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Updated: July 2, 2025
For a time our flying-men had gone out on old-fashioned "buses" primitive machines which were an easy prey to the fast-flying Fokkers who waited for them behind a screen of cloud and then "stooped" on them like hawks sure of their prey.
We did not have the machines to train them in or the instructors to fly with them. We had not the experience in wholesale training of flying-men, and yet we turned out vast numbers. It was a question of getting the men through their flying and getting them overseas as quickly as possible. We had no adequate methods of inspection of machines, and no laid-out course in flying-training.
General Trenchard, their supreme chief, believed in an aggressive policy at all costs, and was a Napoleon in this war of the skies, intolerant of timidity, not squeamish of heavy losses if the balance were tipped against the enemy. Some young flying-men complained to me bitterly that they were expected to fly or die over the German lines, whatever the weather or whatever the risks.
Midway up the face of the precipice opposite there is a sight worth seeing; a mass of coffin boards, caught in a fault in the precipice, have been lying there for untold generations, having been originally carried there by the "ancient flying-men who are now extinct."
Flying-men and officers of all kinds waiting for trains crowded the Folkestone Hotel and restaurants, where they spent two hours over luncheon and three hours over dinner, drinking red wine, talking "shop" the shop of trench-mortar units, machine-gun sections, cavalry squadrons, air-fighting, gas schools, and anti-gas schools.
"Herter's mission in Boschland isn't my business or yours; but I'm allowed to say that it was concerned with aeroplanes. There was something he had to find out, and he has found it out, or he wouldn't be back on this side of the lines. Because he hoped to be among German flying-men, he hinted to you that he might be able to do you some service.
They strolled about, poking their heads into various sheds and making conditions almost unbearable for the various flying-men who were busily preparing their machines within. A band had been engaged and was blaring away at popular tunes. All the aerodromes were draped with flags, and bunting of all kinds made the grounds gay indeed.
He was one of the pioneers of the flying-men in this country. He used to fly at country fairs in an old ramshackle bus of the Wright model a thing of sticks and canvas and wires precariously hung together. But he flew it. And he rehabilitated his finances. When war was declared he enlisted as a gob and was sent on sea duty.
There were times when our flying-men gained an absolute supremacy by greater daring there was nothing they did not dare and by equal skill. As a caution, not wasting their strength in unequal contests. It was a sound policy, and enabled them to come back again in force and hold the field for a time by powerful concentrations.
It occurred to him that he might learn where my grave was and let you know. Nothing further was in his thoughts then or until he happened to draw out a piece of unexpected information in a roundabout way. "His trick of getting across to the flying-men was smart, like all his tricks.
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