As the pilots could fly forward in an hour and would, on arrival be without food or sleeping quarters, to say nothing of air mechanics, I organised the whole move to take under 24 hours. I was patting myself on the back when the Wing Commander arrived with the General, who thoroughly berated me for daring to imagine I could improve on the Brigade staff work. I suppose there is a reason for the strange orders that sometimes come from higher authority, but a more inconsiderate piece of staff work than this could not be imagined.
The last of the new fighters the Squadron
received just before the end of the war was the Sopwith Snipe, a slightly larger biplane, with a 230 h.p. Bentley (B.R.2) engine. These came through to us in October 1918, at a place called Foucacourt on the Somme, and were supposedly the last word in British fighter aircraft. It was not, in my humble opinion, a good aeroplane, but the Armistice came so soon afterwards that we never had a real chance to try them against the enemy, who was by this time retreating so fast that hostile aircraft were few and far between.
Armistice Day 1918 will never be forgotten. The ’phone beside my bed rang at about 06.30 a.m. and the Wing Commander said the Armistice would be signed at 11.00 a.m. He wanted us to carry out a “line patrol” at 10.00 a.m., keeping well on our side of the line, and not to be offensive in any way. So it all ended. We managed to celebrate the event there and then, and believe me there were no half measures. I have read and heard much about the celebrations at home but they simply could not have equalled those on the spot.
In retrospect, the 14 casualties that occurred during my time with the Squadron were comparatively few, but each was a personal loss, for I cannot imagine a Unit that was more of a happy family. One in particular, however, had an even more personal connection. This was the death of Flight Sub-Lieutenant C. R. Walworth on 15 February 1918.
When I was home on leave during Christmas 1917, and dining with my family at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, young Walworth, in the uniform of a Sub-Lieutenant R.N.A.S., was sitting with his family at the next table. He told me he had just passed out from a Flying School and was posted to Dunkirk. His father asked me to try and get him to my Squadron: his mother said he was their only child
