went down to Shanghai, to see the British colony down there. Unfortunately, a man came aboard the boat, and took the next cabin to myself, and he had a rash all over him. I mentioned this, and a doctor was brought, and of course, it was smallpox. I was rather lucky. I’d had measles before I left England, and I was well vaccinated, and I didn’t catch it. Then I went on to Hong Kong, where I had friends, and then down to Australia. And in Australia, I went to live on a sheep station that belonged to a friend of ours from Gloucestershire. I was a jackaroo, 180 miles north of the nearest railway line, right out in the desert. I loved it. If it hadn’t been for the coming war, I might have stayed there. I adored the life.

      However, I did come home. I stopped in New Zealand to see where my grandfather had once owned what is now the great suburb of Remuera, outside Auckland. Unfortunately, he sold it a bit too soon. Then, I came home, via India, and on the way, I remember hearing news that the Kaiser had taken a very large percentage out of all the fortunes of the rich Germans. It was a wealth tax, and I remember discussing it with people on board the ship, asking why he wanted all this money, and we all came to the conclusion that there was trouble coming.

      Back home, in England, in 1914, I went back to Charterhouse for a term, and took my entrance exam to Trinity, Cambridge. But then, of course, came the outbreak of war. I was in camp with the Charterhouse Officer Training Corps, in Staffordshire, at the time. I went back home in my uniform to Gloucestershire, and people were making a fuss of anybody in uniform, and a woman came up to me at Gloucester Station, and she asked me to hold her baby for a minute, while she went and got something, but she didn’t СКАЧАТЬ