R.A.F.’s First Months

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 4

R.A.F.’s First Months

Royal Air Force 1918. Edited

I>y Christopher Cole. Kimber. 240 pp. Index of names.

This book commemorates the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Royal Air Force. Until April 1, 1918, Britain had two air forces, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps. The two merged and became an independent service, ranking with the Army and Navy. The new service took up its duties at a crucial stage in the First World War when the Germans were very far from being defeated, when both Germans and Allies were bringing new aircraft into service, and when the air forces on both sides were exploiting the experience of three and a half years of fighting in the air. Records of what went on in the air on the Western

Front from April 1, 1918, until the Armistice in November are the substance of this book. Brief summaries at the beads of chapters covering short periods of activity are, apart from the Introduction, the only comments on events. The rest, and bulk,

of the book comprises the series of weekly resumes of air operations compiled at the time by Royal Air Force headquarters in France. These hitherto unpublished confidential action reports describe succinctly and laconically, the action-filled first | months of a great fighting service. The fighter, reconnaissance, and bomber aeroplanes of the time are the subjects of pictures and sketches, and combine with the text to make a remarkably complete record of the first months of the RAJ. on the Western Front

THE SIGNPOSTERS, by Helen Cresswell (Faber and Faber), is a heart-warming story about Barley, Hetty and Dyke Signposter. It is Dyke who earns his living by checking signposts. One day Dyke had a wonderful idea connected with a Michaelmas Fair which was held every 25 years at Ingle where Penn, his brother, lived. His idea was to have a grand re-union of 127 members of his family at the Fair. It troubled Dyke greatly that his brother Wick would not come because Kit, his son, had recently left him. However after a great fire Kit returned and then he agreed to go. But Dyke still had another problem—how was he going to house so great a family? It was Barley who saw an army camped under a huge tent there and so a problem was settled. The day arrived and when it was finished Dyke said that he had a “beautiful family feeling” on this Michaelmas Day. After the reunion Dyke went back to signposting, Wick built his house in Ingle, Kit became a famous actor and Penn built churches. For the reader the visit to the great Michaelmas Fair is a time very well spent. Some of Oscar Wilde’s fairy stories have been accepted into the recognised corpus of children’s literature; others are comparatively little known. This is partly because the plots deviate too far from the acceptable norm, but sometimes because the style is bogus. It is curious that Wilde, who had such wonderful lightness and dexterity in his dramatic writing, should not have noticed the lumbering false archaisms that entangle much of the action here. THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER STORIES, by Oscar Wilde (Dent and Dutton, 154 pp.), is suitable for older Children, who can take the tales as literature rather than bedtime reading, and who can enjoy the very pleasing line and colour illustrations by Peggy Fortnum.