Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  He remained unperturbed. He had spied an advertisement by the Wolesley Motor Co. and now wanted to drive ambulances. They didn’t seem to be overly concerned about the size of his chest but they shared his brother-in-law’s concern about him serving in the ranks, ‘that it would mean living with the roughest of men and that he could never stand it’. Eventually a form was produced; an application to drive a lorry. Eric did not want to drive a transport lorry. The recruiters at their offices told him that it was the same thing. ‘No spider has ever ensnared a fly more successfully than they caught me there,’ he said wryly later. Thus he joined the Army Service Corps.

  Eric Lubbock was one of only a handful of Etonians who served in the ranks at some point in the war. Despite everybody else’s reservations he didn’t have any particular problems amongst his fellow soldiers, although it was a culture shock for someone who had experienced such a privileged upbringing. On the crossing he was crammed into the hull of a transport and it was the only time he ever regretted enlisting and envied the officers. He had a terrible headache and the smell was nauseating. He felt so weak when they disembarked that he claimed he could have quite happily drowned himself at the quay. Once in France the 22 year old shared a tent with thirty other men and discovered how limited his vocabulary was, even if he wasn’t inclined to follow his fellow soldiers’ colourful lead.

  His service in the Army Service Corps was only to last for a few months. Eric had always been great friends with Eric Powell, one of the two masters that ran off to war with George Fletcher. He had by now abandoned his intelligence role and joined the Royal Flying Corps as an observer. Eric Lubbock ran into him at the front and by December wrote home to tell his worried mother that he wanted a commission in the RFC himself. It took him a further six months to send another letter home telling her that he was about to be attached to the flying services. ‘I am most awfully excited,’ he told her. He was, however, constantly mindful of the anguish that his service caused her and fully aware that the idea of his feet leaving the ground would not help her to relax at all.

  Nonetheless his RFC career began on 25 July 1915 when he was sent along to headquarters, ‘an odd place with apparently lots of doors leading to nowhere’. Lost, Eric was pondering his next move when an officer looked out of a window with some sarcastic advice. ‘If you can’t find a door come in by a window.’ Eric was bemused. ‘It seemed quite the thing for a budding airman to do so I did it.’

  His record of interesting recruitment experiences continued. He had submitted two recommendations, one from Sir John French who allegedly claimed that Eric had a nose like a pelican and therefore would be good at flying. He also had a similar one from Kitchener apparently saying that he had big feet like a bird, which again showed promise. But it was his motoring background that saw him through. Any sporting prowess, horsemanship or mechanical know-how was jumped on by the flying authorities. Was his eyesight good? ‘Good enough to see through you,’ he responded. How much did he weigh? ‘Ten stone before breakfast.’

  His interview concluded, Eric joined a lengthy waiting list to become an observer in the RFC. His mother was resigned to it. She remembered how he had fallen in love with aeroplanes at Eton several years earlier and didn’t see what good it was trying to stop him from becoming airborne himself. It didn’t stop him from feeling guilty. His father had sadly passed away in 1913 and she bore her anxiety as a lone parent. ‘Mum bears it all so well but I cannot imagine what she suffers. She doesn’t sleep well and somehow it is too awful to think of her suffering. I owe her so much more than I can ever give and yet I give her pain.’

  Eric finally received a summons to join the RFC at the beginning of September 1915 and reported to 5 Squadron near Poperinghe as an observer. He was bombarded with things to learn and it was perhaps a blessing that bad weather denied him his first trip in the air and gave him time to settle down to learning things like Morse and aircraft recognition. There were two other Etonians learning with him, both of them rowers, and so he was feeling quite at home. He finally got up in the air for his maiden flight on 4 September. Cruising over Poperinghe, Vlamertinghe and towards Ypres and back again, he began counting trains, observing troop movements, even sketching trench lines. But methods of communication with the ground were his overriding concern. ‘I can send messages by Morse now fairly accurately though very slowly, but can’t read yet … My head was never made for dots and dashes!’ Aerial photography had really shown its worth at the battle of Neuve Chapelle in March and he was introduced to large box cameras. Pilots and observers had captured the whole ground in front of the 1st Army and then carefully traced the trenches on to skeleton maps. Some 1,500 copies had been produced, which turned out to be massively useful.

  Lewis guns had begun arriving for fitting on to machines but whilst arming aeroplanes was being rapidly developed so were methods for destroying them outright from the ground. Nicknamed ‘Archie,’ Archibald James, another young Etonian in the RFC, shared a nickname with this anti-aircraft fire but it didn’t help him get used to it any quicker. He jumped every time a shell went off; ‘a nasty big bang and crack’. He was flying a sensitive scout at the time and every time his hand jogged the plane lurched about. Slowly he got over this nervousness and managed to fly normally whilst being harassed.

  Thomas McKenny Hughes had left Mr Impey’s house at Eton in 1902 where he had been a contemporary of Ego Charteris. Having transferred to the RFC to become an observer he was with 1 Squadron operating out of Bailleul; where the aerodrome was overlooked by the local lunatic asylum. He was constantly harassed when going about his work by a ‘beastly hooligan’ of an anti-aircraft gun living in between Lille and Roubaix. It was, he said, ‘very difficult to give one’s undivided attention when in the middle of an elaborate calculation of the number of trains one had a terrific explosion apparently a few yards away and that horrid whistling “ping” of the bits passing.’ On another occasion he spoke of trying to count trains under fire. A piece of shell flew into the petrol tank and fuel started pouring out. ‘I made a few ineffectual and tardy attempts to stop it with my fingers … the Huns did not stop shooting at us. What a terrible thing it must be to be a pheasant.’ The pilot was adamant that they were doomed but the engine miraculously jumped back to life and took them home.

  Flying was certainly not for the faint-hearted. Eric had already been present when his pilot suffered a crashed. They were 40ft from the ground when the engine stopped. ‘I thought we were going to land,’ he wrote. ‘Then she back-fired, and the nose went absolutely straight down. I thought, “we’re going to crash.” I had no time to think more. I felt myself being hurled down on to that ploughed field for destruction.’

  It would not please his mother, as she was simultaneously lamenting the departure of his brother for the Dardanelles, but Eric had solemnly promised to tell her everything. He had felt something strike his head. ‘I was thrown clear as we hit the ground and should not have been touched only the front sight of the machine gun just cut my leg … Loraine the pilot was not hurt … but our lovely machine was in pieces! The gun stuck in the ground and the camera flew about 50 yards.’ Eric finally got up some 30 yards away from the wrecked machine, collected the camera and plates and walked back. ‘I must have looked very funny as I landed perfectly upside down in a very soft plough and got up with my head covered and my mouth and nose absolutely full of earth!’

  Accidents and mechanical failures were a common feature of life as an airman and few Etonians escaped a smash at one time or another. Henry ‘Deighton’ Simpson was born in New York State in January 1896. Having been sent to school in England with his younger brother, he left Le Neve Foster’s house at Eton in the summer of 1914, hopping aboard the RMS Olympic with his family the day after war was declared. His parents wanted him home and he was to fulfil their ambitions for him to go to Harvard, thus being kept far away from the conflict in Europe. ‘But his heart was with his schoolfellows’ and in November 1914, travelling steerage on SS
Campania, the 18 year old ran away to enlist in the British Army.

  Henry wrote to his parents from the ship declaring his intentions. His father was flustered but confident that his son could be dragged back across the Atlantic. He was more concerned about the future of Henry’s education and wrote to Harvard to gain some assurance that when they got Deighton home he would be able to continue his studies. ‘He is an exceedingly sensitive young man,’ he explained to the authorities. ‘Long residence at Eton College has made him quite the Englishman with all the bitter prejudice against the Germans … The whole thing is really laughable, a tempest in a tea pot.’

  His father might have made less of a joke of the situation if he had known just how serious his son was. Deighton’s mother chased him across an ocean and located him at Eton staying with a former house master. She found him utterly resolved and could achieve nothing more than a promise that he would wait to receive a commission and not go barrelling into the ranks. He was fully devoted to both England and Eton and she couldn’t hold him back. She consented for him to become a British citizen to facilitate his wishes, and at the beginning of November 1914 stood by him at Windsor as he swore allegiance to George V and joined the cavalry.

  Deighton transferred to the RFC and was soon at the Western Front until, like many pilots, he suffered a breakdown of sorts. Stationed at Joyce Green in Kent he was grounded and bored and managed to convince the Vickers factory at Brooklands to let him fly their experimental aircraft outside his military duties. On 20 December 1916 he was doing just this when the machine that he was in fell apart in mid air; sadly not a rare occurrence in aeroplanes of the period. Deighton was buried at Crayford in Kent. When it came to settling his army affairs his mother insisted that she was not interested in the pay owed to her son. ‘A devoted old Etonian whose happiest recollections and memories of life were always of his old school,’ she wanted all outstanding sums paid to the Eton Memorial Fund2.

  Experimenting with munitions and developments in aerial warfare also continued to result in tragedy amongst OEs in the flying services long after the death of Reginald Cholmondeley. Fatalities were often random and inexplicable. Arthur Newton was a young Etonian from Dublin and a pre-war pilot who had transferred to the RFC from the Shropshire Light Infantry. He was an exact contemporary of Archibald James at school and they were serving together in 5 Squadron. On 20 October 1915 he had just taken off and was passing over the wireless hut when he gave a standard tap on his wireless key to make sure all was all right. The machine promptly blew up and killed Arthur and his observer, littering the aerodrome with debris. The authorities exhausted themselves trying to ascertain the cause of this freak accident and eventually surmised that perhaps a petrol leak had created a scenario where the spark from the key could have caused the accident. Archibald was still baffled years later. ‘Such a combustible mixture could not have been produced. And if it had been produced, it couldn’t have been set off by the spark. But the fact is it did happen, and they were both killed.’

  With the many and varied ways that pilots and observers were killed, and the random nature of death, it was unsurprising that many developed a fatalistic attitude or became partly immune to the losses around them. One simply had to move on or go mad. Archibald James was on leave in London and at lunch with two elderly gentlemen when the subject of the 16th Lancers came up. Four Etonian officers had been killed by a single shell on the Western Front. Archibald mentioned it casually in conversation as if it was nothing but was astonished when his hosts became visibly upset before his eyes3.

  In Britain the population was fully aware of the air war because they were witnessing it first-hand. Henry Dundas had yet to be posted to the front in September 1915 when he first saw one of the Kaiser’s dreaded Zeppelins in London. The idea that Britain, secure in her island status and the protection of the Royal Navy for centuries, should now be exposed to attack from the air was staggering, earth shattering. Henry had been in London when three of the ghostly invaders glided over the city following the line of the Thames. The anti-aircraft defences, involving huge naval guns at Marble Arch, boomed into action. The first two shells almost hit one and slowly the Zeppelin turned, pursuing a line, as far as Henry could tell, up behind St Paul’s and Tottenham Court Road. It began dropping various bombs (mostly incendiary) and caused several fires, a particularly large one just behind St Paul’s.

  Henry himself was standing outside Tottenham Court Road tube station when it glided overhead. Everyone had thought that people would flock underground at the hint of an attack but Londoners stopped and gaped at the monster overhead. ‘It could be seen at an immense height … A vague blurred sausage shape – indefinably sinister – and the car lit up like a train.’ All around the sound of the guns was deafening. The theatres began turning out in a panic. Henry made his way along Oxford Street, packed with more spectators, towards Embankment. Across the Thames, off to his right, he could see a huge fire on the opposite bank and ‘a most wonderful sight, all the sky lit up a lurid red, and the river molten & shining crimson’. Twenty-five years before the Blitz it was an unbelievable display. ‘The great dome of St Pauls silhouetted against the whole. It looked just as if the Cathedral itself were on fire.’

  Dick Levett once watched from the steps of the adjutant’s hut at Sheerness as an airman managed finally to bring one of these notorious killers down:

  I was just watching that very piece of sky. There was first of all a glowing spot in the sky and then it got larger and larger … and became a great blazing mass … floating down quite, quite slowly … we could see the sky light up when the Zeppelin bumped on the ground … All the men cheered and then there were scenes of great joy – but what a death! I couldn’t help thinking of the wretched men inside as the envelope became more and more in flames.

  Whilst the opportunity to claim a victory over the enemy was limited over home ground, with developments in aerial warfare on the Western Front it had become far more common. Eric Lubbock was one of the first British airmen to begin his tally. He was aloft with Robert Loraine, a famous actor, in October 1915 when they were set upon by an enemy machine. Eric was in a panic. All he could focus on was trying to get his gun working. ‘I heard Loraine give a great shout but felt neither fear nor triumph. Then our machine turned downwards … we were diving. I was standing almost on the front of the body.’ The German airman attacked again. ‘Loraine went all out to climb and attack while I put my stiff and aching hands in my mouth, praying for sufficient life to come back to them.’

  Finally they succeeded in driving their opponent to the ground inside British lines. The pilot had been shot in the stomach and died before they got him away but the observer was just a boy of 17. He was a nervous wreck, shaking and crying, ‘no wonder, poor thing’. Only a handful of enemy machines had been destroyed or captured at this point and both Eric and Loraine were awarded the Military Cross for their efforts. Their fight had also happened above the trenches which meant that excited troops had watched it unfold. Although they hadn’t heard the cheers Eric found that he and his pilot were the talk of the town.

  British airmen were not having it all their own way by any means though. With the winter of 1915–16, what became known as the Fokker Scourge arrived to blight the fortunes of the Allied airmen. Archibald James, now a pilot, was commanding part of 2 Squadron. They flew lumbering BE2cs, two-seaters used extensively for reconnaissance and artillery spotting or photography but not designed with aerial combat in mind. They were no match for the single-seater Fokkers. Archibald described their extraordinary rate of climb, which allowed them to get up above their prey and dive down on to them. When they attacked they fired a revolutionary fixed, forward machine gun that sprayed bullets through the centre of the propeller with an interrupter gear that stopped it from shooting the blades off. German pilots merely had to aim the machine in the direction that they wanted to shoot and close in on their target. Lone BE2cs out ranging guns or taking photographs had become sitting du
cks.

  Thomas Hughes was an enigma in that he actually wanted to remain an observer. He claimed that he would only learn to fly himself if the army gave him the ultimatum of training or a return to the infantry. ‘They can’t make a pilot out of me; it would be interesting to see how they would deal with a case of studied incompetence.’ Eric Lubbock bypassed the worst of the Fokker menace though because he took the opposite view and began training as a pilot.

  He arrived back at the front in mid October 1916 as a flight commander with the brand new 45 Squadron. They were hit very badly in their first weeks. Six men were missing in action and another severely wounded in one day. Two days later another pilot died accidentally and then Eric was struck off the strength of the squadron sick. More men had actually been sent home because they were not of sufficient flying standard and by the end of October it became apparent that flinging them into action as soon as they had arrived at the front had been too much. They were withdrawn further back to regroup and undertake a significant amount of training so that they might be better prepared when they were put back into battle

  By the beginning of December they had moved forward again. The authorities had learned from their mistakes and now Eric, as B Flight commander, was forbidden to cross the enemy lines with his men until they became familiar with their surroundings. Eric defied the order on Christmas Eve when he went in pursuit of a pair of German aircraft between Ypres and Bailleul: