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CAVALRY OF THE CLOUDS




[Illustration: "CONTACT"

CAPTAIN ALAN BOTT, M. C.

OF THE BRITISH ROYAL FLYING CORPS]




  CAVALRY OF THE CLOUDS




  BY

  "CONTACT"

  (CAPT. ALAN BOTT, M.C.)




  _With an introduction by_

  MAJOR-GENERAL W. S. BRANCKER

  (Deputy Director-General of Military Aeronautics)




  [Illustration]




  GARDEN CITY - NEW YORK
  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
  1918




  Copyright, 1917, by
  Doubleday, Page & Company

  _All rights reserved,
  including that of translation into foreign languages,
  including the Scandinavian_




  DEDICATED

  TO

  THE FALLEN OF UMPTY SQUADRON, R.F.C.

  JUNE-DECEMBER 1916




PREFACE


Of the part played by machines of war in this war of machinery the wider
public has but a vague knowledge. Least of all does it study the
specialised functions of army aircraft. Very many people show mild
interest in the daily reports of so many German aeroplanes destroyed, so
many driven down, so many of ours missing, and enraged interest in the
reports of bomb raids on British towns; but of aerial observation, the
main _raison d'etre_ of flying at the front, they own to nebulous ideas.

As an extreme case of this haziness over matters aeronautic I will quote
the lay question, asked often and in all seriousness: "Can an aeroplane
stand still in the air?" Another surprising point of view is illustrated
by the home-on-leave experience of a pilot belonging to my present
squadron. His lunch companion--a charming lady--said she supposed he
lived mostly on cold food while in France.

"Oh no," replied the pilot, "it's much the same as yours, only plainer
and tougher."

"Then you do come down for meals," deduced the lady. Only those who have
flown on active service can fully relish the comic savour of a surmise
that the Flying Corps in France remain in the air all day amid all
weathers, presumably picnicking, between flights, off sandwiches, cold
chicken, pork pies, and mineral waters.

These be far-fetched examples, but they serve to emphasise a general
misconception of the conditions under which the flying services carry
out their work at the big war. I hope that this my book, written for the
most part at odd moments during a few months of training in England,
will suggest to civilian readers a rough impression of such conditions.
To Flying Officers who honour me by comparing the descriptions with
their own experiences, I offer apology for whatever they may regard as
"hot air," while submitting in excuse that the narratives are founded on
unexaggerated fact, as any one who served with Umpty Squadron through
the Battle of the Somme can bear witness.

I have expressed a hope that the chapters and letters will suggest a
rough impression of work done by R.F.C. pilots and observers in France.
A complete impression they could not suggest, any more than the work of
a Brigade-Major could be regarded as representative of that of the
General Staff. The Flying-Corps-in-the-Field is an organisation great in
numbers and varied in functions. Many separate duties are allotted to
it, and each separate squadron, according to its type of machine,
confines itself to two or three of these tasks.

The book, then, deals only with the squadron to which I belonged last
year, and it does not pretend to be descriptive of the Flying Corps as a
whole. Ours was a crack squadron in its day, and, as General Brancker
has mentioned in his Introduction, it held a melancholy record in the
number of its losses. Umpty's Squadron's casualties during August,
September, and October of 1916 still constitute a record for the
casualties of any one flying squadron during any three months since the
war began. Once eleven of our machines were posted as "missing" in the
space of two days--another circumstance which has fortunately never yet
been equalled in R.F.C. history. It was a squadron that possessed
excellent pilots, excellent achievements, and the herewith testimonial
in a letter found on a captured German airman, with reference to the
machine of which we then had