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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0631.PDF
JULY 27, 1916. [/QOHTl IT stood out in the long grass, for this is summertime, and although weather conditions are such that it would be hard to guess exactly the time of year, grass, seemingly independent of the coaxing warmth of the sun, grows, as it were, by almanack. The article indicated by the pronoun in the fore going paragraph is an aeroplane, and as I lay in the long grass'watching its antics, I was amused. For it was a windy day, one of those days when it would not be thought advisable to leave an aeroplane out in the open unattended, and it was lightly loaded, having had its engine removed, by which explana tions you shall guess that it was an old machine and of no account. In very truth it looked old ; broken down with age; enfeebled by its infirmities; worn out. Its colour scheme was that of the lower back premises of an old, damp, dilapidated mansion where blue-wash, peeling from the walls, reveals white-wash, or white wash discovers blue-wash, none may tell which. It frisked about as the gusts struck it, heading to east and to west. It spun in a half circle and lifted its tail into the air like unto a foal spinning round and delivering its baby kick, and I fell to watching it, and as I watched, my amusement faded, and sober thoughts prevailed in their stead. I glanced to the left, and in the shed stood its successor, resplendent in its cream-coloured dope, every wire glistening, every strainer bright with new ness. Many men fussed around it, feeling its every bracing, drumming with fingers on tightened fabric, guessing at its speed and its lift and its climb, for it had not yet taken the air. And the owner came to me and laid down with me in the grass, and told me of the old 'bus. It was not yet eighteen months old, so soon does a machine pass from the new love to the scrap-heap. I glanced at the beauty in the shed, and wondered. Yet did the owner feel something for the old 'bus, even as I myself felt. Not a bit of timber, he reflected, had ever been replaced since she was new, all had come safely through the trying ordeals of school work, just a few new wires, or a wheel, or what not, the rest as I saw it now was as it left the builders' hands, only last year. And the pilots, what of the men who, seated in her little blue boat, felt the thrill that comes with the first free flight into the air, the first long straight across the aerodrome at but a few feet above the ground, yet enough to bring that feeling which comes with a knowledge of conquest. • I can imagine nothing in life to equal the sensations experienced by the embryo pilot landing after his first solo flight. Doubtless many of these men who took the little blue *bus into the air on their first trip, have had many and varied experiences since then, experiences that have brought new thrills—thrills and honours. Battles-Royal have been fought in the air. Bullets 620 have whistled round and about. Enemy machines have been seen to turn turtle and drop into space almost incalculable. I can imagine I hear the shout of victory given by the pilot as he sees his overcome enemy disappear beneath him, when, wheeling his machine about by a manipulation of the control learned on the little blue 'bus, he brings his magnificent warplane safely to earth in friendly lines—and the little blue 'bus gives a spin and a kick as if it knew. I walked over and made a closer examination of the little assemblage of wood and fabric. Here was a strut that had been cracked a little, and bound up with tape. I can imagine the sound rating the pilot got from his instructor for the clumsy landing he made. Probably since that day he has broken many struts in such way as to bring nothing but praise from his superior officers. Here, again, is a short length of fine wire twisted round a part where a rib has protruded a little. Perhaps the fingers that twisted it are at this moment busy with the trigger of a Lewis gun, or maybe, crossed upon the breast of their owner beneath the soil of France. I am quite certain that if I were a pilot, I should want to take that little blue 'bus away somewhere and carefully store it where it could drop quietly to pieces in an honoured old age. Well, this is all sentimentality, and deserves to be nipped in the bud. We cannot in these times afford to be sentimental, and it is obviously impossible to store all the machines that have carried blossoming pilots, so away with such dreamings. Yet, perhaps after all, it does not do one any harm to just let one's thoughts travel for a few moments along the road indicated and compelled as the natural consequence of looking at such a thing as that old and worn aeroplane. We should be poor people indeed did we not at times have some feeling for that and those who have served us in the past. I am perhaps too given to store up things which have associations, and dread to part with anything which for me has the power of refreshing memories, but then I am a " Dreamer," and as such, perhaps, excusable. Dreamers are funny creatures, prone to dream. I claim, however, superior intelligence to those who make a god of the family tool box, storing up old iron, and nails, and bolts, and broken hinges, and castors, and rusty bits, of-no use whatever to anybody, always forgotten when wanted, and new purchases made. I am, I say, above that, and with it I bracket china with the names of seaside resorts upon it.. * Yet I have a feeling for that little blue 'bus. I feel it has intelligence. I feel that if it is left there in the wind it will, when in extremities, take itself into the air, and flying cross-country, pile itself up in a field —respectably.
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