MOST of the aerial activity now centred around the battle lines to the north. A British air offensive was launched to soften up the enemy for a ground attack against Messines Ridge near Ypres. The Richthofen circus, which had been noticeably missing on the Arras front for the past month, had been moved north to Courtrai. But the tide had already changed. The Royal Flying Corps now had supremacy of the air.
To the south along the Drocourt-Quéant Switch the Germans continued their tactics of using low-flying two-seaters just inside their own lines to lure British fighter planes into anti-aircraft range. German scouts meanwhile contented themselves with watching for stragglers.
British fighter squadrons still maintained patrols along the front east of Vimy-Arras-St. Léger, where a month before the bloodiest fighting in aviation history had taken place. But “Hun hunting” became more and more frustrating. The Germans seemed determined to avoid a fight.
After the excitement of his raid on Estourmel Bishop found the regular uneventful patrols boring. So on June 8 he ventured alone toward Lille, where he hoped to find more action. He had climbed to twelve thousand when he saw six red Albatros scouts neatly arrayed in a three-layer formation. As he had done the first time he encountered that type of formation, he dived to attack the uppermost pair.
Those two pilots were so busy looking below for any luckless British planes that might venture into their trap that they did not see him coming. He opened fire from twenty yards. A burst of fifteen rounds sent one enemy plane down streaming smoke. Bishop continued his dive and escaped before the other pilots could gather their wits.
For the next week 60 Squadron seldom so much as sighted a German aircraft over the Arras front. The squadron, frustrated by this elusiveness on the part of the enemy, decided on a show of defiance—a “circus” of its own. Bishop led a formation of fifteen Nieuports after dinner one evening. They roamed the Switch at will and no German plane challenged them. What 60 Squadron did next was possibly the most blatant display of arrogance of the war in the air. The fifteen planes put on a display of aerial stunting directly over the German aerodrome at Epinoy, peeling off formation into stall turns, loops and rolls. The Germans at Epinoy preferred to watch the exhibition from the ground.
“We must have looked like a bunch of berserk eagles,” grinned “Black” Lloyd.“We should have charged the damned Huns admission.”
Next day Lloyd was killed in a fight with two Albatros scouts east of Monchy-le-Preux. Bishop was deeply affected. It was the first fatality in C Flight since Bloody April. Bishop’s state of mind changed abruptly from impatience at the enemy’s inactivity to hatred for the Germans who had killed his friend. That night he wrote to Margaret: “I am thoroughly downcast tonight. The Huns got Lloyd today, such a fine fellow too, and one of our best pilots. Sometimes this awful fighting in the air makes you wonder if you have a right to call yourself human. My honey, I am so tired of it all, the killing, the war. All I want is home and you.”
For nearly a month since returning from leave in England he had been fighting steadily. He seldom took the one-day-off-in-three to which he was entitled. Instead he flew alone with the objective, as he frankly admitted later, of increasing his score of victories. He was disappointed that he had been able to add only seven enemy planes in four weeks, and that included the raid on Estourmel.
With Lloyd’s death, some of the zest for the chase went out of Bishop. On June 18 he took his first leave since his return to France and went to Amiens for three days’ rest.
Amiens was hardly conducive to rest. The city was a favourite short-leave headquarters for the troops in the region. The Picardy capital offered an abundance of opportunities for revelry at oases like Charlie’s bar and Des Huitres. Fighting men, released for a few hours or a few days from the brutality (and as often the boredom) of war, crowded into the inns and cafés in pursuit of wine and women.
In Amiens Bishop met Ninette. By his own description she was beautiful, kind and affectionate. His story was that he had met her in a pharmacy. Later he admitted that while this was true, he had followed her into the pharmacy. When they had become well enough acquainted to exchange confidences (a matter of a few hours) Ninette confessed that she had seen him on more than one of his previous visits to Amiens, and wanted to meet him. “But I am not the kind of girl who goes to Charlie’s bar,” she pointed out virtuously, “so when I saw you walking down the street today I turned into the apothecary’s, hoping you would come there too.”
Bishop’s affair with Ninette was no mere garter-gathering adventure. It was too serious, for example, to reveal to Horn, Caldwell and other members of 60 Squadron who habitually roistered with him at Charlie’s—but serious enough to make him decide to tell Margaret. In just what terms he explained Ninette to his fiancée is not known. Margaret apparently “understood,” and certainly it made no difference to their relationship. But the “Ninette letter” was the only one of hundreds Bishop wrote her from overseas that Margaret did not keep. In later years Bishop remembered his affair with Ninette as being more therapeutic than romantic. “If it hadn’t been for Ninette,” he said, “I don’t think my nerves would have held.”(Years later when Bishop and Margaret were visiting France, Bishop was seized by an overwhelming desire to visit Amiens—and Ninette. Margaret wisely realized that the “beautiful, kind and affectionate” French girl of 1917 probably looked somewhat different now, and to preserve her husband’s illusions she persuaded him to abandon the idea.)
When Bishop got back to Filescamp Farm refreshed in body and spirit, he found that his Nieuport had been thoroughly overhauled and even fitted with a new skin. The repeated patching of bullet and shrapnel damage to wings, tail and fuselage had added to the weight and detracted from the smoothness of the faithful old machine with resulting loss of speed—the quality Bishop valued most in a plane. He celebrated the renovation of his plane by shooting down five enemy planes in as many days, and running his score to thirty-one. In the process he achieved a couple of minor “firsts” in his own career as a fighter pilot. One plane fell to the shortest burst he had ever used to down an opponent—ten shots. Another was destroyed at the longest range—over a hundred yards.
On June 29 the moderately good weather came to an end and rain, mist and heavy low clouds made flying impossible. As usual on such occasions, a sort of wet-weather madness seized the occupants of Filescamp Farm. The protesting farmyard animals were seized and painted in assorted colours, and the largest pigs were smuggled into comrades’ sleeping quarters.
The well-decorated mess at Filescamp Farm was as much of a “home away from home” as anyone on the Western Front could ask for. On the east wall, which was covered with brown canvas, Old Young had practised his artistic skill by sketching life-sized figures of the alluring m’amselles from the French magazine La Vie Parisienne in charcoal. And to further overcome otherwise Spartan surroundings, there was a large fireplace at the south end with a two-foot railing supporting a padded seat around it. And the bar, ably attended by one Corporal Dayne, was open at all times. It was an ideal arena for comfort or frolic.
As the bad weather continued the pastimes in the mess became increasingly violent. The gramophone endlessly ground out the hit tunes from “Chu Chin Chow,” the musical that had become as much part of life in wartime London as air raids and rationing. Bishop endured “Chu Chin Chow” for three days and nights and then, in desperation, invented a new game: smashing gramophone records over the nearest head. Everyone joined in willingly and the game soon had to be suspended for lack of ammunition.
The rain persisted, and the mess games became even more destructive. There was a nightly uniform-tearing contest. The rules were simple: the aggressor sneaked up behind his victim, grasped his collar firmly, gripped the flange of the uniform coat, and ripped the garment neatly up the back seam. The only members of 60 Squadron who were less than enthusiastic about the game were the officers’ batmen who were required to work overtime mending the ripped jackets.
Old Young’s garments suffered irreparably. He insisted on wearing the tartan trews of his erstwhile Highland regiment as part of a colourful but unauthorized flying uniform, and those plaid trousers—or portions thereof—became coveted prizes of the game. (When flying weather returned Young had to go into battle in his tennis flannels for several weeks until replacements arrived from a London military tailor.)
On a murky afternoon toward the end of the week of foul weather the occupants of Filescamp Farm heard the drone of a plane overhead and all hands hurried outside. Perhaps the Germans, knowing that all the Allied machines were grounded, were staging a hazardous surprise raid in retaliation for Bishop’s recent stunt. But the plane that dropped hesitantly through the overcast bore French markings. The pilot landed smoothly.
He explained that he had taken off from his own aerodrome with the intention of flying around for a few minutes at low altitude to test repairs to the plane’s controls which had been damaged by anti-aircraft fire during a patrol the previous week. But the clouds had descended and swallowed his plane, and soon he became hopelessly lost. He had flown around aimlessly for hours, seeking a break in the clouds. Then with fuel running low he had been forced to come down and take a chance on finding a reasonably level place for his forced landing. By merest chance he had emerged directly over the Filescamp aerodrome.
The French pilot was ceremoniously conducted to 60 Squadron’s mess and established as guest of honour of a riotous party. He was introduced to—and thoroughly approved—the squadron custom of pouring part of each bottle of champagne into the mess piano’s works “to improve the tone. ”With the instrument thus lubricated, the assembled pilots serenaded their guest with the squadron’s favourite toast, a somewhat lugubrious ballad rendered to the tune of “The Lost Chord”:
We meet neath the sounding rafters,
The walls around us are bare;
They echo the peals of laughter—
It seems that the dead are there.
So, stand by your glasses steady,
This is a world of lies.
Here’s a toast to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next man who dies.
Cut off from the land that bore us,
Betrayed by the land that we find,
The good men have gone before us,
And only the dull left behind.
So, stand by your glasses steady
This world is a web of lies;
Then here’s to the dead already,
And hurrah for the next man who dies.
More champagne, and suddenly the “game” erupted. Bishop selected the French officer for the ceremony, whereupon the latter cheerfully but firmly declared that the honour of his country’s uniform had been despoiled, and challenged Bishop to a duel in the form of a flying contest. Everyone trooped on to the field and, the French pilot’s plane having been refuelled, he and Bishop took off into the early dusk. Each tried to outdo the other in a series of wild manoeuvres which were all the more hazardous because they had to stay within a couple of hundred feet of the ground for fear of losing their way in the low clouds—as the Frenchman had done once before that day. The latter climaxed his performance by scraping a wingtip through the grass of the field, but even he admitted that Bishop outdid him by rolling his wheels on the roof of the mess building as he came in for his landing. Honour having been satisfied, the squadron repaired to the mess to resume the party.
One of the more disciplined pastimes in 60 Squadron mess was a ritual instituted by Jack Scott: that of speech-making at dinner. Each night one of the pilots would be called upon to give a peroration on anything, from his current combat experiences to his latest adventures in Amiens. Scott (who at this time was still on leave) regarded speech-making as part of moulding a man’s character. Serious though this intention was, the inevitable highjinks became a part of the ceremony. If a speech was poor or dull or pompous, it was celebrated with a derisive round of jeers, and a shower of buns, cutlery, and even plates when the occasion seemed warranted, all of which were aimed at the errant orator of the evening.
Jack Scott returned from leave just in time for the resumption of combat flying with the return of good weather, at the end of the first week of July, 1917. He brought Bishop word from London that Lord Beaverbrook was increasing his pressure on the government to form a separate Canadian air force. Scott also reported what was good news for himself, bad news for 60 Squadron: he was to be promoted to command an RFC wing. In one way it was bad news for Scott too. With his new and increased responsibilities as wing commander his flying days would be over.
As leader of a squadron Scott was under orders to confine himself to test and “recreational” flights on his own side of the front lines. General Higgins had to try to suggest diplomatically, because Scott’s legs were severely crippled, that he refrain from all flying. But Scott ignored both the order and the suggestion, and from time to time he joined one of his flights, either as an extra man or to replace a regular pilot who might be ill, injured or on leave. No matter how many fights he got into he always logged his flights as “recreation” so that on several occasions pilots received full credit for victories to which Scott had contributed.
As a leader Scott was bold and aggressive, but as a fighter pilot he lacked blood lust, the killer instinct. On one “recreation” sortie with Bishop, Scott manoeuvred a German Albatros directly into his gunsight, but did not fire, and the enemy escaped. Afterward Bishop asked him:
“Why didn’t you shoot? You had him cold.”
Scott grinned. “I was interested in his head.”
“In his head?”
“Before the war I studied in Germany, and I’m interested in Germans—anthropologically, I mean. You know, I’d swear that pilot was a Bavarian.”
Now that Jack Scott had only a week or two left with 60 Squadron he joined one or more patrols every day. A little after eight o’clock on the evening of July 10 the klaxon horn at Filescamp blared. The observer corps had reported that twelve German planes were attacking ground forces near Monchy-le-Preux. Bishop and Soden, a new arrival at the squadron, who was nicknamed “Mongoose,” were playing tennis with two other pilots. They dropped their racquets and scrambled for their planes, wearing flannels and tennis shoes.
Scott, who had been watching the match from the comfort of a deck chair, grabbed his canes and hobbled out to his Nieuport, shouting to Bishop that he was joining them. Five planes took off in no semblance of order, then closed into formation at a thousand feet. They reached Monchy just as the enemy planes were turning for home. In a moment seventeen planes were swirling around in a vicious dogfight perilously close to earth. Bishop singled out one of the green enemy scouts and had sighted on the head of the pilot when a burst of machine-gun bullets tore into his own fuselage just behind him. He turned on his attacker, only to have another Albatros pounce on him from the other side. He was trapped. But before the German pilot could open fire a Nieuport dived out of nowhere and set his plane afire with a stream of tracer bullets. As the plane that had rescued him flashed by, Bishop recognized the grinning pilot as his squadron commander.
“Thank God the Hun pilot wasn’t a Bavarian,” Bishop muttered to himself. Another Albatros dived at him and bullets ripped into the Nieuport’s tail. Bishop pulled straight up and as the German flashed under him he pushed the stick over and went into a rough stall turn that put his Nieuport directly behind the Albatros. Bishop had a dead shot. His burst ripped the German’s fuselage apart. It fell, streaming smoke and shedding splintered wood and torn fabric. That ended the fight. The remaining Germans scattered, using their superior speed to outdistance the Nieuports.
When Bishop landed at Filescamp, Scott’s plane was already on the ground and he hurried to the mess to thank him for saving his life. Scott wasn’t there, and Caldwell had bad news: Scott had been wounded in the arm and the same burst had badly damaged his motor. Scott, becoming increasingly weak from loss of blood, had barely been able to coax the sputtering machine back to Files-camp. Mechanics had pulled him from the cockpit and rushed him to a makeshift hospital at Izel-le-Hameau.
That was gallant Jack Scott’s last combat flight. As soon as the report of his injury reached Colonel Pretyman, the latter ordered Scott’s transfer to his new post immediately he recovered from the wound. Bishop blamed himself for Scott’s mishap, since he had been shot while his attention was occupied in saving Bishop from almost certain disaster. But Scott, cheerfully convalescing in a lounging chair in 60 Squadron’s mess, laughed scornfully at Bishop’s melancholy brooding.
“I was fighting my own fight,” he insisted. “I didn’t even know you were in the vicinity.”
The day after Scott’s departure, an exciting event occurred at Filescamp: the first of 60 Squadron’s S.E. 5 scouts arrived. It was assigned to Bishop.
“A most tremendous thing,” Bishop described the event in a letter to Margaret that night. “It’s forty miles an hour faster than our present machines and has two guns. It will be wonderful to be able to catch Huns instead of watching them disappear.”