AN AIR GUNNER IN WORLD WAR I

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 4

AN AIR GUNNER IN WORLD WAR I

The Fledging: An Aerial Gunneria Experience* in * World War L By Arch Whitehouse. Nicholas Vane. Illustration* and an index. 307 pp.

Be not deceived by the slow start of this autobiography. The runway is short and it is no time before the reader is airborne in flight after flight of hair-raising adventures, it is intense realism sauced with idealism, irrepressible humour and caustic criticism—mostly of sergeant-majors, sergeants, corporals. This is a personal at ount of life and near-death in the years 1914-1918. It is as alive today as though the events described happened only yesterday. and so thrilling as to be incredible when placed against modern standards of wartime aerial equipment and training. For these airmen fought in flimsy planes composed of insubstantial frames partly covered by insubstantial fabric and held together mainly by insubstantial wires; and, open to the skies, and inadequately protected against the cold. Pilot and gunner flew at. 18,000 feet, even 22,000 feet, without Oxygen. Arch Whitehouse (correct name, Arthur) was bom in Britain and taken to the United States as a youngster. When the war came he was 18 years old and working for the famous Edison in a storage battery factory. Appalled by the German outrage of Belgium, he immediately volunteered for war service with Britain. After a nightmare voyage to Liverpool as an attendant with a shipload of horses, he joined the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, was trained with makeshift equipment, went to France, was disillusioned when the horses were transferred to Indian cavalrymen. He served on the foul and muddy battlefields, then volunteered as a gunner in the Royal Flying Corps. There was no preliminary training for aerial gunners in those days, and it seems from the account given in this book that the officer pilots, in the early stages at least, were no more adequately trained than the gunners. In fact, it was not long before some of the pilots were frankly relying on the adaptable Gunner Whitehouse to tell them where they were and to guide them home from across the enemy lines.

Whitehouse was assigned to the famous 22nd Squadron. He flew in F.E.2B’s and later in Bristol Fighters, shot down 16 enemy aircraft and six barrage balloons, won the Military Medal and was recrmmended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Eventually, after many hairraising adventures and narrow escapes in a gunner’s open, low-sided nacelle, a long-delayed promise to train him as a pilot was fulfilled He was sent to Cranwell for training on Sopwith Pups and Camels. He was commissioned, sent on leave to America—and the war ended. Since then Whitehouse has written many books and articles, most of them concerned with war in the air, thanks to the war service that gave him the yearning and

experience to make a writer of him. His is not a highly literary style, but it grips with its simple, down-to-earth narration of exciting events; and there is always his human touch, romantic outlook, and ability to see the funny side of exasperating things. Among the highlights of this book could be: how the author unknowingly snubbed the Prince of Wales; fought in an aerial dog-fight; reported aerial observations that eould have made the Battle of Cambrai needless and saved thousands of lives (if they had been accepted as the truth); and recognised in the actor Leslie Howard the Lieutenant Leslie Stainer with whom he had been friendly in the Yeomanry—a strange tale, that!