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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Group Captain Gilbert Insall holds a unique record: he is the only person to have both won a Victoria Cross and escaped successfully from a German prisoner of war camp during the First World War. The Madness of Courage describes how, when forced down by engine damage after destroying a German fighter, Gilbert ignored intensive shelling in order to repair his aircraft and return to base. But a few weeks later, he was shot down and captured. And thus began a distinguished career in prison breaking. He tunnelled out of Heidelberg prison camp and later hid among boxes on a horse-drawn cart to get away from Crefeld, each time being recaptured. Then, in Ströhen, Gilbert and several companions concealed themselves in a claustrophobically small space they had excavated under the floor of the bathhouse. They remained there for seventeen hours, while a fruitless search for them was carried out, and eventually emerged and successfully reached Holland. Meticulously told by Gilbert's great-nephew, the critically acclaimed intelligence historian Tony Insall, The Madness of Courage is a gripping true story about a remarkable man at a time before the Geneva Convention was signed, when conditions for prisoners of war were often appalling and the British War Office did little to help prisoners escape. Instead, Gilbert's family, assisted by French intelligence, gave him the support he needed to break out of captivity in an extraordinary feat of bravery, resilience and ingenuity.
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i“This is a most extraordinary story. The intensity of Gilbert Insall’s courage – or madness – is impossible to exaggerate. His story reads like a relentless thriller. I had no idea that such events had happened or were even possible.”
Michael Dobbs, bestselling author of House of Cards
“This vivid and insightful book sheds new light on the First World War through the story of a remarkable character.”
Gordon Corera, BBC correspondent
“The first, pathbreaking and brilliantly researched biography of the only man ever to have both won the Victoria Cross and escaped from a German prisoner of war camp in the First World War.”
Professor Christopher Andrew, former official historian of MI5 and honorary air commodore of 7006 Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force
“A fascinating, inspiring true account of gallantry over the French battlefields and under a prisoner of war camp in an era of selfless courage.”
Nigel West, intelligence historianii
“This book makes an important contribution to intelligence and military history while telling the exciting story of the courageous exploits of Gilbert Insall and his attempts, ultimately successful, to escape from German prison camps during the First World War. It reveals fascinating new details of the ingenuity displayed both by individuals and by intelligence organisations still taking early shape in providing information and practical help to prisoners and their families.”
Gill Bennett, intelligence historian
“This is not just a fascinating account of an extraordinarily brave man and his determination to return to active duty; it is a groundbreaking account of prisoner of war escapes during the First World War.”
Michael Smith, author of The Secrets of Station X
“Tony Insall’s masterful and eminently readable book is more than a historical account; it offers us all a source of inspiration.”
Air Marshal Sir Christopher Harper, former director general of the NATO International Military Staff
iii
vTo my grandfather Jack, a respected historian of early aviation, whose work inspired me to write this book vi
Contents
Map of Germany in 1914
x
Foreword
It is my distinct honour to introduce Tony Insall’s book about his great-uncle, Group Captain Gilbert Stuart Martin Insall VC MC. This is a story of unparalleled bravery, talent and seemingly indefatigable determination, and it serves as a timeless inspiration to us all.
Those who have ever had the privilege of serving in the military will know that we still strive to build on the foundations laid by pioneers like Insall. The challenges faced by today’s service members have evolved considerably, and the technology associated with warfighting would probably be unrecognisable to him. However, the core values of courage, integrity and excellence associated with military service remain unchanged.
Insall’s journey began in the nascent days of aviation, a period marked by both innovation and peril. His actions during the First World War, particularly on that remarkable day in November 1915, exemplify incredible levels of bravery and determination. He engaged an enemy aircraft, forced it down and then, with his own machine damaged and out of fuel, landed between trenches on the front line. Enduring constant bombardment, he supervised the xiirepair of his aircraft under the cover of darkness so that he could fly it home the following day. This is not just a tale of derring-do; the heroism demonstrated by Insall earned him the Victoria Cross (VC), the United Kingdom’s highest military decoration awarded for valour in the face of the enemy.
But Insall’s bravery did not end there. Captured later in the war, he was held as a prisoner of war in a succession of prison camps. He tunnelled out of Heidelberg, and then concealed himself on a horse-drawn cart to get away from Crefeld. After concealing himself in a cramped space under a washroom floor, his daring escape from Ströhen on his third attempt in August 1917 and subsequent return to service further underscored his resilience and unwavering commitment to duty. For his persistent efforts to escape, he was awarded the Military Cross (MC). Remaining in the Royal Air Force and rising to the rank of group captain, Insall’s career spanned both World Wars. As you will read, his legacy is not just in the medals he earned but in the example that his life story sets for future generations.
I would also contend that Insall’s VC and MC each represent a different aspect of valour. Pursuing and shooting down an enemy aircraft, in the most challenging of conditions, is arguably ‘hot-blooded’ courage; it demands skill and immediate, decisive action while under fire. Planning and executing an escape from a prisoner of war camp, on the other hand, requires patience, ingenuity, guile and an unwavering will to overcome prolonged adversity. Both forms of bravery are, however, rooted in the same fundamental qualities: mettle, grit, resilience and steadfast commitment to duty. The title of this book is TheMadnessofCourage. Mischievously, I cannot help but wonder whether some form of ‘madness’ is, indeed, also a prerequisite? xiii
During my own career, I had the privilege of commanding No. 41(F) Squadron, flying the Jaguar aircraft; later I also commanded the Jaguar force at RAF Coltishall, and No. 1 Group. I participated in active operations over Bosnia–Herzegovina and northern Iraq and served in senior NATO appointments, including as the UK Military Representative to NATO and Director General of NATO’s International Military Staff. These experiences certainly reinforced my belief in the enduring values of honesty, integrity and excellence that Gilbert Insall so vividly embodied.
That said, while flying a Jaguar on operations over northern Iraq, I experienced being shot at – but not hit – by hostile anti-aircraft artillery. Without making light of the encounter, I cannot imagine that seeing soundless expanding black cotton wool balls within 100 metres of a pressurised, air-conditioned cockpit was anything like the sensation of being under fire while in the freezing cold environment of an open-cockpit Vickers Gunbus. Nonetheless, modern-day acts of valour, such as those displayed daily by our military personnel in current conflicts, do echo the bravery of Insall and his contemporaries. Whether it is flying missions over hostile territory, coordinating evacuations in genuinely perilous circumstances, conducting rescue missions on land or at sea or delivering humanitarian aid to conflict zones, we should all be grateful that their spirit of patriotism, service and sacrifice stays constant.
Quite rightly, a full account of the actions that led to Gilbert Insall’s being awarded the Victoria Cross is displayed on a history board in the entrance to No. XI(F) Squadron – which now flies Typhoon aircraft – at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. But this story now deserves to be told far more widely. Tony Insall’s masterful and eminently readable book is more than a historical account; it offers us all a source of inspiration. It reminds us that the qualities that xivmark out greatness – bravery, skill, determination and a relentless pursuit of excellence – are timeless. As you read about Gilbert Insall’s remarkable accomplishments, I hope that you will be inspired to reach new heights in your own endeavours, in whatever course of life you have chosen.
SirChristopherHarperKBEMAFRAeSAirMarshal(Ret’d)
Chapter 1
A mad old bugger
Group Captain Gilbert Insall, my great-uncle, holds a unique record. He is the only person to have both won a Victoria Cross and escaped successfully from a German prisoner of war camp during the First World War.* Gilbert trained as a pilot and was posted to 11 Squadron in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), in which my grandfather Jack also served as an observer. Gilbert won his VC in November 1915. He was involved in combat with a German fighter, which he shot down. After descending to a low level to drop a bomb and ensure its destruction, his own engine was damaged and he was obliged to make a forced landing just behind the French front line. Ignoring intensive German shelling, he oversaw repairs to his aircraft overnight and took off – again 2under heavy fire – and returned to base the following morning. A few weeks later, after an encounter with another German aircraft in which he was quite badly wounded by anti-aircraft shrapnel, he was shot down and captured.
After three months in hospital, he was sent to a series of prison camps. Once he had recovered from his injury and, later in September 1916, from an operation for acute peritonitis performed without anaesthetic (he was told that this was due to the scarcity of drugs in Germany, which precluded their use for prisoners1), he began to plan an escape. All of his attempts required at least some temporary confinement in unpleasantly constricted areas. His first, at Heidelberg, was through a tunnel more than forty yards long, which required the removal and disposal or concealment of some five tons of earth. For the second, from Crefeld,† near Düsseldorf, he and Captain William Morritt hid in a space which had been created among piles of boxes on a cart transporting prisoners’ luggage to storage. It was very cramped and Morritt was obliged to kneel on Gilbert’s head for much of the journey, before they slipped unobtrusively off the cart and attempted to get away from the area. After being transferred to Ströhen, Gilbert and several companions concealed themselves in a claustrophobically small space they had excavated under the floor of the bathhouse (which was just outside the camp perimeter) and remained there for seventeen hours, enduring the heat of a summer’s day while a fruitless search for them was carried out. They eventually emerged early the following morning and reached Holland a few days later in September 1917.
3But this is not just a story about Gilbert, for he could not have managed to plan and execute his escapes without assistance from his family, then based in Paris. In the first years of conflict, the War Office provided no assistance or advice to servicemen to help them prepare for the consequences of capture. And, before the beginning of 1917, there was no British organisation to provide escaping equipment or advice either. So, prisoners wanting to escape had no official support. Fortunately, in some cases, families were able to provide help. My family played a significant role and found some clever ways of helping Gilbert once they managed to work out ways of communicating safely with each other without attracting the attention of German censors. They were able to provide nearly all the escaping equipment which he required, mainly maps, files and compasses – though also, remarkably and with French assistance, a large pair of wire cutters, which were successfully smuggled in to him. But that was not all. Gilbert’s father (another Gilbert, so hereafter called Gilbert senior) was also active in lobbying officialdom on his behalf and in raising public awareness about some of the harsh conditions in which prisoners were held and how they were being punished. For example, when Gilbert was sentenced to five months in solitary confinement (in a cell measuring nine feet by six feet, with restricted light), Gilbert senior drew attention to it by writing to TheTimes. His complaint attracted plenty of attention and sympathetic comment. Gilbert senior also arranged for questions to be asked in Parliament and wrote repeatedly to the Foreign Office Prisoners of War Department. This encouraged others to do the same. It was against this background that the government decided to negotiate with Germany over changes to the treatment of prisoners, leading to the Hague Agreement of July 1917, whereby such extreme punishments were discontinued. As a result, Gilbert was spared having to 4serve most of the five-month sentence in solitary he had received for his escape from Heidelberg. There were a few other improvements too which made life as a prisoner a little more tolerable.
Conditions in German prison camps during the First World War were different from those in the Second, not least because the Geneva Convention had not by then been signed. (Though that certainly did not prevent the harsh treatment of, as well as some serious crimes being committed against, prisoners during the Second World War.) Two Hague Conventions were negotiated in 1899 and 1907, but they were not effective and both sides tended to interpret or violate them as they saw fit – for example, over the use of gas as a chemical weapon. But there’s no doubt that conditions in German camps were considerably worse than those in the UK. The American Deputy Red Cross Commissioner to Switzerland, Carl Dennett, wrote of the treatment of Allied prisoners of war (PoWs): ‘Germany … notoriously failed even to provide them with the necessities of life, and it is a fact beyond dispute that the ravages of disease, including tuberculosis, due to malnutrition, and even starvation, have killed tens of thousands of prisoners in the hands of the German military forces.’2
Prisoners were given poor and inadequate food, and all but officers were required to work, sometimes in agriculture but also in salt and coal mines and similar places in appalling conditions – and sometimes dangerously close to the front lines. Overall, 11,147 British prisoners are officially listed as having died in captivity, but the real figure is estimated to be significantly more than that.3 French figures were higher still.
Gradually, towards the end of the war, the War Office began to realise the advantages which could be gained from helping prisoners 5to escape – not just in terms of the disruption which escaping prisoners could cause to their German captors but also in securing the return of trained, skilled fighting manpower. There could also be propaganda value, too. The main British intelligence organisations of that period – GHQ1b and MI1c (which later became known as the Secret Intelligence Service, SIS, or MI6) both began at the end of 1916 to develop sections which concentrated on helping prisoners of war. (As will be described in Chapter 8, the French had already started to do so, with some effect, rather earlier.) MI1a also played a role, though it was more analytical than operational. My family, and in particular my grandfather Jack, developed contacts with these organisations and exchanged information with them about escaping activities. However, family links with Gilbert were so well developed that they were in a position to decline an offer of assistance from MI1c in July 1917, a few weeks before Gilbert succeeded in getting out of Ströhen. They had a very productive relationship with the French intelligence service as well. Indeed, it was actually the French who gave them the most practical assistance.
Very little is known about the work of these escape sections. Few documents have survived. In 1919, the War Office instructed officers in the Intelligence Corps to burn nearly all their files. The papers which survived that weeding were mostly destroyed in the Blitz.4 However, it has been possible to discover hitherto unpublished material about some of the early activities of these sections, as well as my family’s links with them. The British organisations were operating on a fairly small scale and, since they only began their work in the later part of the war, did not have much opportunity to achieve significant results. Nonetheless, some of those who had been in MI1a or who had successfully escaped played a 6significant role‡ when a reconstituted MI1a was in the late autumn of 1939 renamed and turned into what became the much larger, better-known and considerably more effective organisation MI9.5 It is estimated that some 23,000 prisoners of war, assisted by MI9 and its American counterpart MIS-X, managed to escape successfully during the Second World War. This was admittedly from a much larger number of conflict zones.6 When attempting a comparison between the two wars, it is difficult to make a reliable estimate of the numbers. However, the War Office calculated that there were some 190,000 British and empire prisoners captured in the First World War – though there were also around another 100,000 who for one reason or another were unregistered. About 570 of them escaped successfully, mainly other ranks, not officers, who were able to abscond from outside working parties relatively easily and thus did not have to solve the problem of how to get out from a well-guarded camp. (Of this total, 420 were British prisoners.) Around fifty of the 570 were officers.7 Of those, thirty-five – well over half – were from the RFC.§ How many more might have got out if they had been better supported?¶
7There was another consequence of the failure of the War Office to provide guidance to aircrew and troops on dealing with capture, although the extent of the damage it caused is practically impossible to calculate. Files in the French military archives in Vincennes contain reports of valuable intelligence, much of it British, obtained from the interrogations of German aircrew after they had been captured. But it’s clear that German interrogations of captured British aircrew were also sometimes remarkably effective. Although many German files did not survive the Second World War, some have been recovered in the course of my research which describe the interrogations of captured British aircrew. These reveal the extent of the information which they divulged, as well as information obtained from documents which they were carrying with them when captured. Some of those reports were obtained from aircrew serving in 11 Squadron, where Gilbert and Jack were posted: they include both Gilbert himself and Thomas Donald, Gilbert’s observer. If, overall, the Germans did as well as the British (which the available documents suggest is quite possible), then a lot of information will have been given away. Once escape training began to be provided from early 1917, GHQ1b also started providing briefings and lectures to aircrew on how to behave after capture and what to expect during their interrogation, and we can see that its importance was emphasised even more strongly in MI9 briefings during the Second World War.
What sort of person was my great-uncle Gilbert? I well remember the first time I met him. It was in the mid-1950s, when our lives were more formal and small children were not much included in family gatherings. So I was excited to be allowed for the first time to join the adults when he and my great-aunt Olwen came for lunch. My mother asked how their journey had been from 8Yorkshire and Olwen, a rather precise and correct woman, stiffened, looked at Gilbert and said crisply and emphatically, ‘Ah, he’s a mad old bugger.’ She explained that Gilbert preferred to drive in the middle of the road (there were far fewer cars then), liked overtaking and hated being overtaken himself. Gilbert stoically ignored this exchange and just got on with his lunch.
That memory has stayed with me, particularly since I started thinking about researching and writing a book about him. For Olwen’s description of Gilbert as a competitive, determined and stubborn driver picks out some of the characteristics necessary for someone to achieve what he did during the war. Two significant achievements which require rather different types of courage. It’s a theme which deserves to be considered further. When the Canadian Lieutenant Peter Anderson returned to London after successfully escaping from Germany in October 1915 (thus becoming the only Canadian officer to succeed in getting back to Britain8), he was invited to Buckingham Palace to meet George V, who often asked to see such returnees.|| The King observed to him that ‘he considered the bravery involved in escaping was, if anything, greater than that required on the battlefield, which was usually the product of the heat of the moment’. He added:
He had heard many interesting experiences related by men who had received the VC but he remarked that nearly all had received this coveted decoration for something they did on the spur of 9the moment; a few minutes, a few hours at the most. But he said, ‘You took your life in your hands for days and weeks,’ adding, ‘I am proud of you.’ It was splendid.9**
So, to leave the comparative safety of a prison camp and travel through an unknown country where everyone was an enemy, suffering hunger, privation and often extreme physical conditions, demanded not just courage but determination, ingenuity, imagination, guile, good planning and a very large dose of luck. Talking of hunger, when Johnny Evans and Sidney Buckley (both RFC officers) arrived in Switzerland after jumping off a prison train in June 1917, they had both lost three stone on their journey and weighed only seven stone. This was perhaps not surprising: to achieve this, they had walked some 250 miles in eighteen nights.10 Or of privation: Geoff Greene, a Canadian who spent time in solitary confinement in the cell next to Gilbert’s in Crefeld in the spring of 1917, wrote of returning captured prisoners: ‘It was sad to see the continuous stream brought back; practically everyone in the last stage of exhaustion from lack of nourishment, cold and lying out night after night in the rain.’11 Some too were shot, badly beaten or mistreated after their recapture. And as for luck, in October 1917, Lance Wingfield had reached the River Ems, the final barrier to crossing from Germany into Holland, when he was discovered by a sentry. The man was an Alsatian, who hated Germans, and so instead of arresting Wingfield, he took him to a point further down the river and showed him the best crossing site, also providing him with advice on the location of patrols. Wingfield reached Holland 10successfully.12 And Johnny Evans, whose final and successful escape had included several very close calls where he and Sidney Buckley narrowly avoided being picked up, concluded the account of his various attempts to escape from Germany with the following observation: ‘In my opinion, no prisoner of war has ever escaped without more than a fair share of luck, and no one ever will. However hard you try, however skilful you are, luck is an essential element in a successful escape.’13
Gilbertagedthreemonthswithhisfatherandmother.
Gilbert was born in Paris in June 1894, the eldest son of another Gilbert and Mary. Gilbert senior was a dentist who had been a professor 11of dentistry at the University of Paris before setting up a successful private practice. Gilbert’s younger brother Jack, my grandfather, was born two years later in March 1896. Cecil, the third brother who will also feature in this story, arrived in 1898. Gilbert and Jack both studied at the Anglo-Saxon school in Paris, as did Cecil a little later. All grew up to be bilingual. By a remarkable coincidence, Claude Templer, with whom Gilbert later escaped from Ströhen, was educated there at the same time. (An even more remarkable coincidence, which happened just after Gilbert had been shot down, will be described in Chapter 4.)
Gilbert(third from right, back row) andJack(seated, extreme right) attheAnglo-Saxon school in Paris,1909–10.ClaudeTempler is believed to be at the back on the extreme left.
When they were a little older, Gilbert and Jack started to study dentistry, because they had aspirations to take over their father’s practice in due course. They were also good at hockey, and in 1913–14, 12both played for the university in matches against other university teams, in both France and Germany.
Gilbert and Jack were very interested in the early development of aviation, and at weekends used to cycle down to Buc, near Versailles, where Louis Blériot (the first aviator to cross the Channel) and the Farman brothers, Henri and Maurice, were experimenting and developing new machines. Gilbert and Jack helped out, for assistance was usually needed in moving aircraft out of their sheds. They got to know Maurice Farman especially well, and he would sometimes take them up for flights. Both Blériot and the Farman brothers built aircraft which were used by the RFC during the early part of the war. (Some of Gilbert’s photographs, taken during these visits, are included in the plate section.)
ArareearlyphotographofMauriceFarmanatthecontrolsofoneofhisownaircraft,takenbyGilbert,probablyin1912.
In August, when it became apparent that war was about to break out, the Insall family was advised by the British consul to return to England. At that stage, it was not certain whether Britain would 13fulfil its undertaking to come to the assistance of France if it was attacked. But the situation in France had already started to become volatile. When Germany breached Luxembourg neutrality and invaded it on 2 August 1914, two days before Britain declared war, there were demonstrations in Paris, and Jack and Cecil saw German shops being vandalised. (Though Cecil also commented that there had not been much cordiality shown to Britain either in the period after the Boer War, and that he and his brothers sometimes had stones thrown at them and were abused by young lads when they were on their way to school. That changed following the German invasion of Belgium on 4 August, which led to Britain declaring war the same day. When British troops arrived in France shortly afterwards, they were greeted with a rapturous reception.)
So the family decided to leave. They took a horse-drawn omnibus to the Gare du Nord and caught the last passenger train out of Paris, experiencing chaotic scenes on their journey. By the time they reached Boulogne, a general mobilisation had been declared, so reservists were flocking to join their units, and everyone’s papers were being minutely examined. The family eventually boarded the MaidofKentand watched as a ship’s officer came up from below, carrying a large blackboard upon which had been chalked a signal just received, stating that as from 11 p.m. the previous day, Britain had been at war with Germany. It was, they heard later, the last non-naval crossing to be made from France to England. After the chaos and disorganisation in Boulogne, they were struck by the contrast, as they approached Folkestone, when they saw holidaymakers strolling up and down the promenade in blazers and flannels, and ladies with their parasols, apparently without a care in the world. This was uncannily similar to an early scene in the film Oh!Whata LovelyWar, which had its premiere just over fifty years later, when 14the holidaying Smith family are shown entering Brighton’s West Pier where General Haig is selling tickets.
The Insall family stayed in Surrey for a few weeks, uncertain what to do next. After the Battle of the Marne in early September, when the German advance towards Paris was halted and turned back, Gilbert senior decided that he would return to Paris to rescue his dental practice as soon as it was practicable. Gilbert and Jack resolved to stay and to enlist in the University and Public Schools Brigade of the Royal Fusiliers. Although it was permitted to sign up at the age of eighteen, you needed to be nineteen to go and fight overseas. This is what Jack wanted to do, as he told the recruiting officer. The latter quietly pointed out that he must therefore have made a mistake on the form which he had just filled out, so he completed another one in which he falsified his age. I sometimes wondered whether this piece of family history was credible, but then I found the evidence in the National Archives – the certificate of attestation which he had completed showed clearly that he was claiming to be just nine months younger than his elder brother, when it should have been twenty-one months!14
Shortly afterwards, Gilbert and Jack paraded in Hyde Park and were then transported down to Surrey, where they spent the next six months doing a great deal of rather tedious drilling and route-marching. In March 1915, they were informed that the War Office was making an urgent appeal for volunteers to join the Royal Flying Corps and to be trained as pilots. Their platoon commander recalled their involvement in aviation while living in Paris and encouraged them to follow it up, which they did. They applied for an immediate transfer to the military wing of the Royal Flying Corps. Jack described how the adjutant assisted them in completing the form: 15
Against the heading ‘Previous Experience’, we wrote the significant entry: ‘Close interest in progress of aviation while resident on the Continent (Paris). Passenger ascents at Buc (Versailles) with M. Maurice Farman.’
The plural in the word ‘ascents’ worried me a little, but I gave way to the considered opinion of our Adjutant, who pointed out that in effect it was a joint application, and that [with] my brother having two ten-minute flights according to his entry, and I one, that made three in all and if that was not plural, he didn’t know what was!’15
By this time, the RFC had already transferred four squadrons to France. When Gilbert was subsequently required to complete further forms in connection with his transfer, he added additional information to his application, stating that he was fluent in French and German, that he was accustomed to the use of French maps and – exaggerating a little further of his experience of aviation – that he had ‘often flown with French pilots around Paris and taken photographs from machines’.16
In the meantime, Gilbert senior returned to Paris with the rest of his family. Cecil should have gone back to school. However, the Anglo-Saxon school had been forced to close because many of the students had left, the English teachers had returned to Britain to enlist and their French counterparts had also been mobilised. So he got a job with the Red Cross – first in a hospital which was staffed, unusually, by a Japanese medical team that had arrived in Paris to take over its running. He began work there in the mortuary, which, as a tender sixteen-year-old, he found very difficult. Since he spoke fluent German, he then acted as an interpreter for his Japanese colleagues, who knew no other European language. Cecil was later 16transferred to the transport section, where he learned to drive and was given much of the responsibility for its organisation. He too had some early aviation experience. He had won a model aeroplane competition in 1911, for which the prize was a flight in a Maurice Farman biplane. He was later also given a ride in a Caudron biplane by a French officer, who subjected him to some fairly violent aerobatics, which he survived without becoming in the least bit airsick.
In the autumn of 1917, when Cecil was just nineteen, the French government suddenly altered the agreement whereby at the age of twenty-one, the sons of foreign nationals who were born in France could adopt either the nationality of their parents or French nationality. The shortage of manpower led them to reduce this age to eighteen and to conscript those foreign nationals who were not already on active service. Unlike the British government, which took a different view, the French declined to recognise the Red Cross as active service, and so Cecil was deprived of his French identity papers and was called up. He wanted to join the British forces, much preferring the RFC for family reasons, but could only enlist in the army while he was in Paris. Fortunately, the now liberated Gilbert was in Paris on leave. It was arranged that Cecil would enlist in Paris and would be escorted back to Britain by Gilbert, who would be able to facilitate his transfer into the RFC. After a spell on kite balloons as an observer, Cecil trained as a pilot on airships and spent time on anti-submarine patrols over the English Channel.17 He had his fair share of excitement, too, for his balloon was nearly brought down when he was flying at a low level near some Royal Navy (RN) destroyers on the track of a German submarine. One of them saw a loose mine floating in the water and enthusiastically opened fire to sink it, without noticing how close Cecil was. Fortunately, he saw 17the danger in time and ascended just high enough to avoid serious damage when the mine exploded.18
Once they got to France in July 1915, as will be described, Gilbert and Jack were to experience similar risks on an almost daily basis. 18
NOTES
1 A. J. Insall, Observer: Memoirs of the RFC, 1915–18 (London: William Kimber, 1970), p. 185.
2 Oliver Wilkinson, British Prisoners of War in First World War Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 104, quoting Carl. P. Dennett, an American Red Cross Commissioner, Prisoners of the Great War: Authoritative Statement of Conditions in the Prison Camps of Germany (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919).
3 John Lewis-Stempel, The War Behind the Wire: The Life, Death and Glory of British Prisoners of War, 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014), p. xx, quoting Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914–1920, p. 329. Lewis-Stempel points out that this is the figure for British servicemen, including the Royal Navy and Royal Naval Division, who died in Germany and occupied France and Belgium. The figure for PoW fatalities for British and empire PoWs combined in Germany/France combined is 12,425. Of these, 447 were officers and 11,978 other ranks.
4 Janet Morgan, The Secrets of the Rue St Roch: Intelligence Operations Behind Enemy Lines in the First World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004), p. 366.
5 M. R. D. Foot and J. M. Langley, MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 (London: Biteback, 2011), pp. 22–3, 26.
6 Ibid., p. 5.
7 Lewis-Stempel, p. xviii and p. 304.
8 Ibid., p. 195.
9 Peter Anderson, I, That’s Me: The Memoir of Officer-Escaper Major Peter Anderson DSO & Bar, 1914–1919 (Ottawa: CEF Books, 2009), p. 161.
10 A. J. Evans, Heir to Adventure: Notes for an Autobiography (unpublished), p. 108. Imperial War Museum (hereafter IWM), LBY 88/1271.
11 IWM, G. E. D. Greene, private papers, 20775.
12 IWM, L. A. Wingfield, private papers, 18776.
13 A. J. Evans, The Escaping Club (Stroud: Fonthill Media, 2012), p. 144.
14 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), WO339/68239. For comparison, Gilbert’s certificate is on WO 339/53916.
15Observer, pp. 11–12.
16 TNA, WO 339/53916.
17 Family papers.
18 Family papers.
* Though there were a couple of others who came near to qualifying. Corporal Charles Garforth VC was taken prisoner in October 1914. He escaped three times, once getting almost to the Dutch border before he was recaptured. And if we expand the parameters to include the civilian equivalent of the VC awarded to someone in the First World War but who got away in the Second, then Group Captain Harry ‘Wings’ Day, well known for his involvement in the Great Escape from Stalag Luft 3 in March 1944 during the Second World War, also deserves a mention. He was awarded the then civilian equivalent of the VC, the Albert Medal, for saving lives on HMS Britanniaafter it had been torpedoed in November 1918, shortly before the end of the war. (He exchanged this for a George Cross in 1971.) Following his recapture after the Great Escape, he was sent to several concentration camps at Sachsenhausen, Flossenburg and then Dachau. In April 1945, he was moved over the Brenner Pass in South Tyrol to Villabassa. He escaped again from there as the Americans approached and this time reached the Allied lines. So his success, like his earlier medal, came right at the end of another war.
† Now known as Krefeld but spelled as Crefeld until 1925. This was the spelling used by prisoners of war at that time.
‡ A good example was provided by A. J. Evans, who arranged for maps to be given to prisoners who might be in a position to escape via the Schaffhausen salient on the Swiss–German border, a crossing which he had successfully used himself more than twenty years previously. He had visited it on holiday and confirmed that it could still be used. See Helen Fry, MI9(London: Yale University Press, 2020), p. 18. This was, incidentally, the location which Gilbert and his compatriots were aiming for when they escaped from Heidelberg in March 1917.
§ My grandfather Jack, when working at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) after the First World War, compiled a list of all those RFC, Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and RAF officers who escaped successfully, and contacted them to ask whether they would be willing to donate items which they had used during their escapes, to be included in an exhibition he was curating. There were thirty-five names on the list, of whom one (Captain R. J. Tipton) had escaped from Turkey and another (Second Lieutenant G. H. Eastwood) had escaped from Holland, and a third (Captain C. A. Ridley) was really an evader rather than an escaper, for he was never captured, but he provided some material for the exhibition so deserves to be included! (IWM, EN 1/2EXH2/3.) There was at least one other successful escaper whose name was not on the list: Captain Willie Loder-Symonds of the Wiltshire Regiment, who was killed in an accident in May 1916 before the end of the war. So the total was at least thirty-six, of whom thirty-four are known to have escaped from Germany.
¶ Accurate figures are generally not available for comparison. However, some 2,800 RAF aircrew who failed to return from operational sorties during the Second World War either evaded capture or – more rarely – escaped from captivity. (http://www.rafinfo.org.uk/rafescape/)
|| Not only was Anderson the sole Canadian commissioned officer to have successfully escaped from Germany; he was also, at the age of forty, one of the oldest. (Major Crofton Vandeleur of the Scottish Rifles was actually the oldest at the age of forty-seven.) After the war, Anderson was awarded a bar to his Distinguished Service Order for this escape. The citation stated that it was in recognition of gallant conduct and determination in escaping or attempting to escape from captivity. There were a series of bravery awards, usually an MC, made to escapers, mainly in 1919, though some were backdated as they were not gazetted until 1920. Gilbert was also one of those later awarded an MC for his escape.
** For readers who are interested in pursuing this theme further, I’d recommend TheAnatomyof Courage, by Lord Moran (London: Robinson, 2007). Moran, who was later Churchill’s doctor, served in the trenches with the First Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers from the autumn of 1914 to the spring of 1917. While researching for his book after the war, he also drew on his contacts with pilots in the Royal Air Force.
Chapter 2
Taking to the skies
The Royal Flying Corps which Gilbert and Jack joined in March 1915 was still in its infancy, for it had only been founded on 13 April 1912. What was the history of aviation up to this point, and how much had it developed and started to be used for military purposes, both in Britain and elsewhere in Europe?
Remarkably, the concept of using flight in some form for aerial reconnaissance had already been in practice for well over a hundred years. The first recorded use of balloons by military forces came in 1794, when the French Committee of Public Safety created the Corps d’Aérostiers. Their balloons were sporadically used for reconnaissance during the French Revolutionary Wars, being first deployed during the Battles of Charleroi and Fleurus in 1794. They were also used for aerial observation during the American Civil War (1861–65) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). The Royal Engineers began experimenting with the first British balloons in 1878 and by the following year had built and were using five of them. This can reasonably be described as the first use of an air force in the British Empire, and similar balloons were later used in military manoeuvres in 1880 and 1882. Balloon detachments took 20part in campaigns in Bechuanaland* in 1884 and the Sudan in 1885. They were sufficiently valued that a Balloon Section was created as a distinct unit of the Royal Engineers in 1890, and they were used again during the Boer War (1899–1902).1 In 1903, the Committee on Military Ballooning concluded that aerial observation was essential in time of war. The subsequent development of powered flight after the Wright brothers’ first success in the same year gave further food for thought to far-thinking strategists. Thus, Brigadier General David Henderson† wrote as early as 1907:
The possibilities of reconnaissance have been greatly enhanced by the invention of aeroplanes and dirigible airships, and in the wars of the future there can be no doubt that the use of aircraft will make the acquisition of information, both strategic and tactical, more certain and more easy than in the past. It may be frankly conceded that aerial reconnaissance is, even now in the early stages of its development, the method by which information of any considerable forces of the enemy can be obtained most rapidly, accurately and completely.2
As new aircraft began to be developed which were capable of flying further, faster and higher, thought began to be given to extending the role that might be given to them, which could conceivably go beyond reconnaissance to control of the air. However, in July 1910, 21the General Staff decided that, while it could ‘not arrest or retard the perhaps unwelcome progress of aerial navigation’, it would be a while before it would be necessary to develop aircraft to defend the island.3 That negative position did not last long. In February 1911, the Royal Engineer Air Battalion was formed, comprising No. 1 Company (Airships) and No. 2 Company (Aircraft), commanded by Colonel Hugh Sykes. The responsibility was assigned to the army because by then it already had considerable experience in building balloons. Moreover, at that time, there was thought to be little possibility of producing an airship which would be capable of accompanying a naval fleet to sea.‡ It was not entirely clear what roles balloons might have for the army, but it was generally thought that a balloon could be used:
As a scout for reconnaissance purposes.As an offensive weapon to drop explosives, for example on heavily armed troops.For carrying raiding parties.By this time, there was growing evidence of the advantages which could be gained from developing military aviation, as well as the benefits of having a service commanded by officers who had practical flying experience, in a separate branch of the army. The French, who had founded their air force as the Service Aéronautique in 1909 (it did not become an independent military branch until 1934) had been exercising and experimenting with the use of aircraft to deter and force back hostile aircraft encroaching into their territory on
22reconnaissance missions as early as 1910, when during an exercise a Farman intercepted two ‘hostile’ aircraft and forced them to return to their own base after being ‘attacked’.4 Moreover, in 1911, Hugh Sykes was invited to observe French aerial manoeuvres and took the opportunity to study the technical aspects of French aeroplanes and their capabilities, as well as the organisation and training of the French service.5§ He also toured northern France, selecting possible landing grounds, which would prove invaluable during the retreat from Mons.¶ His visit coincided with a directive from Prime Minister Asquith to the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) to determine what else needed to be done to secure ‘an effective aerial service’ for the armed forces. A committee was set up which included both Henderson and Sykes as members. Their report was accepted by a technical subcommittee of the CID in February 1912, and with the support of the Admiralty and the War Office, it led to the creation of the Royal Flying Corps two months later, on 13 April 1912. Sykes was appointed to command its Army Wing. During this period, the French position remained pre-eminent and the report which Sykes had produced after his visit there, entitled ‘Notes on Aviation in France’, ‘could be considered one of the important pre-war organisational influences on British aviation’.6
A Naval Wing of the RFC was also formed at the same time. 23The Admiralty did not greatly care to have naval aviation subsumed into what was at that time essentially an army corps. Consequently, it developed its own training centre (at Eastchurch, near Sheerness in Kent) and demonstrated the extent of its independence by announcing the creation of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) shortly afterwards. So powerful was the Admiralty then that this action was never challenged. The RNAS was formally recognised on 1 July 1914 and remained under the Admiralty until it was transferred back into the Royal Air Force on its creation on 1 April 1918.
The Admiralty’s rather brazen insouciance did have one very beneficial consequence. There were few resources available then for aircraft design and construction. For reasons of economy, the War Office had directed that all aircraft (military and naval) should be built at Farnborough, where the Balloon Factory had expanded and developed to become the Army Aircraft Factory and where Geoffrey de Havilland was the chief designer.|| The Admiralty did not care for this and so turned to private enterprise for what it needed. This provided a stimulus for the growth of private firms. Companies like A. V. Roe, Shorts, Sopwith, Airco, Handley Page and Vickers all flourished. They developed and built new aircraft, many of which later made significant contributions to the growth of effective British air power. ‘So [the Admiralty] performed a lasting service by encouraging the emergence of a civilian aeroplane and aeroplane engine industry.’7
The RFC only possessed a handful of aircraft when it was created in 1912. However, by the beginning of the war, together with the 24RNAS, its establishment had grown to 270 aircraft and 2,073 personnel – and increased thereafter exponentially. As a result, there were 22,171 aircraft and a total strength of 274,494 personnel serving in the RAF by the end of the war.8
Acceptance of the value of military aviation was further assisted by the outcome of some military exercises and manoeuvres in September 1912. These were staged around Cambridge and witnessed by King George V with General Foch, the senior French observer, with two opposing forces commanded by Lieutenant Generals Haig and Grierson. Both generals were equipped with aircraft, but Grierson used his force both more astutely and more extensively. He was able to establish the position of Haig’s units through aerial reconnaissance and took care to conceal the subsequent movements of his own into positions of decisive advantage. Consequently, he was able to win a clear victory. This provided a powerful lesson in the value of control of the air.
What were these early aircraft like, and how reliable were they to fly? Jack, describing the pre-war visits which he and Gilbert used to make to the airfields outside Paris (where Blériot and the Farman brothers had started to develop their aircraft before Blériot’s first Channel crossing in July 1909**), wrote of the basic methods they saw being used. They would watch while Blériot would attach his aircraft (a monoplane with which he was then experimenting) to a spring-balance (normally used to determine the weight of an object, but in this case a crude means of gauging the power which it was generating), tinker with the engine and then start it up:
25Blériot would run the engine slowly for a moment or two, and then open the throttle, and the dust and gravel would rise in a cloud and hurl themselves against the doors of the shed, and Blériot’s long, drooping moustaches would stand away from his face like horizontal black horns, as he twisted in his seat to watch the hand of the spring-balance waver and turn.
And when, as now and then happened, the ‘pull’ gave a satisfying reading on the dial, he would throttle down to a spluttering tick-over, bellow ‘ça va!’ and the mechanic would detach the rope fastening the spring-balance to the machine, and away the latter would go, with its pilot’s moustaches back to normal, taxiing erratically far away to the right until it was impossible to distinguish detail, and then turning in a slow semicircle. One would see the plume of smoke and dust rising, and hear the engine’s distant clatter, and one would wait until the clatter turned to a sort of tattoo and the dust-devil began to move. And then one would see the machine gather speed, and the tail start to rise. As a rule, this would last for about thirty seconds, and then the tail would sink back while the machine continued to advance. Then the tail would rise once more, the body of the monoplane would become horizontal again and the aeroplane would rise clear off the ground three, four or five feet, perhaps even ten. I don’t remember it ever getting higher than that and it never, while we were present, remained airborne for longer than four or five seconds, covering a distance of rather less than thirty yards. But it would have been powered flight and … his mechanic and any onlookers would throw their hands into the air with joy.9
Both Blériot and the Farman brothers provided aircraft for the RFC’s use during the early stages of the war, when it did not have 26enough for its needs. Indeed, a Blériot flown by Captain Philip Joubert de la Ferté carried out one of the first aerial reconnaissances in France on 19 August 1914, a fortnight after the outbreak of war. However, Blériots based at wartime airfields did not perform satisfactorily. They could not be kept in suitable conditions and after several nights out in the open, the fabric covering them started to show signs of flabbiness, affecting their speed, rate of climb and manoeuvring capability.†† Farman Longhorns and Shorthorns did not have this problem, and Longhorns in particular were used extensively and over a long period, both in combat squadrons and also for training. Longhorns, incidentally, were so called because of a rather curious front-mounted elevator located some six feet in front of the cockpit nacelle. Shorthorns lacked this superstructure. Both Gilbert and Jack were trained on them. So was Arthur Gould Lee, a pilot who joined the RFC in 1916. He wrote subsequently that all these early aircraft were by modern standards as primitive as bows and arrows. Not only were they fragile in construction, with wooden, wire-braced frameworks and wings, covered with doped fabric, but they were rudimentary in their layout and equipment.10 The quality of design and building techniques were not always of a high standard either, for there were few well-trained designers and much experimentation as the Air Committee‡‡ tried to develop aircraft with better performance. Accidents due to structural failure of the airframe – as well as engine problems – were common.
When did aircraft start to be armed, and what sort of weapons did they carry? Some experiments were carried out in 1913 by a section formed by the RFC to consider the use of arms and bombs, ‘though 27it was actually the RNAS which initially took a greater interest in this subject, conducting ground-breaking experiments and demonstrating that bombs could be dropped successfully from aircraft’.11 The section assessed what sort of armaments might be both effective and capable of being carried on aeroplanes – and its creation provides evidence that there was at least some expectation of aerial conflict occurring if war broke out. But machine guns were too heavy, and anyway could not be securely mounted. The Lewis light machine gun was used instead. However, a supply shortage meant that the first RFC aerial combats on 25 August 1914 were conducted by pilots and observers using revolvers and rifles. The first aircraft equipped with Lewis guns did not reach France until a month later.12
Lewis guns seem to have been particularly susceptible to jamming, usually because imperfect construction sometimes caused misshapen cartridges which did not fit the breech. This could be – and often was – fatal for a crew if it happened in the middle of combat, because they could not defend themselves against enemy aircraft, which during this period were generally capable of greater speed. The problem cost Jack an eye in 1916, when he was examining a piece of faulty ammunition and the round exploded, hitting him in the face. This prevented him from continuing to fly.
What were conditions like for the pilots in these aircraft? Arthur Gould Lee provided a graphic description:
Every aeroplane of the day had an open cockpit, in which one sat swathed in layers of woollen underclothing, fleece-lined leather greatcoats and sheepskin thigh-boots, with which to resist the perishing cold three or four miles up. There was no heating, no oxygen for high flying, no retractable undercarriage, no engine starter, no radio links with air or ground, no brakes to help with 28landing and taxiing and, most vital of all, no parachutes. And there were no instruments worth the name. But we did carry a hammer to rectify simple machine-gun stoppages!13
The crew of an FB5, location unknown, showing quite how exposed their positions were. Source: 11 Squadron
Pusher aircraft – that is aircraft such as the Farman Shorthorns and Longhorns and the Vickers FB5s,§§ which were all flown by both Gilbert and Jack – had the engine situated behind the cockpit. Vickers FB5s were nicknamed ‘Mossies’, because they were thought to be so slow that they accumulated moss in the air. They therefore tended to be colder than tractor aircraft, which had the engine in front. One of the 11 Squadron commanding officers (COs), Lieutenant Colonel T. O’B. Hubbard (perhaps predictably nicknamed ‘Mother’, with whom Jack frequently flew), reckoned that they were the coldest aircraft which he had ever had to fly. He described it as like sitting in a refrigerator, adding that clothing was inadequate 29and crews often froze and sometimes could not get out of their aircraft after they landed. The records of 11 Squadron highlight that many members of aircrews were severely frostbitten as a result during the winter of 1915–16.14 ‘Sidcot’ suits, the result of a fortuitous discovery by Sidney Cotton, were not invented until the winter of 1916.¶¶ But despite their lack of speed and their lack of comfort, the FB5s were well regarded and proved effective.
Gilbert dressed in flying gear in front of his FB5 in October 1915. The clothing available in those days did not provide adequate protection for aircrew flying at heights up to 10,000 feet, and they often froze, literally.
30Training in those early days was organised in a fairly haphazard way. There was no established manual to provide guidance for students. Instruction was provided by more experienced pilots with no particular educational skills. By 1915, there were also instructors who were being given a break from operational service on the front. Sometimes their nerves had been affected and they had no particular interest in or enthusiasm for what they were doing. Other instructors just shouted at and mercilessly hectored their nervous pupils.
Aircraft also varied in how easy they were to fly and the degree of friendliness they offered beginners. Some, like the Farman Longhorns, were solid and dependable, while with some of the others, like the early Caudrons, there was practically no difference between stalling speed and full speed, so they had to be flown at full throttle. Others still needed a sensitive touch on the controls, which would often be beyond an understandably clumsy beginner. The consequences of this were far reaching. Estimates of the number of deaths among aircrew in the First World War have varied wildly, but the most credible show that a total of 6,933 airmen were killed while flying. Of these, the number killed in training accidents between 1914 and 1918 was just over two thousand, almost a third of the total.15 The situation improved considerably in December 1916, when the estimable Robert Smith-Barry was sent to command the School of Flying at Gosport, where he completely reorganised flying training methods and introduced effective training courses for instructors.|||
31
Gilbert (third from left), with Stanley Caws on his left, with fellow flying students at Brooklands in the spring of 1915.Image via Imperial War Museums
For the initial stages of their flying training, Gilbert and Jack were sent down to Brooklands, near Weybridge, where they arrived at the beginning of March 1915. Brooklands had originally been a motor racing track and was requisitioned by the War Office for flying training. It was not at that stage equipped as a military camp, and so Gilbert and Jack were billeted together with other flying students at the Blue Anchor pub*** nearby and enjoyed congenial company and some predictably lively evenings. Gilbert and Jack were very close during this period, providing each other with advice and help. One fellow student, a former Canadian Mountie called Stanley Caws, with whom Jack became extremely friendly, christened them the ‘Gold Dust Twins’††† because they 32seemed to be almost inseparable.16‡‡‡ Two other students who were also there when they arrived were Robert Hughes-Chamberlain and Hugh de Crespigny. Both subsequently served with Gilbert and Jack in 11 Squadron, and Jack often flew with de Crespigny, as his observer.
Because the Brooklands circuit was quite large, the area was also big enough to accommodate an airfield suitable for training purposes. Though if for any reason a student pilot had to carry out a forced landing not long after he had taken off, Brooklands was probably not the place to do it. One corner of the site accommodated a sewage farm, which was occasionally visited by unfortunate pilots who had neither the altitude nor the speed to be able to manoeuvre sufficiently to avoid it…
The aircraft used at Brooklands at this time were Farman Longhorns and Shorthorns. The first instructors for Gilbert and Jack were two non-commissioned officers (NCOs), Sergeants Rees and Wyatt. Their initial flights must have been something of an experience. Jack wrote that he had the impression of ‘sailing along in a large cage, with a high wind pressing on my exposed upper half to the accompaniment of a busy metallic rattling from behind, where the 70 hp stationary Renault engine spun the huge two-bladed Integral propeller almost within reach of my hand’. He added: ‘I suppose that I was awed by the thought of being in due course alone at the controls of this huge laced-in contraption of pale-yellow sticks and piano wire, but there was too much afoot for my mind to dwell on this.’17
Sergeants Rees and Wyatt gave Gilbert and Jack a relatively helpful introduction to flying, for they were reasonable and fairly 33
