AIRMEN IN THE DESERTS OF EGYPT
Adventures of the Royal Flying Corps in Sinai
Told by F. W. Martindale
The land has its perils for the aviator, and so has the sea; but our "fliers" in Egypt have learnt to dread the treacherous desert more than anything else. Here are two little stories from the annals of the R. F. C.—one near tragedy, the other real tragedy, lightened only by the amazing self-sacrifice of a young officer and the dogged pluck of his mechanic, who posted up his diary while awaiting death. Recorded in the Wide World Magazine.
I—FLYING OVER THE ANCIENT HOLY LANDS
Whatever the professional distinction may be between the two branches of the aviation service, the broad difference in the public mind between the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service is that the former fly over land and the latter over sea. And whatever the relative advantages, and the reverse, of these opposite conditions may be, a certain amount of sympathy inevitably goes out to the naval airman in the supposedly more difficult element from which he starts and on which he has to make his "landing" on return. The mystery and the menace of the sea, which has always made sailors a race apart, is so real and apprehensible a thing, even to the landsman, that instinctively the sea is felt to be a source of greater peril to the airman than the land.
Be this as it may, it has fallen to the lot of the Royal Flying Corps in this war to face an "element"—if one may call it such—as mysterious as the ocean, and not a whit less menacing. This is the desert—a thing which casts a spell upon those who have to dare it as potent and as fearful as any with which the sea holds the mariner in thrall.
Mutable to the eye as the face of the waters, sudden and fickle in mood as the sea itself, there lurks in the desert an even grimmer menace than that which gives the sailor his wary, vigilant eye. The cruelty of the sea is nothing to the cruelty of the desert. Ask the airman who has made trial of both, and he will tell you that better a hundred times the risk of falling into the clutches of the uncertain sea than the chance of finding himself at the mercy of the pitiless desert.
Here is a case in point—a little excerpt from the doings of the Royal Flying Corps, which it would be hard to match even in the records of that adventurous service. Pilot and observer set off in an aeroplane upon a single-handed reconnaissance towards the enemy's lines in Sinai. A long flight was made over the desert, and the machine was a long way from its base when that terrible bugbear known as "engine-trouble" developed. All attempts to right it in the air proved abortive, and a forced descent was made. The aeroplane alighted on the desert waste, and the two occupants worked feverishly to adjust the faulty mechanism. Their dismay can be imagined when they found repair impossible, and realized that between themselves and the Canal lay a stretch of some twenty miles of desert, over which no means of progress was possible to them save their own legs.
It says much for the loyalty to the duty of these two airmen that they carefully dismantled the gun which was mounted on the machine before setting fire to the latter, and that they actually set off on their long tramp across the burning desert carrying the gun between them.
It soon became evident that any idea of saving the gun by taking it all the way with them was hopeless. The weight, not inconsiderable under any condition, was insupportable, and before long there was no course possible but to bury the weapon in the sand, obliterating as best they could all tell-tale traces which might reveal its hidden presence to a chance enemy patrol.
II—OVER THE BURNING DESERT WITH A GUN
Progress was easier when the cumbersome weapon had been disposed of. But it was not long before clothing had to be jettisoned also. The relatively thick and heavy garments of an aviator were intolerable under the savage rays of the sun, and one by one they had to be discarded. Even so, the going was terribly difficult and the journey most exacting. By means of a compass a direction due west was maintained, the one hope of the castaways being to keep on until some point on the Canal should be reached.
The hours went slowly by as mile after mile was laboriously covered. The strength of both men was steadily declining, but it was not until something more than half the estimated distance from their goal had been accomplished that either gave way. Then one collapsed; he could go no farther, he declared. His companion, well aware how fatally seductive a "rest" would inevitably be, bade him keep going, but without effect. The weary man's legs gave way beneath him; he sank down on the sand, and declared that he preferred to stay there rather than attempt to struggle on any longer. Advice, persuasion, cajolery, threats, and even force were of no avail, and nothing remained but for the second man to continue the journey, with waning hope, alone. To stay with his comrade meant that both must inevitably perish miserably; by pressing on there was, at all events, a faint chance, not only of reaching the Canal himself, but of summoning aid to return in time to rescue the other.
For some miles the wretched survivor, now tortured by an awful thirst and so weakened that he seemed scarcely able to move his legs, staggered blindly on across the desert. He had consciousness enough to maintain his westerly direction, but as to how long he continued stumbling forward in this almost aimless fashion, or what distance he covered, he can hazard only the wildest guess. His progress became largely automatic. Force of will kept him moving, his reluctant limbs relapsing into semi-mechanical action.
At the moment of his direst extremity, as it seemed, when from sheer lack of power his body threatened to collapse altogether, the hapless wanderer espied a horse before him in the desert!
Now, if this were fiction, no writer, however cynical, would ever dare to introduce a horse at such a point of the narrative. The thing would be too absurd; the long arm of coincidence never reached so far as that! Nobody could be expected to believe it.
Yet the fact is as stated. At the psychological moment, when every new step taken might have proved his last, the wanderer saw before him in the desert the miraculous apparition of a horse. It can be easily supposed that at first he did not believe his eyes. In his half-demented state he feared the creature must be an hallucination—some trick of mirage, or the mere figment of his disordered brain. Only when he came nearer, and could hear as well as see the animal move, did a full realization of his good fortune begin to dawn upon him.
III—TALE OF MODERN ARABIAN NIGHTS
A sail in unfrequented latitudes never seemed more truly a godsend to castaways at sea than this marvellous horse to the exhausted airman. It was but a stray animal belonging to some mounted unit which had drawn the peg of its head-rope and escaped from the horse-lines into the open desert, but to the incredulous eyes which suddenly perceived its presence it might well have been the famous magic steed of the Arabian Nights.
To catch the animal was the immediate thing to be done, and anyone who has tried to catch a shy horse in a paddock can imagine the hideous anxiety on the part of an exhausted man in approaching an animal which has the illimitable desert to manœuvre in, and has but to kick up its heels to vanish in a trice over the horizon. Fortunately, the creature evinced but little shyness, and suffered itself to be taken without difficulty. It is probable, indeed, that this desert encounter was not less welcome on the one side than on the other.
One wonders how the would-be rider ever managed to get astride his lucky steed. His legs had little enough capacity for a spring left in them. But necessity and hope in combination provide a wonderful incentive and spur, and somehow or other he scrambled up. He himself has hazy recollections only of this stage of his adventures, and beyond the fact that he did mount that horse, and manage to set it going in a westerly direction, his recollections are vague.
The next phase of the story is contained in the narrative of the officer commanding a patrol vessel on the Suez Canal, who relates that while on duty his attention was directed to a strange figure riding on horseback along the eastern bank of the Canal. At first sight he supposed it to be some mounted Arab or other nomad of the desert, but on closer inspection the horse did not seem to be of native type, and the rider's garb appeared unusual. On nearer approach the strange apparition resolved itself into a white man, of wild and haggard demeanor, dressed in a torn shirt and very little else, who bestrode barebacked a troop-horse in distressed condition. Hailed by the patrol boat, the white horseman replied in English, and explained intelligibly, if a trifle incoherently, that he had come out of the desert, that his chum was lying some miles back in dire distress, if not already dead, and would somebody please hurry up and do something.
The conclusion of the story can be told in a sentence. A relief party was sent at once into the desert, the second airman was picked up exhausted but still alive, and at the date when the present writer last heard of them both parties of this strange adventure of the desert were little, if any, the worse for their experiences. As to the gallant troop-horse which played the part of a kind of equus ex machina, no peg in all the lines is now more firmly and securely driven in than his!
The story just related ends happily for all concerned; let me deal now with the reverse side of the shield!
IV—SHOT HIMSELF IN SELF-SACRIFICE
About the middle of June last year Second-Lieutenant Stewart Gordon Ridley, of the R.F.C., went out alone in his machine as escort to another pilot, who had with him a pilot named J. A. Garside. "Engine trouble" developed when Lieutenant Ridley had been flying for an hour and a half, and, as they could not put the matter right immediately on alighting, they decided to camp where they were for the night. Next morning, as Ridley's engine still proved obdurate, the second pilot decided to fly back alone to the base, and return on the following day to the assistance of the two men. This programme was duly carried out, but when he got back the pilot found that Ridley and Garside, with the machine, had disappeared.
A search party was immediately organized to scour the desert, and on the Sunday tracks were discovered. It was not until the Tuesday, however, that the missing 'plane was discovered. Beside it lay the dead bodies of Lieutenant Ridley and Garside. A diary was found on the mechanic, and the brief entries therein tell the tragic story of those last hours better than pages of description. The diary reads as follows:—
Friday.—Mr. Gardiner left for Meheriq, and said he would come and pick one of us up. After he went we tried to get the machine going, and succeeded in flying for about twenty-five minutes. Engine then gave out. We tinkered engine up again, succeeded in flying about five miles next day (Saturday), but engine ran short of petrol.
Sunday.—After trying to get engine started, but could not manage it owing to weakness—water running short, only half a bottle—Mr. Ridley suggested walking up to the hills. Six P.M. (Sunday): Found it was farther than we thought; got there eventually; very done up. No luck. Walked back; hardly any water—about a spoonful. Mr. Ridley shot himself at ten-thirty on Sunday whilst my back was turned. No water all day; don't know how to go on; got one Verey light; dozed all day, feeling very weak; wish someone would come; cannot last much longer.
Monday.—Thought of water in compass, got half bottle; seems to be some kind of spirit. Can last another day. Fired Lewis gun, about four rounds; shall fire my Verey light to-night; last hope without machine comes. Could last days if I had water.
The captain of the Imperial Camel Corps, with which the aviators were co-operating, formed the opinion that Lieutenant Ridley shot himself in the hope of saving the mechanic, the water they had being insufficient to last the two of them till help arrived. The Commanding Officer of the R. F. C. states: "There is no doubt in my mind that he performed this act of self-sacrifice in the hope of saving the other man."
The history of the R. F. C. is a short one, but it is already full of glorious deeds.