Awarded a DFC for his “dash and skill,” Lloyd Hamilton was shot down and killed flying with 17th Aero Squadron in August 1918.
Aren’t We Ever Going to Fly?
In the same week of November 1917 that Fred Libby was facing up to life as a reluctant hero, John McGavock Grider told his diary of a visit to Oxford from a veteran officer of the RFC. “This individual hero stuff is all tommy rot,” he told the Americans in an address. “It’s devotion to duty and concerted effort and disciplined team work that will win the war.”
The major then said that, by coming to England, the 150 aviators had taken the first steps on a long journey:
It’s a hard trip and will require a lot of courage. You’ll all be frightened many times but most of you will be able to conquer your fear and carry on. But if you find that fear has gotten the best of you and you can’t stick it and you are beyond bucking up, don’t go on and cause the death of brave men thru [sic] your failure. Quit where you are and try something else. Courage is needed above all else. If five of you meet five Huns and one of you is yellow and doesn’t do his part and lets the others down, the four others will be killed thru the failure of the one and maybe that one himself.
A fortnight later, Grider, Callahan, and all the cadets save for the twenty chosen by Elliott Springs to attend flight school in Stamford relocated to Harroby camp in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Grider was unhappy not to have been selected by his friend. “I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t take Cal and me and I told him so,” he wrote in his diary. “What’s the use of having friends if you don’t stick by them and do things for them?”
Grider admitted to his diary that he had a case of the “blues.” Winter had arrived in England. The days were colder, the nights longer, and melancholy seeped into his thoughts. “I could close my eyes and see the old living room at Grider with a big fire burning and Goodlookin’ [his pet name for his estranged wife] undressing John and George in front of it while I laid on the settee or the chaise lounge and read or smoked. I didn’t know how good it all was or could have been.”
His own mortality weighed on his mind also. “I do want to see the kids bad,” Grider told his diary. “Because I don’t really expect to go back.”
For Clayton Knight, also dispatched to Grantham, the rupture with Springs was a source of concern for reasons other than friendship. “For quite a while the pay [from the American Aviation Corps] never caught up with us…so we were in great money difficulties,” he recalled years later. “But Springs, who had plenty, acted as banker for a while.”
Awarded a DFC for his “dash and skill,” Lloyd Hamilton was shot down and killed flying with 17th Aero Squadron in August 1918.
Harroby camp afforded less salubrious accommodation than Oxford, and the cadets were obliged to share huts—though each hut had a servant assigned to its occupants to clean and shine shoes. “Everyone is fed up,” wrote Grider just five days after their arrival at Grantham. “Aren’t we ever going to fly?” Bored and disillusioned, the cadets sought outlets for their energies, drinking more than was good for them, often swigging back port in their huts late at night.
Then, on November 17, the cadets at Grantham began to be posted to flying schools around England. Grider and Larry Callahan were among five cadets sent to Thetford; Donald Poler, a twenty-one-year-old who had attended ground school at Cornell University in early 1917, was assigned to the Gosport School of Flying, and Lloyd Hamilton was ordered to Tadcaster in Yorkshire.
Hamilton, the only child of a Methodist minister from Troy, New York, was a student at the Harvard Business School when war with Germany was declared. In May 1917, he volunteered for the army before deciding, two months later, to join the fledging air service. According to the major in charge of the Tadcaster flying school, Hamilton proved “the best and most apt pupil” he’d seen.
In Gosport, on the south coast of England, Donald Poler soloed in five hours and twenty minutes. “It wasn’t too good as some fellows got to solo at around three and a half hours,” he recalled. Part of the challenge for Poler was familiarizing himself with the aircraft, the Avro 504, a two-seater biplane that was the RFC’s preferred training machine. “The Avro was quite stable and very light on the controls,” he said. “One could drop an Avro from twelve feet and it wouldn’t do any harm.” That was not always the case, as Poler discovered when he misjudged a landing one day: “The right wing crumpled, then the forward skid, the prop and engine went into the ground and I just lost four front teeth.”
At Thetford the aspiring aviators learned to fly in the Maurice Farman MF.11 Shorthorn, a French-made light bomber that had become obsolete on the Western Front by 1915. Grider recoiled when introductions were made, telling his diary they “are awful looking buses.…I am surprised they fly at all.”
But fly they did and by the first week of December Grider had soloed in one. With the psychological barrier breached, he set his heart on learning to master the single-seater scout and to become a fighter pilot. His first sight of a scout machine (as fighter aircraft were known) was of a Sopwith Pup, a docile and maneuverable aircraft that had been introduced by the RFC the previous year. “It’s the prettiest little thing I ever laid my eyes on,” he wrote. “I am going to fly one if I live long enough. They aren’t as big as a minute and are as pretty and slick as a thoroughbred horse.”
On December 16, George Vaughn wrote to inform his family that “Harold Bulkley and I have now about finished our time, and will probably be posted to some more advanced school before very long.” A week later, however, neither Vaughn nor Bulkley had been posted, and the pair spent much of the time eating, since bad weather precluded flying. Breakfast consisted of cereal with ham and eggs, “some kind of fish or sausages,” toast, jam, and coffee; for lunch there was “some kind of meat,” vegetables, and dessert; tea, an English tradition that was maintained despite the war, was taken between four and five o’clock, and comprised bread and butter, jam, cake, and tea. Finally, if the aviators were still hungry, at seven o’clock they could gorge on “either soup or fish, meat and vegetables, dessert, crackers and cheese, and coffee.”
This Avro 504 has crashed to earth, but on the whole the aircraft was a tough, reliable machine. It was used initially for reconnaissance patrols and for bombing missions before becoming a favorite training aircraft of the RFC.
Elliott Springs was also dining well, writing to tell his parents on December 27 of a sumptuous Christmas dinner in London, eaten in the presence of Lt. Alex Matthews, an old classmate of his at the Culver Military Academy of Indiana, who had arrived in England a few weeks earlier to train with the RFC.
Springs had been returned to Stamford after his brief posting to 74 Squadron because of a bureaucratic blunder over his rank. Despite a request in October from the British, the American military had not officially commissioned Springs or his fellow aviators, so despite passing out from flying school, he was unable to take up a posting with a British squadron. “There’s no telling when I’ll get it,” he told his father. “The censorship won’t permit me to give my opinion of the way we’ve been handled [by the American Signal Corp] in that respect.”
The somber mood at Stamford was deepened by a series of three fatal crashes in four days in December: the popular Harold Ainsworth from Philadelphia was one of the victims. He had been performing a series of loops over the aerodrome at four thousand feet when the wings broke up.
Springs decided to keep a diary for 1918. His first entry ran:
“1 January 1918. I began the New Year in the most approved manner. At the stroke of 12 [Robert] Kelly [a cowboy from Arizona who had come over on the Carmania] and I were lying most socially in the gutter being very binged. 1918, may you bring me at least an honorable demise.”
The fun lasted more than a week. “We drink until I pass away,” wrote Springs on January 9, after another night’s drinking with Kelly. Then three days later he was assigned to the 56th Training Depot Station at London Colney. “Deep gloom here,” he told his diary. There were only two Avros to train on there, but he was delighted to discover that Callahan and Grider had also been assigned to the depot.
Grider had some bad news to pass on to Springs—the death of another cadet, Joe Sharpe, who had given Grider such a good fight in the Oxford boxing tournament. “Poor fellow…nose-dived into the ground from 1,500 ft,” Grider told Springs.
The specter of death made the cadets more appreciative of life, particularly the Three Musketeers, whose motto was “Live for the Moment.” On January 15, Grider threw what Springs called a “big party.” Unfortunately, the rest of his description in the diary entry is illegible. The following day the three friends, together with Robert Kelly and two other cadets, went to London and “endeavor [ed] to wreck the Savoy”, one of the city’s most exclusive hotels. On January 18 they were at it again, incurring the wrath of their commanding officer who “gives us hell.” Additionally, a steady stream of attractive young women were making the trek north from London to St. Albans, the nearest town to London Colney. On February 7, Grider told his diary about an adventure “with a charming, unsophisticated damsel in St Alban’s.” Her name was Madge and she was “pretty with eager big blue eyes and the reddest lips I ever saw.” However, confessed Grider, “my conscience haunts me. Oh well, take the fruit the Gods provide.”
Fatal training accidents were common during the early phase of a pilot’s career. Library of Congress
None of this found its way into the letters Grider wrote his family. Around the same time he was making Madge’s acquaintance, he told his sister: “We are sportsmen of leisure. We have two classes a day and fly a good deal. We rise at nine and retire at eleven. We have the best food in England and very comfortable quarters. We sleep on folding cots and carry our furniture with us when we go.”
As for his flying, Grider described how he was “now learning the art of looping, spinning, turning side slips, tail slides, flat spins and vertical banks on the finest bus that ever was built for the purpose. If you get into trouble, all you have to do is put everything in neutral and she comes out in flying position herself. It’s a rather queer feeling at first to look up and see the ground instead of looking down, but you get used to it soon and it’s the greatest sport there is!”
To his diary, Grider was again more honest. On February 8, Fred Stillman Jr., a 6-foot-7-inch-tall athlete who “used to play end on Yale” collided with another Avro three thousand feet above the aerodrome at London Colney. One of the fuel tanks erupted and the two machines fell to earth locked in a fiery embrace.
George Vaughn and his good friend Harold Bulkley were posted to 85 Squadron at Hounslow aerodrome13 early in the New Year of 1918. It was a good spot to be, within easy access of the center of London thanks to the Underground trains. Fog grounded the pilots for much of January, so Vaughn and Bulkley rode the subway to London where they shopped, dined, and took in matinees at one of the West End theatres.
On Sunday February 17, Vaughn wrote his family that they were still awaiting their commissions from the American Signal Corps but they were rumored to be “getting nearer and nearer.” He also described how he and Bulkley had been caught up in a German air raid the previous night as they dined out in central London. “We spent the rest of the evening in the ‘Tube’ station, waiting for the all-clear,” he wrote, adding with an airman’s disdain: “It was a very weak attempt at a raid, as a matter of fact.” Vaughn ended the letter by telling his folks he had to go to bed as he had to be at the aerodrome early next morning for his “first trip” in a single-seater scout “which does well over a hundred miles an hour.”
The machine in question was a Sopwith Pup, an aircraft that Bulkley, but not Vaughn, had already flown. Bulkley took the Pup for a short spin and then landed. It was Vaughn’s turn. Bulkley, meanwhile was told by Captain Dell Clark to take up an Avro. The weather was good so why not make the most of it before the fog reappeared?
There were a number of aircraft in the sky over Hounslow on the morning of February 18, and more were waiting on the ground to take off. As Bulkley glided in to land he noticed “a large machine in the middle of the aerodrome.” Believing he hadn’t enough room to land, Bulkley switched on his engine and his aircraft rose sharply to the right, smashing into the undercarriage of another aircraft whose pilot also had an eye on the large machine below. The impact buckled the wings of Bulkey’s aircraft, and, like a crippled bird, he dropped out of the sky.
More agile and maneuverable than the Albatros at high altitude, the Sopwith Pup had half the horsepower of its German rival and also carried just one .303-inch Vickers machine gun. This Pup of 54 squadron was shot down in October 1917.
The sad task of organizing the return of his friend’s personal effects to his family in New Jersey fell to Vaughn. He also cabled his parents and asked them to notify Mr. and Mrs. Bulkley of their tragic loss. Four days later Vaughn was one of the pall-bearers as Bulkley was laid to rest in Heston churchyard, the coffin draped in an American flag and conveyed on a gun-carriage.
The next day Vaughn received word from the American Aviation Section, whose headquarters were in Eaton Place, London, that his commission had arrived and would be sent on to Hounslow. Bulkey’s commission was also being forwarded there.
