Fighter Heroes of WWI. Joshua Levine
out with the boys. They said that I had to catch such and such a train tomorrow to London and then another to Aldershot, for the Royal Flying Corps. Next day, I took the train to Liverpool Street Station. I’d never been further than Yarmouth in my lifetime!
So at Liverpool Street, I got off the train and there was a policeman, and I said, ‘Excuse me, old chap, how do I get on the Underground?’ So he told me where to go. I followed his directions, until I saw a dustman, who was sweeping up the horse manure. I said to him, ‘Excuse me, where’s the Underground?’ ‘Down there!’ he said, pointing down some steps. ‘Look, old chap,’ I said, ‘I may have just come from the country, but I’m not daft enough to go down there! You’re trying to send me down the toilet!’ I thought he was. I’d never seen the Underground before. So he took me down and I got the train and went off to Aldershot. When I got there, I was really hungry, so I went out into the street, to a fried fish shop. I got some fish and chips, and just as I opened the paper to eat some, I saw my fish and chips going up in the air. Two military police had kicked it out of my hands. ‘You don’t do that here!’ one of them said. I was in the services now.
Those who joined the other ranks of the Royal Flying Corps often considered themselves a cut above the humble infantryman. Cecil King:
Everyone who joined the Royal Flying Corps in the other ranks held some trade or other, whereas the men in the general regiments – they might be anyone. All us recruits in the RFC had some kind of training or apprenticeship; we actually had to pass a trade test before we got in. And therefore we considered ourselves a bit superior to the infantry and cavalry who may have come from any walk of life. We also got more pay than they did and when they found that out, they were a little bit jealous.
George Eddington was not a born soldier:
The Flying Corps interested me because the army was rather a brutal affair full of big hefty Irishmen and that type of person. I was neither that way disposed nor that way built. It didn’t attract me a bit. I was a tradesman rather than a soldier, so the Flying Corps sounded attractive.
The Great War was a time of intense patriotism in the British colonies. Frank Burslem was born and raised in Trinidad, but he considered himself as British as any man born in the British Isles:
I thought that any enemy of England was an enemy of mine and I wanted to be in the war. When I was sixteen years old in 1917, I was six foot two tall, and I knew that there was a ship going from Trinidad to England with eight vacant berths. Local merchants paid for the berths and sent eight young fellows who wanted to join the army over to England. My father allowed me to go, but when he gave me my birth certificate, he told me I was to do some kind of war work like munitions or working the land. But when I got to England, I never showed my birth certificate to anybody. I told them that I was three years older than I really was, and I joined the army. I had no difficulty going against my father’s wishes – I was a patriotic youth and I wanted to be in it.
When we arrived in England, the eight of us went to New Scotland Yard, where we saw a fatherly sergeant and told him we wanted to join the army – and he put us in. Being volunteers, we had a choice of what service or regiment to go for. As the other fellows were going into the Artists Rifles, that’s what I chose too.
I went to the basic training camp at Gidea Park, but I didn’t like it very much. The marching was so strenuous and I found it numbed and cramped the muscles in my thighs and calves. I stood it for a week, but after that I reported ill, and went before the doctor. He expected somebody ‘swinging the lead’. He asked what the matter was, and I said, ‘Anchhylostomiasis, sir.’ ‘Good God, what’s that?’ he asked. It was hookworm. I told him that just before leaving Trinidad, the Rockefeller Foundation had tested me and discovered that I had hookworm. I knew that I still had it. It meant that I wasn’t strong enough to do the strenuous work in the infantry. So they sent me to hospital and gave me the remedy. After that I was cured, and I went back to the regiment, where I could stand the drill. But by now, I’d seen what life in the infantry was like, and I thought it would be better for me if I didn’t do that kind of work. As they didn’t form fours, or anything like that, I changed my papers for a commission in the RFC.
Stanley Walters had problems reaching Britain from Rhodesia:
I did my damnedest to join the Royal Flying Corps, but I hadn’t got any money to get to England. Eventually, I persuaded somebody to let me go in and see the manager of the Union Castle Company. He asked what I wanted to see him about. I said, ‘I want to join the Royal Flying Corps!’ ‘How praiseworthy,’ he said, ‘how commendable, what have I got to do with that?’ ‘I can’t get to England!’ I said. ‘How disappointed you must be,’ he said. I slid off the chair and went away. Six weeks later, at three o’clock in the afternoon, I got a message. The Land Steffen Castle sails at six o’clock. I could go in her as an assistant purser. He didn’t call my bluff. I made it. I got to England with one golden sovereign so I was compelled to join the Royal Flying Corps immediately on my arrival.
Frederick Powell was stuck in an infantry regiment with no immediate prospect of joining the fight. He knew nothing of flying. He merely saw the Royal Flying Corps as a passport to France:
In November 1914, a circular came round to our battalion asking for volunteers to be an observer for the Royal Flying Corps. I didn’t know what I was volunteering for; my only interest was to get out to France. There was no sense of my wanting to fly, but my regiment seemed to have no chance of getting out to France before Christmas. One point is that, at the time, an observer’s weight had to be ten stone or less, so when I got down to ten stone, I was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps.
They had asked for one officer from each battalion, and there were two of us who wanted to volunteer; a man named Knowles was top of the list, and I was second. They only wanted one, but Knowles told me that he didn’t really want to volunteer because he was engaged to a girl. So if we were asked for one from each battalion, he would stand down. In point of fact, when the moment arrived, he did not stand down; he went. But by great good luck, they asked for another officer from our battalion, so I went too.
Even though I went as an observer, after I had been there two days, I was put down as an orderly officer, which meant that I had to go and report to the adjutant at six o’clock in the evening, and sleep in his office all night, in case the telephone went.
As I reported to the adjutant, the colonel called him into his office. The adjutant went, leaving the door ajar. I didn’t want to eavesdrop but I heard the adjutant say, ‘We’ve got another officer called Knowles, who’s been posted to us.’ The colonel said, ‘Is he an observer or a pilot?’ The adjutant said, ‘An observer.’ The colonel said, ‘Oh, we don’t want any more observers! We’ve got nothing but observers!’ The adjutant said, ‘Well, what shall I do with him?’ The colonel said, ‘Send him back to his regiment!’ And that was the end of Knowles. It frightened me, so that first thing in the morning, I reported to the adjutant and said, ‘Is there any chance, sir, of me being able to learn to fly, to become a pilot?’ I thought he was going to say, ‘Oh no, certainly not!’ but to my astonishment, he said, ‘Really? Do you want to become a pilot?’ ‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘Oh, good lad! Then start away. We’ll put you down as a pilot!’
Arthur Harris, a man who was to achieve notoriety as commander-in-chief of Bomber Command during the Second World War, used his connections to jump the queue into the oversubscribed Royal Flying Corps:
I went round to the War Office where I was interviewed by a rather supercilious young man. When I said I would like to fly, he said, ‘So would six thousand other people. Would you like to be six thousand and one on the waiting list?’ So I retired rather disgruntled and when I got back, my father had just returned from India. When I told him what had happened, he said, ‘Why didn’t you go and see your Uncle Charlie?’ I had many uncles. I didn’t know who or what or where Uncle Charlie was but my father gave me a note and I went back to the War Office. When I handed the note addressed to Uncle Charlie to the same supercilious young fellow, he said, ‘Oh, please sit down a minute, sir!’ which was rather a change from the day before. He came back about ten minutes later and he said, ‘Colonel Elliot is in conference and unable to see you at