Young war bird’s memories of long ago

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33959, 27 September 1975, Page 10

Young war bird’s memories of long ago

Air of Battle. By W. M. Fry. William Kimber 194 pp. N.Z. price $7.30. When this book was published last year the author was aged 78—and it was his first work. It is a biographical treatment of a five-year period of his life which finished 56 years ago. Why the delay in publication? Wing Commander William Fry, M.C.. does not say so directly, but there is internal evidence that he did not even begin to assemble this account until he was already in his seventies, and then only because he was satisfied that certain war historical data that he had been checking for some years—some of it even before the Second World War—were at

last sufficiently verified for him to talk with assurance about his part in the First World War. That, at least, is the readily available reason for such a late appearance. Whatever the background, the result is a delightful, meandering, and strenuously honest story of a young man’s almost incredible years of survival on the Western Front. For most of these years young Fry was flying the strut, wire, and fabric machines which today look as though they were discards from the Wright Brothers experimental period at Kittyhawk. In two years and a half of operational flying in France, with few breaks, he accumulated 637 hours in the air, including 381 sorties against the enemy. Wing Commander Fry’s total war span was quite remarkable. He was actually in the trenches as a private in 1914, and took part in the celebrated fraternising of the British and German troops in No-man’s Land on Christmas Day. He calls this the “notorious Christmas truce” and says that he had read many reference to it “mostly more legendary than factual.” His participant’s recollection of it is therefore not only fascinating but valuable in itself. The fraternising in Fry’s sector continued from dawn until soon after midday, and he himself exchanged addresses with a German soldier. By the spring of 1915 he was back in England because as a territorial soldier he had gone out under age, and he was not yet 18. He secured a commission in an infantry, regiment, and by the end of the year had applied for transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, where he was given pilot training. From now on Fry builds most of his story round the entries in his flying log book. When he can recall the circumstances of an entry he will launch into his account of the flight or incident with gusto; but he resolutely, even testily, refuses to be drawn by

an apparently exciting rererence wnere the details have eluded him. It is a world of Morane biplanes, Bristol Scouts, Vickers Bullets, Sopwith Dolphins, Spad Scouts, Fokker triplanes, Nieuport Scouts, and all the rest of it. A “Hell’s Angels” brought up to 1975. Airfields behind French farmhouses; pilots without parachutes going down in flames. The pace and style of the writing are one with the performance of those historic machines—slow and measured, even pottering, but still interesting. In a word, charming. Fry served with some of the big men in the air war, including the V.C.s McCudden and Bishop. His references to Bishop are curious, almost as though he is inviting the reader to follow him between the lines. He records that the exploit on June 2, 1917, for which W. A. Bishop was awarded the Victoria Cross took place on a flight where Bishop had asked Fry to accompany him. Fry did not do this, and Bishop went alone. He shot up a German aerodrome and destroyed several aircraft which went up to attack him. Fry writes: “This must surely be a very unusual case of a Victoria Cross or any high honour being awarded on the word of the recipient only as to his exploit and without any witnesses or participants.” Towards the end of the same month Fry was posted. back to England for a spell at home. “I recall that out of stubbornness I refused to apologise for a remark I had made to my flight commander”—who was Bishop. It must be wondered why, after all these years, Wing Commander Fry bothered to bring his experiences of two generations ago into book form. Readers interested in the period and circumstances will be grateful that he did bother; they will still be puzzled that the gestation has been so long. On this time-scale personal accounts of the Second World War will still be coming out in the twenty-first century.