CAUGHT NAPPING.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2645, 20 October 1919, Page 7

CAUGHT NAPPING.

SURPRISED by AUDACIOUS HUN TACTICS. (By Major W. A. Bishop, V.C.) One afternoon I was out with ray patrol, six machines strong, and had not been on the lines very long before we met. with a lone Hun twoseater. From a distance he looked like one of the shy fellows I had been chasing most of the morning, and I led the patrol straight all him, quite confident in my own mind that he was going to be an easy victim. I was convinced of this when at first he appeared to run away. I opened fire at him at 200 yards, whereupon a marvellous thing happened. The German pilot turned in a Hash and came head-on into the six of us, opening fire with two guns. Much to our amazement, he flew right through the centre of our formation. The unexpected audacity of the Hun caught us entirely off our guard. It was a bad bit of work for us to let him go right through us, and we were all deeply disgusted. We turned on the fellow with all the fury there was in us, but he was quite ready for us. We seemed to be fighting very badly, and the honours were not coming our way. The fight lasted about three minutes, and during that time I for one was caught badly by the German. While trying to correct a stoppage in my gun he turned on me and got in .a very fierce burst of fire, some of the bullets passed close to my body. He also got one of the others a few seconds later trying to do the same thing ; and then, to cap the climax, he turned away, broke off the combat, and escaped as free as a bird, with probably only a few bul-let-holes in his machine. He must have been a very fine pilot, and a very brave man, for he put up a wonderful fight ; and I have not the slightest hesitation in saying he probably enjoyed it more than we did.

A little later I was flying around, when I saw dead beneath me a green-and-black machine, with huge black crosses painted on it. It was one of the new type of enemy scouts, and, and, a£ I later discovered, had a verygood man piloting it. I dived at him, but he did a great turn, climbing at the same time, and by a clever manoeuvre managed to get directly behind me. I had a hard time getting rid of him, as he had me in a very awkward position, and every second, for several minutes, I expected that one of his bullets, which were passing close by me, would find its mark. But even in a perilous time like this my sense of humour would out, and I thought of a verse from “The Lobster Quadrille” : “ ‘Won’t you walk a little faster ?’ Said the whiting to the snail : ‘ There’s a porpoise close behind me, And he’s treading on my tail !’ ” I did not like that Hun porpoise at all. and he was treading on my tail like the very Shadow of Death itself. However, he made a slight mistake on one of our turns, and a few seconds later I got into a position where the fight began anew on slightly different terms. For several minutes we flew around in a circle, both getting in occasional bursts of fire. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some scarlet German machines approaching, so 1 snatched at an opportunity that suddenly appeared, and escaped. A few minutes later on returning to that spot, I saw that the Hun scouts had found another one of our machines by itself, and. were all attacking it. So I came down from above, and created a momentary diversion by opening fire with my last ten rounds, and thus gave the British machine a chance to escape. Our pilot slid speedily out of the fray. We were up late that night attending a show given for the squadron by a travelling troupe of concert people by the Army Service Corps. It was jiast midnight when I got to bed, and I was up again at four, having an early morning job on hand. I will never forget the orderly who used to wake me in those days. He positively enjoyed it. After a cup of hot tea and a biscuit, four of us left the ground shortly after five. The snn in the early mornings, shining in such direct rays from the oast, makes it practically impossible to see in that direction, so that these dawn adventures were not much of a pleasure. It meant that danger from surprise was very great, for the Huns, coming from the east with the sun at their backs, could see us when we couldn’t see them. At any rate, one doesn’t feel one’s best at dawn, especially when one has only four hours’ sleep. This was the case on this bright May morning ; and, to make matters worse, there was a ground mist. The sun, reflecting on this, made seeing in any direction very difficult. We had been doing a patrol up and down the line for an hour and a quarter, at a very high altitude, where it was cruelly cold, so I decided to lead the patrol down lower. There did not seem to be an enemy in the air, and for a moment I think my vigilance was relaxed. I had begun to dream a bit, when suddenly a burst of machine-gun fire awakened me to the fact that there was a war on. Not even taking time to look from where it all came, I pulled my machine up and turned it like lightning, looking over my shoulder during the whirl. This instinctive manoeuvre saved my life. An enemy machine, painted a beautiful silver, was coming vertically down at me firing. He just missed mo with his bullets, and, “zooming” up again, he made a second dive. This time I pulled my machine back, and, with my nose to the sky, f tired at the Hun as he came down. I then flew sideways and evaded him that way. It had been a clear case of surprise, so far as I was concerned, and I had a very narrow squeak from disaster. Altogether there were five Huns in the attacking force against the four of us. We were flying in diamond formation, and the pilot bringing up

our rear had seen the Huns just before the attack, but not in time to warn us. Counting the five enemy pilots, he wondered which one of us was going to be attacked by two Huns instead of one ? The next moment he saw i the Germans split up as they dived j at us, and lie was the fortunate one to draw the two. It was a hicdy ; thing for the rest of us, taken wholly by surprise, that we each had but a j single machine to deal with. Our , rear-guard was better prepared ; and, [ although we all had our troubles, we managed to clear away without injury. i Next day we had rather a dramatic | touch. After the morning’s work we were sitting at luncheon and the second course had just been served, when a telephone message came that two enemy machines were at work on the lines. They were directing artillery fire of several hostile batteries on some of our important points. The request came through from the front line to send somebody out at once and drive the undesirables off. Talk about Wellington at the battle of Waterloo ! This had that beaten in every way. We felt like a lot of firemen, and in a very.few minutes after we got the message another pilot and I were out over the trenches. Five minutes later we were engaged in deadly combat with the two enemy machines. They had seen us as we approached. We were hungry, and were anxious to get back to our muttons. So there was no shilly-shallying about the fight —it was a case of going in and finishing it in the shortest possible order. So the two of us waded in side by side, opening fire on the rear enemy- With our first burst of fire, it dived on | its nose) did a couple ot turns as it fell, and finally crashed into a field beside the river. We then turned our attention to Hun No. 2, but he was a mile away by this time and winging it for home as fast as ever he could. We were willing to waste ten minutes more away from the festive board to have a go at him, but he showed no sign of returning, and we streaked home to our interrupted meal. It had all been very short and sweet, and most successful.