CHAPTER VII.
INTO THE BIGHT AND END OF L 53.
I.
With lustful pride the Huns called the North Sea the German Ocean, and if there was any part of this dirty sheet of water which justified the name, it was that portion known as the Bight of Heligoland.
Here before the war were the growing harbours and shipyards with which she was challenging the British supremacy of the sea; and during the war her yards which turned out submarines, her seaplane and Zeppelin bases, and the refuges of her High Seas Fleet.
Climbing into a flying-boat and crossing a hundred miles of sea, brings you to the Hook of Holland. Turning north you pass Scheveningen, which is near The Hague, where peace conferences met to mitigate the horrors of war, or do away with it entirely, and supplied the Hun with a ready-made list of forbidden atrocities—atrocities which he immediately made haste to perpetrate.
Passing up the coast you come to the Dutch islands of Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, and Ameland. Once around the corner of Terschelling Island, and you are in the Bight.
If you draw a line true north-east from this island it will touch Denmark just below the Horn Reefs, near the boundary-line between Schlesvig and Jutland, and all the water to the east of this line is the Bight, the particular property, more or less, during the war, of the Hun seaplanes, the Zeppelins, and the German Navy.
Going along the coast from Terschelling into the Bight you find the island of Borkum, in the mouth of the Ems river. The Hun seaplane pilots stationed here carried out reconnaissance and bombing patrols out to the Dogger Banks and down to the Dutch coast. A short distance up the Ems is Emden, one of the bases from which the pirate Fritz sallied forth to do his dirty work.
Continuing, you pass the island of Norderney with its seaplane station, and reach the Jade river, with Wilhelmshaven, an important seaplane and submarine base. In the angle of the coast are the Zeppelin sheds of Wittmundshaven. Farther on is the Weser river, with Vagesack and Bremen, which spawned out the Undersea-boats, and the Zeppelin base of Ahlhorn.
Turning north you find the Zeppelin sheds of Nordholz, and reach Cuxhaven, the place made famous by the celebrated raid of the R.N.A.S. early in the war. Here in the Elbe is Brunsbuttel, a submarine base, on the North Sea end of the Kiel Canal, and farther up the river is Hamburg, where once upon a time German shipowners dreamed dreams of possessing the maritime supremacy of the world.
Some thirty miles outside the coast, and protecting the mouth of the Elbe, you come across the fortified island of Heligoland, with its fine artificial harbour for war vessels, its submarine base, and its seaplane station. The guns of Heligoland were of great range, and threw a tremendous weight of metal, and could prevent our surface ships from approaching within a radius of twenty miles.
I was informed by a Royal Naval Air Service officer, who had a good deal to do with the successful attack on Zeebrugge and Ostend, that he had a plan to destroy the garrison of Heligoland by means of poison gas and an attack under smoke-screens, but that those in authority considered the scheme too barbarous, as everybody on the island would have perished.
Going north from Heligoland you come to Sylt Island, with its seaplane base, and inside on the mainland the Zeppelin sheds of Tondern, destroyed by naval aeroplanes flown from the deck of H.M.S. Furious. Just north of Sylt you pass out of the Bight near the Horn Reefs.
So the Bight was the hotbed of all German naval schemes, and they ploughed it with the keels of their ships, and sowed it with mines, and the British Navy could not follow the Hun fleet inside or prevent their submarines coming out. The British Navy, as soon as they could collect sufficient mines, and there was a great shortage of mines in the first years of the war, mined the Germans in their turn, until the Hun surface ships and submarines had finally to make their way out behind a row of mine-sweepers.
Flying-boat pilots from England could get into the Bight, but it was a long way away, and they could not get in far enough or stay long enough to do very useful work. So Colonel Porte, at Felixstowe, devised the towing-lighters. These lighters were little flat-bottomed steel barges, with hydroplane bottoms, on which the flying-boats could crawl up. They could be towed, with the boats in place, by a destroyer at thirty knots.
The idea was to put flying-boats on the lighters, tow them across to the Bight behind destroyers, and slip them into the water. The boats, not having first to cross the North Sea, would have enough petrol to carry out long reconnaissance and return to England.
Early in 1918 the Navy was preparing the pleasant little surprise for the Huns at Zeebrugge and Ostend. While the assault was in progress it was essential that the ships engaged in the attack should not be fallen upon by the enemy from the rear. Therefore their north flank was to be protected by the Harwich Light Forces cruising off Holland.
But besides this, the Navy people wanted to know what chance there was of the German Fleet coming out. Under ordinary circumstances the Huns would have to go a long way round, because of our mine-fields; but they might have got wind of the show, and be sweeping a short-cut passage through them, to be used by a strong striking force.
Our surface ships could not of course go in for the information, the submarines had done all that they could, airships were out of the question because of Hun seaplanes, so the flying-boats were told to do the job.
Thus it came about that the first two lighter trips were carried out in the Bight.
II.
At noon on March 2 we were ordered to prepare to go into the Bight.
I chose the three best machines out of the War Flight string of nine boats, and the men groomed them to a finish.
Everything that was put on board was carefully weighed and the total weight checked to a nicety, so as to make certain that the pilots could get off in the open sea.
Norman A. Magor, a Canadian from Montreal, was chosen to lead the flight. He was a fine pilot. He had taken a boat from Felixstowe to Dunkirk, when the float seaplane pilots there had packed up because of the deadliness of the Hun fliers. While there he destroyed the German submarine U-C 72 just off Zeebrugge. Later on while on patrol from Felixstowe, in a fight against overwhelming odds, his boat was shot down in flames. He was a gallant gentleman.
Lighter with Flying-boat being towed in heavy sea.
In the evening, as the light was fading, the three boats were rolled out on the concrete, an electric heater, to keep the oil warm, was clipped on beneath each engine, and thick padded covers fitted, to keep the heat in, so that the engines would start easily. They were shoved down the slipway and turned over to the Old Man of the Sea.
Jumbo was in his element. His motor-boats seized the flying-boats as they touched the water and towed them to the sterns of their appointed lighters, which were lying at buoys at the ends of the slipways. The five men in the crew of each lighter had flooded the water-tanks in the sterns, and the boats were quickly floated into their cradles, hauled up by a winch into position and secured. With a hiss the compressed air was turned into the tanks, the water was blown out, and the lighters rose into towing trim.
Now the pilots carrying their flying gear assembled on the slipway. I checked the crews over and asked if everybody was ready. On this a great cry arose from Jumbo—he had forgotten his provisions, and in answer to the cry we saw men staggering down the concrete under the weight of huge boxes. The Old Man of the Sea never went on an expedition without a good supply of food.
We were ready.
The night was still, not a breath of air was stirring, and a light haze hung over the oily-smooth surface of the harbour.
Heralded by the mournful wail of a syren three destroyers loomed up beside the lighters. They had slipped across the harbour without their sharp sheerwaters raising a ripple. Jumbo leaped into activity. The noisy exhausts of three motor-boats shattered the silence, we all found ourselves bumped on board, and in two minutes the lighters were off their buoys and at the sterns of their respective destroyers.
I was going out in the leading destroyer to watch the evolution, and Jumbo was going out on the leading lighter.
As we fetched up at our destroyer she switched on a yard-arm group, lighting up the flying-boat and her own stern with the waiting men. Jumbo sprang on board the lighter and received the wire hawser, making it fast to the towing bollards. A waterproof electric cable was passed to carry the current for the electric heaters.
The lighter, swinging with the tide, tried to put one of the wings of the flying-boat on board the destroyer, but the wing was successfully fended off by an active bluejacket, with a pudding-bag on the end of a boat-hook, a weapon which had been prepared for just such an emergency. The pudding-bag was a piece of cloth stuffed with soft odds and ends, fastened to the business end of the boat-hook to prevent any injury to the planes.
In the meantime the motor-boat ran alongside the destroyer with the flying crew, and we climbed on board. As we landed on the deck her syren gave a short blast, the yard-arm group was extinguished, and she went ahead. I looked astern and could just see the other two destroyers with their lighters following. From the time of leaving the slipway five minutes had not elapsed.
As we passed out between the guardships into the expectant darkness of the North Sea the tow was lengthened, and I went up on the bridge.
Behind us on the lighter were Jumbo and his four men, settling down for the night in the cramped forecastle, in which were two bunks, an electric heater tapped off the main cable, and a big box of provisions.
Once outside our mine-fields we were picked up by the covering force of light cruisers and destroyers, and we started across for the Texel at eighteen knots. Fascinated by the brooding mystery of the darkness and the rush through the black water at a pace which seemed greater than the speed of a flying-boat, I spent most of the night on the bridge, being comforted at intervals with cocoa, excellent cocoa which can only be had on board ship. But before daybreak I snatched two hours' sleep in Number One's bunk.
I had apparently just closed my eyes when I was turned out by a message that I was wanted on the bridge. As I climbed the iron ladder the unearthly light of the false dawn was filtering through the darkness. Far away on the port bow I saw the light cruisers, grey ships barely discernible on a grey sea.
A signal had come through to stand by.
There was a round wind of ten knots blowing, ruffling the surface of the water. It promised to be a fine morning for flying.
We came upon some fishing smacks and then the Haaks light-ship, black and gaunt against the light in the east, and strange and unfamiliar when seen for the first time from the level of the water. Here the whole flotilla turned south for ten miles, and at six o'clock the signal for zero time was received.
Jumbo, on the lighter, had the covers stripped from the engines and the heaters removed. At the same time the tow was shortened and Magor and Potter and the two ratings were transferred. They started the engines of the flying-boat, tested them full out, and then throttled them down until they were just ticking over. Webster and Fallon in the second boat, and Clayton and Barker in the third boat, had also tested their engines.
When the correct time had elapsed the engines of the flying-boats were stopped, the destroyers slowed down to three knots, and the boats were slid off the lighters backwards into the water. The destroyers made a right-hand turn and drew away from them.
The warships formed a four-mile circle, travelling at speed in case an Undersea-boat was lurking about. In the centre, bobbing up and down on the water, were the three boats, looking incredibly small. Presently I saw white water breaking beneath their bows, they ran along the water, bucketing a bit in the swells created by the ships, and took to the air.
Getting into formation they headed in a north-easterly direction and gradually diminished in size until they were no more than specks in the sky.
Then I lost sight of them.
When he had got off Terschelling, Magor swung his formation east and went into the Bight. They photographed all mine-sweepers and surface craft they met and jotted their position on the chart. At Borkum they ran into two two-seater Hun seaplanes.
Magor crashed down on the tail of the first seaplane and Potter filled it with lead from his machine-gun. It burst into flames, nose-dived into the water, and a pennant of black smoke, ever increasing in volume, tailed off down wind.
Clayton fell upon the second seaplane, his gunner failed to get a burst home, and the fleeing Hun was chased to Borkum, where he landed behind the island close to a gunboat.
But the Hun observer in the seaplane Magor brought down had riddled the flying-boat with bullets. Great gashes were torn in the petrol tanks, fortunately above the level of the liquid, and a water-pipe on the port engine was pierced.
Magor shut down that engine and flew on the other.
The other two boats joined him and the formation proceeded on the appointed courses, taking photographs and making notes.
In the meantime Anderson, Magor's engineer, stripped off his leather flying-coat and climbed out on the wing to the damaged engine. He was passing through the air at sixty knots. It whipped his clothing against his arms and legs, making them difficult to move; it tried to wrench his tools and materials from his hands, and would have blown him overboard had he relaxed his vigilance. For one hour, an hour completely filled with sixty long minutes, he fought with the air and completed the repair.
Magor, when he could start up his second engine, was two hundred miles from Felixstowe, and had completed his reconnaissance, so he turned the formation for home, crossed the North Sea, and landed in the harbour at half-past twelve o'clock.
Nineteen days later the second lighter trip was sent into the Bight.
Tiny Galpin and Rhys Davis were leading, Webster and Tees were in the second boat, and Barker and Galvayne were in the third. The latter pilot was killed later when the pilots of four boats attacked fifteen Huns off Terschelling, and put them to flight.
Tiny led his flight into the Bight, and also encountered two enemy seaplanes. But these pilots were not having any. They dropped their bombs and made off inland at high speed.
He met a flotilla of mine-sweepers who fired shells at him. So he and the other two pilots swooped down and swept the decks with machine-gun fire. When the mine-sweeper first opened fire the wireless operator seized his Aldis lamp and began signalling furiously to one of the ships. Tiny, reaching out, pulled him away from the side and demanded an explanation. The operator wrote on his pad—
"Sir, he was making e's to me."
He had not realised they were enemy craft, and thought that the quick flash of the gun was the light of a signal-lamp with which somebody was making a series of e's to him, the calling-up signal.
After sweeping around in the Bight as requisite, Tiny headed his formation for home. But now Webster's engines developed trouble, and he had to land three times to make repairs before the coast of England was sighted.
As a result of these two reconnaissances it was decided that the Huns were not making any serious effort to sweep a short-cut channel through our mine-fields, so they were not aware of the show to be staged at Zeebrugge and Ostend. The pilots engaged in the operation received a letter of appreciation from the Lords of the Admiralty.
III.
Illustrating the work of the lighters, although the incident did not take place until late in 1918, there is the yarn about Zeppelin L 53.
Many subsequent lighter trips were attended by this Zeppelin. Its crew watched the evolution from a great height. The pilots of the flying-boats when slipped from their lighters were unable to get at the airship, as they were heavily laden with petrol. Her skipper, Commander Proells, kept well out of range of the anti-aircraft guns of the cruisers, and he thought himself safe enough.
But the L 53 annoyed Colonel Samson, D.S.O., who at this time was Officer Commanding No. 4 Group, R.A.F., and he had a thirty-foot deck made to fit on one of the towing lighters, and on this, held in place with a quick release gear, he put a Camel aeroplane, a single-seated fighter land-machine with great speed and climb.
On the first experiment, and while being towed by a destroyer at thirty knots, Colonel Samson tried to take the Camel off the lighter. But the deck was not at the right angle and the machine stalled off, nose-dived into the water, the lighter passing over the pilot and aeroplane. Both were fished out. Undeterred by this mishap he had the deck altered, and on the second trial it proved satisfactory, the aeroplane getting away in good style.
It was decided to have a go at the Zeppelin on the next lighter trip, and Cully, a Canadian, one of the old R.N.A.S. pilots, was chosen for the job and was told to stand by.
On August 11 a little show was to be staged in the Bight.
The Harwich light cruisers were to carry six coastal motor-boats to a position off Terschelling Island. Here they would be dropped into the water and sent well into the Bight over the mine-fields to torpedo any mine-sweepers and other surface craft, and collect if possible information which would make glad the heart of the Admiralty Intelligence Department.
About this department an American who had occasion to deal with them said—
"That gang is one that delivers the goods every time. I don't believe the boys in the U.S.A. can teach them anything. They look outside like an out-of-date, low-pressure, single-cylinder show, but inside, believe me, customer, they're a nickel-plated, triple-expansion, consume-their-own-smoke outfit, working above the licensed pressure and with a nigger on the safety-valve."
The show was to be all the same as putting in ferrets. The coastal motor-boats were small hydroplanes filled full of big engines and could do forty knots full out. They carried a torpedo on their stern and a machine-gun mounted in the cockpit. Three flying-boats on lighters were to accompany the cruisers. They were to get off and keep in touch with the C.M.B.'s to direct them to enemy craft and lead them safely back to the ships, as owing to their liveliness on a rough sea their compasses were not of much value. The Camel was to go along on the lighter as a surprise packet for Old Man Zeppelin. Three more flying-boats were to leave Yarmouth and pick up the cruisers at Terschelling.
At daybreak on the morning appointed the whole circus was on the job.
At six o'clock the towing hawsers of the lighters were shortened and the crews of the flying-boats and Cully were put on board their respective machines. The three flying-boats were slipped, but their pilots could not get them off the water owing to a long swell, the absence of wind, and a heavy overload of petrol and armament. They were taken up on the lighters again.
But the light cruisers dropped the C.M.B.'s. They immediately dug out towards the Bight at top speed, flinging the tops of the rollers into spray far on each side of them, so that it looked as though they were supported on white and gleaming wings.
The three flying-boats from Yarmouth boomed up, and on receiving the order started on after the C.M.B.'s.
Cully's Camel on way to Terschelling.
The flotilla then cruised off Terschelling until fifteen minutes after eight o'clock, when the flagship signalled to the destroyer towing the Camel lighter that the L 53 had been sighted.
Immediately Cully saw the Zeppelin glistening in the sunlight.
It was about thirty miles away, at a height of ten thousand feet.
It looked about as big as his little finger.
He climbed into the cockpit of his machine. The propeller was swung. He tested the rotary engine.
When the towing destroyer had got up to thirty knots, he ran his engine full out, slipped the quick release, ran along the lighter deck only five feet, and took to the air.
At forty-one minutes after eight o'clock he started to climb towards Commander Proells' airship at a speed of fifty-two miles an hour.
In the meantime the crews of the Yarmouth flying-boats had sighted the Zeppelin. Owing to some misunderstanding they returned to the light cruisers to report, and received an order to return to their base.
When the flying-boats were just out of sight on the homeward journey, fifteen Hun monoplanes appeared in the sky. They had been summoned from Borkum by the Zeppelin with wireless. They swept over the flotilla, dropping bombs on the ships, which replied by filling the surrounding atmosphere with bursting shells. It was a lively five minutes. With all the bombs that were dropped no hit was registered on a ship, but a shell found a monoplane and brought it down. At this, and having unloaded all their bombs, the fourteen Huns withdrew.
On their way back to Borkum the monoplanes met the C.M.B.'s. The motor-boats separated and ran along at forty knots, twisting, turning, doubling. But the Huns were all over them, firing into the thin shells of the structures streams of machine-gun bullets. The crews of the boats replied with their machine-guns. But it was a fight against heavy odds.
The engine of one boat was knocked out by a bullet. It stopped. The Hun monoplanes swooped down like gulls on a fish. The pilots tore the boat to pieces with bullets and it began to sink. But another C.M.B. hurled itself alongside and took off all the crew, wounded and unwounded.
Three C.M.B.'s in all were sunk, their crews being taken off under the greatest difficulties and dangers by the crews of the three surviving boats, and after a long contest the crews of these boats won their way to Holland, where they were interned.
During this time Cully in the Camel had been climbing steadily, all unaware of the fighting going on below him. He climbed the first thirteen thousand feet in twenty minutes. He had edged in towards the Dutch coast and was now between the coast and the Zeppelin and hidden from her crew by the sun.
Commander Proells had also been climbing, and he was still above Cully. His airship was of the type known as the height-climbing 50's, the last word in construction, six hundred and forty feet long, with five engines, and containing two million cubic feet of inflammable gas.
The L 53 had all this time been broadside on to Cully. He now saw her turn end on. He thought that he had been sighted by her crew, and that her Commander had turned out to sea away from him. He swung the nose of the Camel directly towards her and continued to climb. But he saw that the great airship was growing bigger and bigger. He realised at last that she was heading straight for him.
The two aircraft were closing with tremendous rapidity.
Cully was at eighteen thousand feet.
Commander Proells was at nineteen thousand feet.
He felt the controls of the Camel get sloppy and knew he could get it to climb no higher.
If Commander Proells could get up another couple of hundred feet he could not attack him with any chance of success.
But the crew of the great Zeppelin apparently did not see the tiny midge in the sun, for they held on their course at the same height.
At forty-one minutes after nine o'clock, one hour after Cully had left the lighter in the Camel, the two machines met head on, the airship only two hundred feet above the aeroplane.
Cully pulled back his controls and stalled his machine until the Camel was almost standing on its tail.
As the bow of the Zeppelin came into his sight he started both Lewis guns. The port gun jammed after fifteen rounds. But the other gun ran through its tray of ninety-seven rounds.
Cully looking through his telescopic sight, saw the flaming incendiary bullets darting into the dark belly of the airship.
He also saw a side of one of the four gondolas, a propeller flapping slowly around, and was three-quarters of the way down the body of the airship when his second gun stopped owing to the lack of ammunition.
So intent was he on the job that he did not know whether he was being fired at or not, but rather thought he was not.
With the stopping of his second gun he dived away to the right, looking back over his shoulder. The Zeppelin was going strong. It appeared to be undamaged. He had failed.
And then he saw three little bursts of flames.
They were on the envelope about sixty feet apart, and as he watched the flames increased in size with terrible rapidity.
Satisfied, he turned back to his instruments and got the Camel, which had been panicking all over the shop, in hand.
When he looked again L 53 was slowly falling, burning furiously at the bow.
The nose bent down and broke off.
A black bundle in flames shot past him. It was one of the crew who had jumped out of a gondola. He had a parachute and was the only survivor, being picked up by a Dutch vessel.
The aluminium skeleton of the bow of the Zeppelin was now fully exposed. But the fabric of the tail was still smoking and burning. She was standing vertically upright, nose down, and was falling rapidly below him with ever-increasing momentum.
Then he could see her no more because of the smoke.
As L 53 fell she left behind her a column of light blue smoke. He noticed that it was blown into the shape of a huge question mark.
Having finished the Zeppelin, Cully suddenly awoke to the need of looking out for himself. He flew straight to the Dutch coast, went south until he arrived at the Texel, and then went out to the rendezvous at Terschelling Bank. Here, at six thousand feet, there were patchy clouds between him and the water, and he could see no destroyers.
His pressure petrol tank ran out.
He switched over to the emergency gravity tank. It contained only enough petrol for twenty minutes, not nearly enough for him to get back safely to the Dutch coast.
Looking down, he saw a providential Dutch fishing boat, and decided to land beside it. As he dived down he saw two destroyers come out from under the edge of a cloud. And then he saw the whole flotilla.
Looping and rolling over the fleet to relieve his pent-up feelings, he picked up his destroyer with the lighter, fired a light as a signal, and landed in front of her. He was picked up, the Camel was hoisted on the lighter, and the flotilla started back for Harwich.
IV.
Here end the yarns about the beginnings and first year of the War Flight. On the 12th of April I began to turn over the little show to my successor, and took up work under the Technical Department, a shore job.
The high lights in the picture alone have been painted in, the grilling hours of monotonous and apparently unproductive patrol put in by the pilots over that grim and unfriendly graveyard of ships, the North Sea, have been left out. Results only have been more or less fully presented, the loyal and often heartbreaking work of the ratings in the sheds has not even been sketched. But the hard and the soft, the comedy and the tragedy, are now in the past, and it is out of such stuff, seemingly raw and grey at the time, that Romance is made.
The German submarines, defeated and surrendered, have come streaming in through the guardships, up past the slipways, their crews on deck, and the white ensign flying above them, and are lying rusting and rotting, huddled together, in "Submarine Trot" off Parkeston, in Harwich harbour.
New and better flying-boats than we used have been built. And Old '61, her day done, has been dismantled and broken up. But glance down the bare bones of her career.
| Hours of patrol work | 300 |
| Total flying time | 368 |
Also the men of the War Flight are mostly back in civilian life.
They were nearly all 1914 and 1915 men, competent "tradesmen," cheerfully working overtime at their trades for a small wage, while men outside, absolutely free from discipline, were making big money for similar work. Not that the men were working for the money in it. They worked to down the Hun. But the point is mentioned because the high cost of living hit many of these service men very hard.
The officers are now scattered to the four corners of the earth, such as are still alive, in South Africa, Ceylon, Canada, South America, and the United States. There are few of them remaining in the new service. As required by the nature of the work, they were nearly all a bit older than the usual run of aeroplane pilots, and a peace time service made no appeal.
For "them as likes figures" the work they did in twelve months may be boiled down to—
| 8 | average number of boats a month: |
| 190 | flying days. |
| 605 | patrols carried out. |
| 105,397 | nautical miles flown. |
| 47 | enemy submarines sighted. |
| 25 | enemy submarines bombed. |
| 1 | Zeppelin destroyed. |
Also, at this time, the Service we belonged to and loved came to an untimely end, and although the War Flight carried on until the Armistice, and did great work under the Royal Air Force, the rose by another name did not smell as sweet.
On the last day of March there was a dinner given by the Mess to Rear-Admiral Cayley, C.B. He was a staunch friend of the Station, and had been in charge of operations from Harwich. But even he was leaving to take up new duties.
At this dinner many admirable speeches were made, both in style and substance, encouraging the Royal Naval Air Service pilots to play the game, and whole-heartedly turn over their allegiance to the new service that was being born at midnight—a service which many of the active service men felt might open the door for intrigue and unrest, and quick and unfortunate changes in command and policy, at a time when all hands should be busy mopping up the Hun.
But the Royal Naval Air Service was passing away.
It was the older of the two British flying services, having its beginnings in 1910. It had never been noted for its red-tape methods, its ingenuity in creating forms to be filled in, or the number of ground personnel required to administer it. But the debt which the nation owes to it for the development of engines and efficient aircraft, no less than for its operations on land and sea over the whole world, has hardly been appreciated. For at one time, without the pilots developed under its traditions and the machines and engines developed by its foresight, things would have gone hard with our arms in France.
It was a small service that had done great things. But its work was not appreciated, as it followed the traditions of its parent, and adopted, not without a struggle it is true, the virtue of silence. And now its people were asked to give up the legends about the mighty pilots who had created the service, the traditions which had accumulated so rapidly in war time, the uniform and routine which so well fitted their work, the comradeship which had permeated the personnel owing to its limited number, and the name which numberless brave men had laid down their lives to make honourable.
And bitterest pill of all, the Navy, our natural parent, was willing we should be put under the guardianship of an unknown and alien stepmother.
At this dinner the toast to the King was drunk in the mess sitting for the last time.
Blow this khaki! I feel hardly human.