Sir Walter Raleigh and the Air History: A Personal Recollection

by H. A. Jones

The next time I saw him was at Victoria Station on his return on April the 25th. He had been due to arrive the previous day. Lady Raleigh had spent the day meeting continental trains. She had to return to Oxford on the Tuesday afternoon, so I went down that evening to watch the trains in to see if he would arrive. The likeliest one was the train timed to arrive at 7.30. Actually it came in, in two portions, an hour later. Sir Walter was on the second train. He stepped out of the saloon loaded like a Christmas tree. He had all his own luggage packed for convenience of travelling in suit-cases. He carried a topee and wore a waterproof cap, with many flaps and folds, slightly tilted. Under one arm packed in straw and canvas was a thigh boot which some one had given to him in the desert with a request that he bring it to London and have it delivered to the address marked on it, where, presumably, it was to be half-soled and heeled or otherwise reconstructed. Under the other arm was a large round bundle, similarly addressed for delivery to a lady in London. This parcel, he supposed, contained Turkish Delight. This fugitive gift to a lady was carried a few thousand miles from the desert by Sir Walter Raleigh, already in the grip of a fatal fever. The many stories of his great forbear hardly approach this for sheer charm and gallantry!

It was raining in torrents and a bit chilly. I got a taxi and Sir Walter directed the driver to the Waldorf. He was unwilling to disturb his club as he had not wired for a room. The Waldorf was full and we went on to the Cecil. Not a room in the place, so on to the Metropole. He himself jumped out here a little impatiently, but was received, as he said, somewhat coldly by the office staff who, after keeping him waiting, spoke to him almost with astonishment that he should have the temerity to ask for accommodation. At the Victoria, the same story. We then tried a small hotel in one of the side streets off Charing Cross—Craven Street, I think. They had nothing. Yes, if he did not mind there was a small room through the office and connected with it. He took it gladly. It was small. But as he washed he carried on a conversation with the proprietress, a woman of friendly manners. We could get nothing to eat there, and he had had no dinner. He looked very tired and a bit faraway.

We went, through the driving rain, to a near-by restaurant. He chose something, but when it came, although it looked very good, he complained after eating a little that it was not nice. It was so unlike him. However, he ordered some soft roes on toast and we sat on till near midnight whilst he talked of his tour. He was full of it. Full of stories and impressions. I asked him if he had made notes of the more interesting things that had struck him. He had not. He had them all in his head. He told how at the aerodrome at Amman an Arab Sheikh had appeared with his followers, all heavily armed with service rifles and bristling with ammunition. Sir Walter and the Sheikh were introduced and sat together awhile at a corner of the aerodrome. The Sheikh occasionally stroking Sir Walter’s cheek apparently as a mark of friendliness. The followers formed a large circle round them and squatted. This went on for a bit and then the conversation being rather one-sided Sir Walter got bored and walked away to sit at another part of the aerodrome. He was deep in thought. He looked up and there silently squatting around again were the Arabs with the sun gleaming on their rifles. He talked a bit with the Sheikh and then tiring got up and sought the officer in charge of the aerodrome.

“What do you do when you want to get rid of these fellows?” he asked.

“Do?” was the reply. “What do we do? Why, we take a big stick and tell them to hop it.”

The big stick was produced, the order was given, the rifles were quietly slung and the Arabs went. They were like children, said Sir Walter, and knew what you meant when you told them that you didn’t want to play with them any more.

He spoke of his stay with the High Commissioner at Jerusalem. How he had gone over the road on which the Turkish 7th Army had been bombed from the air until it had become a rabble. The havoc of that day—September the 21st, 1918—was made clear to him. The Turkish armies were in retreat. Soon after dawn on the 21st a reconnaissance machine landed with the information that dense masses of men and transport were on the road running north-east from Nablus. This was the Turkish 7th Army making for the Jordan, hoping to cross at Jisr-ed-Damieh. The enemy retreat via Beisan had already been blocked by the cavalry, but it was out of the question that ground troops could guard the Jordan crossings for some hours. If the road could not be blocked from the air, the army would escape. All available aeroplanes were got together and there began the most awful disaster which has ever been suffered from the air by an army. To strike from the air you must strike quick and strike ceaselessly. The attack was arranged so that two machines should arrive over the retreating enemy every three minutes. In addition a formation of six machines was sent over every half-hour. The attack started at 8 o’clock in the morning. At noon it was all over. The road is bordered by steep ravines. No cover for a rabbit. There was no escaping the pitiless rain of machine-gun bullets poured on to the enemy from a low height, or the bombs which soon reduced the head of the column to chaos. The road was blocked, but there was panic pressure from the rear. Dead were piled on dead. Drivers jumped from their motor-lorries. Motor-lorries ran amok. Horses stampeded, tramping soldiers to death beneath their hoofs. Guns were overturned. Every three minutes and every half-hour with demoniacal precision the aeroplanes appeared, did their job, and went. Every three minutes and every half-hour on the ground confusion worse confounded. The Turkish 7th Army a few hours before in orderly retreat, soon ceased to exist. Sir Walter inspected the road on a Scots Grey charger. He confessed that he was brought somewhat into sympathy with the panic of the retreat because he was not at home on a charger. On one occasion, and at a precipitous and dangerous piece of road, with a slope to doom on one side and an oppressive gaunt height on the other, Sir Walter coughed. The charger taking this as a sign of encouragement, went off at a gallop. Happily Sir Walter recovered his nerve and the reins without much loss of time. He talked of this trip, telling how the point where the bombing started is marked by the stone on which Christ sat and talked to the woman of Samaria.

The soft roes on toast arrived and he ordered another beer. And then on to the desert. The aeroplane on which he was making the journey to Baghdad had a mishap and landed in the desert. For four or five days no relief arrived. The little party soon exhausted their stock of sandwiches and had to fall back on bully-beef and biscuits. They made tea in petrol tins. A wise friend had insisted on giving Sir Walter a present of a bottle of whisky just before he left for the East. At the time he thought the present superfluous. But during the stay in the desert, it was invaluable. It made him most popular. He found it difficult to get on with the hard food. He was sixty-one. But it was another adventure and he loved it. He must have been the life of the little party. He invented a game. They chased paper boats to a given point on the sand, made a bet and then each ran after his fancy. They organized sweepstakes as to the time and hour and direction from which relief would come. Sir Walter never won. Relief came with Sir Edward Ellington on his way to Baghdad.

The journey was resumed. At Baghdad Sir Walter sickened. But he flew to Mosul. At Mosul he fell sick of a fever. But his adventure was not over, so he shook off his fever and flew back to Baghdad. He saw and talked with everybody he could. He was delighted with Baghdad. The dream of years had come true and the truth was finer than the dream. That is how he found life. He recalled the taste of Baghdad. How an apparent mist was hanging over the city when they came to it from the air. How it was found to be not a mist, but the mud of centuries. He still had the curious taste of it, he said, as he gulped a little beer, as if to wash it away.

The following morning he came to the office before leaving for Oxford. He made a few additional corrections to his book. The next news we had told us of his illness. But he was still light-hearted and we never knew how ill he was. In a letter to Colonel Daniel, written on May the 4th in reply to an invitation to dinner, he says: “It can’t be done. They work away at my temperature but without much success. They are of course tyrannical and refuse me beer, which I pine for. When I can get up to London we will have some beer. They also fill me with things the taste of which to any reverent natural theologian is sufficient proof that God never intended these things for human consumption. I hope it won’t be very long, but I am sure it can’t be next week.” The next week his fever had been diagnosed as typhoid, and on May the 13th he was dead. His last adventure was over. At the height of his powers he was touched and taken by the long arm of war.