Who could forget Johnstone and Jordan indulging in imitation scraps in the air? The mere remembrance of those hair-raising stunts gives me the old thrill again. Those combats, I might say, were almost invariably continued in the mess, There they took the form of prolonged wrestling matches. They lasted until both parties were completely done, and after each had tried his level best to break the other man short off at the waist. Chairs and tables were overturned in the process, and the fight raged with deadly
determination and entire disregard for surrounding persons or things. A stranger would have come to the conclusion that it was the real thing and could only end in murder. We knew better, but they were scraps worth watching. When, and only when, complete exhaustion had been reached, the duel would automatically cease, with honours easy and the friendship stronger than ever. They were both born fighters and leaders.
And then Compston, and his lone quests at heights which he could not really stand. I have seen him so exhausted after such flights that he was hardly able to get out of his machine, and so racked with subsequent headache and depleted vitality that only a long leave could have made up for that continual over-strain. But he carried on, sustained by an unquenchable fire of devotion, and it is only now these many years after the war that he begins to look less like a physical impossibility. He was a proof that the finest and most successful fighting pilots must be possessed of exceptional brain, sight and spiritual force. He was the embodiment of the spirit which animated our fighting pilots.
Will anyone write a record of the evening binges which relieved the end of a foggy day? When Johns would shamelessly appear in the guise of a W.A.A.C. going home on leave; when Jordan walked his imaginary quarter-deck, and gradually provoked everyone to struggle in deadly combat with everyone else; when Johnstone - always ready for trouble on land and in the air - had a duel with Jordan, the weapons being Pyrenes; when Cooper played and sang snatches of the latest London shows in his charming way, and suddenly reduced us all to an attentive silence with a painfully pleasant glimpse of life at home; when Draper would take charge of the piano and inspire us all to yelling choruses and happy forgetfulness; when we worked the “funnel trick” on an American General and filled his riding breeches with water, having mistaken his one modest star for the badge of a lieutenant; when Dixon delivered his only and historic speech, and Roach would make sure of his mess bill with a game of poker.
They were wonderful evenings, and like all the best and fullest moments of life, they came unrehearsed and full of sudden and unforgettable incidents.
