Deeds of heroism and bravery : $b The book of heroes and personal daring
History
Deeds of heroism and bravery : $b The book of heroes and personal daring
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
“The way I clung to my companions that day reminded me of the little
child hanging to its mother’s skirts while crossing a street. I
remember I also felt as a child does when it is going up a dark pair
of stairs and is sure something is going to reach out somewhere and
grab it. I was so intent on the clinging part that I paid very little
attention to anything else.”
Some distance off was another formation on patrol that became engaged
with a Hun formation and he saw the young flyer of one of the machines,
“one of our own,” going down in flames, but his reflections on that
incident were suddenly interrupted by a “bang” of terrifying violence
close to his ears. The tail of his machine shot up in the air and he
fell three or more hundred feet before he could recover control. It was
a shot from an “Archie” (an anti-aircraft gun), and Colonel Bishop says
of it: “That shot, strange to relate, was the closest I have ever had
from anti-aircraft fire.”
THE GERMAN “FLYING PIG”
In his highly entertaining book, _Winged Warfare_, Colonel Bishop
introduces an amusing incident as the finish of this night’s patrol. He
says:
“We continued to patrol our beat, and I was keeping my place so well
I began to look about a bit. After one of these gazing spells, I was
startled to discover that the three leading machines of our formation
were missing. Apparently they had disappeared into nothingness. I
looked around hastily, and then discovered them underneath me, diving
rapidly. I didn’t know just what they were diving at, but I dived,
too. Long before I got down to them, however, they had been in a short
engagement half a mile below me, and had succeeded in frightening off
an enemy artillery machine which had been doing wireless observation
work. It was a large white German two-seater, and I learned after we
landed that it was a well-known machine and was commonly called ‘the
flying pig.’ Our patrol leader had to put up with a lot of teasing that
night because he had attacked the ‘pig.’ It seems that it worked every
day on this part of the front, was very old, had a very bad pilot and a
very poor observer to protect him.
“It was a sort of point of honor in the squadron that the decrepit old
‘pig’ should not actually be shot down. It was considered fair sport,
however, to frighten it. Whenever our machines approached, the ‘pig’
would begin a series of clumsy turns and ludicrous maneuvers, and would
open a frightened fire from ridiculously long ranges. The observer was
a very bad shot and never succeeded in hitting any of our machines, so
attacking this particular German was always regarded more as a joke
than a serious part of warfare. The idea was only to frighten the
‘pig,’ but our patrol leader had made such a determined dash at him the
first day we went over that he never appeared again. For months the
patrol leader was chided for playing such a nasty trick upon a harmless
old Hun.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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