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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0861.PDF
3BXR 5. 1916. l/liGHT) efleeTf&joJt Ti VERE comes a time when I get tired of things. I know a i toian who, what time the raiders were busy dropping nielsseogers of death from the clouds on a Saturday nifart round about his house and mine, was on the flsmt of his back with the influenza fiend racking his li|mbs and prodding his brain until it throbbed and x>bbed again. He lay in bed but faintly interested, having the Jiews brought to him periodically with the soda and " „ It was nothing to him that the Tower Bridge being demolished for the fifth time, or that London was once more but a heap of smouldering ruins. He lay in bed comfortably warm ; I, donning my greatcoat overnight attire, paced the garden in slippers. To-day he is getting better. There is a comforting fire in his study. The most luxurious armchair has been wheeled to the cosiest corner away from the draught. Female hands wait upon his every wish. He is King in his domain. Only when he is really ill does a man come into his own. Let him be but getting ill, and they will dose him with ammoniated quinine and faintly-veiled remarks illustrative of how he has brought it all upon himself by not dressing properly for the occasion. Undoubtedly the best thing to do when the gasbags come is to he in bed and let them go hang. There comes a time when I get tired of things. All Saturday night I stayed away from my bed to catch cold in the garden, and all Monday night I stayed up making it worse, and because my cold has arrived one day behind the fair, the heroic possibilities of the situation are lost to me. Not for me is the luxurious armchair and the cool hand to my fevered brow, but the ammoniated stuff and the tallow candle and the words without soothing cadence. There comes a time when I get tired of things, and I am tired now of Zepp. raidings. If they do not cease quickly, they will lose me all my friends. Like meddling with other people's business, it is a thing you are better out of, for the greatest damage done by the raiders is the host of broken friendships that follow in their wake, owing to differences of opinion. Each'raid has cost me dearly in lost friendships. Following a night of bomb-dropping,rmy friends fall away from me like the leaves from the Virginia creeper in autumn. This time, in a moment of unguardedness, I have severed the friendship of years because I ventured to disbelieve a man who told me in all sober earnestness that he saw a trapdoor open in the under part of the Zepp. and a bomb drop through.^ The Exhibition of Zepp. Relics. To the exhibition at the H.A.C. grounds in Finsbuiy ol relics of the German airship brought down at Cuffley has now been added another marquee containing several parts of one of the Zeppelins brought down in Essex. About 12 feet of the pointed end of the airship is shown, together with two engines, one of the engine cabins, the bomb-dropping gear, propellers, gears, tanks, 4c. Another instructive addition is an L, V.G. biplane captured in France. In the early days I lost many friends who, although living widely apart, had the airship stationary right over their respective houses, but 1 became wise to this trap and was not caught later. 1 came near ^to losing several in previous raids who saw " the whole thing shiver as the shots struck it," and who " saw her point her nose vertically to climb out of range," but the affair was patched up by a compromise, and I should have taken heed of my tongue. But I was not prepared for the trapdoor being seen to open and a bomb slip through with the machine at something like twenty thousand feet above our heads. R",A*,weak point in' my composition is that 1 cannot lie low and say nothing when things do not seem to me to point to possibilities. There is that corres pondent whose tale is in the dailies this week, for instance. If he were a friend of mine, I am sure that friendship would be in jeopardy. He gives a graphic account of the saving of an aeroplane by the obec rvcr after the pilot was killed. The communication cord had also'^been shot through. I do not know exactly what, by that name, the communication cord in an aeroplane is, but we will take it for granted that there is one. The machine dived vertically towards the ground, and all seemed about to end in a pile-up, when, at 200 yards from terra firma, tin heroic observer wriggled out of his seat and got upon the top plane, thus restoring the balance. From this position of control he worked the rudder with his hand. The machine rapidly assumed its proper flying aspect, and came safely to earth within friendly lines. And because the writer is unknown to me, my visiting list is unaffected so far as he is concerned. Two years ago I had never seen a Zeppelin. Since then I have seen most of those that have approached my'district, including the three which dropped, finished up in flame and smoke, and I have been inclined to tell of what I have seen, but now I come to realise it, I find that people have received my statements without respectful reserve, even as I have received those of others. I am inclined to the belief that there is a kind of disease, a sort of zeppdinitis, that sets the hand of all men against his brothers, and that the best recipe is to have influenza and stay in bed out of the way of everything, and to see and say nothing. There are times wlien I get tired of things, and I am tired putting forward my opinions against those of others. In future, I intend to pretend to believe everything I am told in relation to airship raids. si m How Italy does li. IT has been announced in Rome that the valuable property of the Austrian Imperial family owned in Italy is to be sold, and the proceeds of the sale devoted to the pay ment of compensation to sufferers in towns bombarded by Austrian aircraft. It is estimated that the property, for which tenders have already been received, n worth any thing from fifty to a hundred million lire C£2.000,000 to j£4,ooo,ooo). *S7
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