One Friday the 13th there was such a gale blowing that before flying had been washed out for the day eight crashes had taken place on and around the aerodrome. Two of them fatal.
At nine o'clock I was in the air. With the wind behind me, I was above the prison at Kingston in seven minutes. But though the throttle was wide open, it took me over an hour to get back to the aerodrome. With an air speed of 85 m.p.h., my ground speed was barely 10, flying into the gale. A farmer telephoned the squadron office that one of us had been up over his house for the last half hour, and seemed to be stuck up there. He suggested sending some one along to fetch him.
"Be right over with a ladder," said the flight commander. "Many thanks."
The O.C. and the flight commander of B took a couple of machines up and splitassed over the aerodrome to keep up the squadron's morale, but the F.C. crashed in landing. Warden got his before flying was called off for the day. He landed on his back. They picked up his head thirty feet behind the machine. I did not sleep so well that night. The sight of his empty bunk next to mine kept me awake.
A time honored institution at every flying camp was the Honey-Wagon. Into it, fatigue parties shovelled the overflow from the latrines, then it was dragged over to the lake and the contents dumped in. Full Corporal McGuirk had been making himself so obnoxious that the more revengeful spirits of an outgoing draft decided he needed a lesson. A grey hour before dawn he was seized, thrown on his stomach and blindfolded before he was fully awake. From the warmth of bed he was dragged nightshirted to the honey-wagon. Not far from it McGuirk smelt what was in for him.
"'Eere now, me lads, go easy, now!" he cried. "Don't throw me in! You don't 'ave to throw me in! I'll climb in!"
"Get in," said someone, "and stay in till we claxton three times. And we'll come back and drown you in it if you take that bandage off your eyes!"
Within twenty minutes we were on the train, Toronto and Leaside bound.
At Leaside a lot of old friends were waiting to welcome me. One of them, from Deseronto, was in such a hurry to greet me that instead of waiting to come in by the door he landed his machine on the roof of the mess where I had just sat down to lunch. We got him out through the hole he had knocked in the chimney, and with a broken nose, which made him very depressed as a girl had told him it was Greek.
Smiddy, with whom I had kept in touch, had just gone overseas. He had left a note for me with a mutual friend. It contained technical advice and the telephone numbers of three young ladies in Toronto. A p.s. said: 'If you land again at that girls' school we went to for breakfast, don't leave the motor reving at 400 so she'll be missing if anyone comes after you. Just move the distributor brush in the mag. They won't think of that. You can always move it back again'.
The flight sergeant at 91 Squadron ran McGuirk a close second. He gave me a brand new untested machine one morning. It revedtyping error in original. 1400 with the chocks under it, but when I took off, dropped down to 1000. Unable to get enough height to clear the trees at the end of the aerodrome, I banked and came back.
"What's the matter now?" he said.
"Losing power in the air," I said. "Can't clear the trees."
"Revingtyping error in original. 1400," he said.
"With the chocks under her," I said.
We tried again. The needle registered 1400 revolutions a minute.
"You have the wind up," he said.
"I'll take off again. Want to get in the front seat?" I said.
I did not quite clear the trees. The branches, slapping the undercarriage, made me lose flying speed. I saw I was going to crash and switched off, shoving the stick forward and hard over on the right—with opposite rudder.
We took it on the side. My belt snapped and I was thrown clear....When I got on my feet I was bleeding from the mouth.
At Leaside there was no chance of earning extra money taking the natives up for joy rides. Too much work to be done. But I needed money if I was to take out Smiddy's three friends and another, a tall darkeyed girl who knitted me a flying helmet to put under my leather one, and a muffler to match. I had a trench coat, Burberry model, purchased second-hand from a returned observer. I decided to raffle it. I made tickets out from one cent to a dollar. Everyone fell for the idea. I bought the trench coat back from the winner for $10.
Before I left Leaside I had repeated this stunt twice. I had quite a crush on the darkeyed girl, and as she had no telephone I used to fly over her house in North Leaside in the mornings and drop billets-doux in her backyard. I used to tie them to a stone or a bag of sand. It was good practice in deflection to drop them in the middle of the yard. One day the cook was there and got hit on the head. Fortunately she was a colored woman from Alabama, where the girl's mother came from, and was not hurt.
I once heard a cadet from London, Ontario, say to Corporal McGuirk of Bow Bells:
"You're from London, Corporal, so am I."
"You's from Lunnon in the bleedin' bush. Not Smokey, me lad," replied the corporal.
When I got to Beamsville I recalled these words: In the bleedin' bush. Green River, Wyoming, where I once had to stay twelve hours, was a civilized town beside Beamsville. When I was there you could not even buy a square meal, and if it had not been for some philanthropic ladies who operated a kind of rest house for pilots, where, for two pence, smoked-salmon, canned chicken and ham or bloater-paste sandwiches could be had, I would have starved to death. What was served in the mess, even the two coyotes, our mascots, refused. And yet the mess president had the same allowance as his confrères at Borden, Deseronto and Leaside. What he did with it, I often wondered. Beamsville was the toughest flying camp in Canada. With snow on the ground, we had to fly without windshields, on account of the machineguns mounted on the hood, and leather flying coats were almost unobtainable, most of them having been issued to the lady stenographers at H.Q.
"Any complaints?" asked the orderly officer in mess.
"Would you mind coming outside, sir?" I said.
I carried my plate of stew out and threw it to one of the coyotes who lived in a barrel. He sniffed at it and crawled back in the straw. There were maggots in the meat. Stewed, granted, but still maggots. The orderly officer, an R.N.A.S. man, said nothing, but he made a note, which was the last we ever heard of the matter. The mess president continued to serve us stewed maggots to the bitter end. When a money order for £10 came from my brother, in Cork on a month's leave, I took the steam-tram to Hamilton and blew myself to a dinner at the Royal Hotel. Our mess president was entertaining a party of ladies at an adjacent table. I recognized a couple of stenographers at H.Q. I was in the lobby when they left. They were wearing issue flying coats, cut down. And yet, if warm clothes and nourishment were needed in any camp, it was at Beamsville. Flying without a leather coat when snow is on the ground needs a strong constitution. I used to wrap my Toronto girl-friend's woolen muffler around my neck a couple of times and button up my Britishwarm, but you needed more defence than that against that icy wind hitting your chest at 100 m.p.h. I was soon spitting blood again.
There was a target in the form of a dummy airplane on the lake. From 2000 feet we dove on it, firing at it in bursts of ten. Three machines were detailed to this gunnery practice at the same time, flying in a circuit of a mile. The first day I turned out for this target practice the cadet behind me got impatient and began firing before I had straightened out. He riddled my fusilage to within eighteen inches of my neck. I crashed in on the shore of the lake, one side of my elevator shot away. But I sustained no more injury than a lump on my forehead where it struck the cowling, and a good shaking-up.
The instructors at Beamsville were the best flyers the R.F.C. had in Canada and were very democratic, knowing that in two weeks we would have our own pips up. I became friendly with one of them who loaned me his leather coat. The tests—all gunnery—were simple enough and soon done with: enfilade fire directed on an armored motorboat crossing the lake; exercise in clearing stoppages of the Vickers and Lewis machineguns in the air, and machinegun drill on the range. There was something fascinating about all this.
The last exercise at Beamsville was aerobatics. Aerial acrobatics, we called them in those days. An instructor took you up and rolled you to the right. You followed suit. A left roll came next; Immelmann turns after that, and then a right and left spin. During these tests we wore the Gosport telephonic head pieces, so that there was communication between the instructor and his pupil, who was in the front seat.
"Spin to the left," said my instructor.
I looked down. The ground seemed dangerously near. The altimeter registered 400 feet. I tapped it, looking back at him.
"Go ahead," he said. "Half a turn." I pulled out of the spin forty feet from the ground.
"You sure put the wind up me," I said.
He grinned.
Finished at last! With a feeling of relief we filed in through the doors of Jesse Ketchum for the last time. War news was good: The Hun in retreat, R.F.C. and French Flying Corps squadrons harassing his rearguard. Our draft was scheduled to sail in six days. In spite of the elation we all felt at the thought of going overseas, I was sorry to leave Canadian friends whose hearths had been mine while I was at the S. of M.A, and Leaside....Here in Toronto I had sat at a mother's table in the place of a fallen son; at a sister's in the place of a brother. Canada had been hard hit by the war, and smiled through it all. In these brave hospitable people I had found the virtues of British and Americans combined.
Out of a clear sky burst the news: The Armistice had been signed. We felt lost. What were we going to turn to now? The jobs many of us had left—could we get them back? Times had changed. We had become back-numbers in civilian life. In the flying corps, at least we had a bed to sleep in and clothes to our backs....Now? At H.Q. I was given $15. and a railroad pass to Los Angeles,—it was impossible to collect about $130. back flyingpay due me. I was still spitting blood, which the M.O. at Leaside said was from my intestines. At Beamsville I had not reported for sick parade, fearing to be stuck there. A friend of mine, an old R.F.C. pilot, loaned me $10. I am ashamed to say I never repaid him, for by the time I could have done so I had lost his address.
A day's run from Los Angeles the train had an hour's wait in one of those towns where only the railroad station is brickbuilt. Across the tracks I caught sight of a barber shop. I needed a haircut, and appearances are everything, even at a cost of 10 cents. The barber was a nice man. He gave me a cigarette. He looked like Will Rogers, only taller. When he had cut my hair I asked for a shampoo, but he did not know what I meant. He refused the five cent tip I offered him because I was in uniform.
It was only when I got on the train again I found out that my hopes of an effective homecoming were blasted. He had given me a Texas haircut.