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Chapter Five
Our Flying Aces: Daring Young Men
There has always been something magical about the flying aces of the Great War. While Canadian soldiers struggled in the muddy trenches below, the pilots of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service seemed to lead charmed lives in the skies above. “The air was the theatre for tens of thousands of troops watching the sky,” said Nanaimo-born flying ace Raymond Collishaw.
Contents
“Collie”: Maybe the Best Who Ever Flew—Sixty Victories
From Our Listeners: Flying Boat Pilot Claude Chester William Purdy
Major Donald Roderick MacLaren—Forty-Eight Victories
Captain Frederick McCall—Thirty-Seven Victories
Captain Charles Robert Reeves Hickey—Twenty-One Victories
Major Alfred Williams Carter—Seventeen Victories
The Hilborn Brothers of Quesnel
The Bell-Irving Boys
Flight Lieutenant Harwood James Arnold
Captain Bernard Paul Gascoigne Beanlands—Thirteen Victories
Poem: Sitka Spruce
Article: Airborn with Sitka Spruce
BC's Other Flying Aces
Sidebar: From Our Listeners
“Collie”: Maybe the Best Who Ever Flew—Sixty Victories
Raymond Collishaw always lived in the shadow of Ontario’s Billy Bishop. Bishop claimed seventy-two victories in the air and won the Victoria Cross. He dined with royalty and had a good war. But “Collie” was the better pilot and might have been the greatest of them all. His sixty victories were undisputed. And while he served most of the war in the less well known Royal Naval Air Service, he was highly decorated and became a true leader of men.
The propaganda experts back in Canada needed a dashing young hero to splash in the newspapers and Bishop was their man. But Collishaw kept quietly racking up victories. After 1918 he fought in ten more small wars before commanding air operations in North Africa in World War II.
Raymond Collishaw was born in Nanaimo in 1893. In 1914, his plan was to join the Canadian Navy. But while he was waiting for a response, he caught the flying bug.
“Oh, I wanted to fly!” he told a CBC documentary team in 1969. “We all had to pay four hundred dollars out of our own pocket to pay all the [flying school] living expenses. We got nothing in terms of allowance or any pay for the first months that we were in the game learning to fly.”
“Generally speaking, showmanship or any trickery didn’t enter into the field at all,” said Collishaw. But to survive, you needed some breaks. “It was straightforward duelling. And the best man, the luckiest man, won. It was more luck than anything else.”
Collishaw qualified as a Royal Naval Air Service pilot in 1916. And he was good. Very good. His description of a dogfight captures the element of performance:
“It was a sporting affair because there was a fifty–fifty chance for each. And there would be cheering going on in the trenches as one side or the other side overcame his adversary. The Germans were all watching their boy wearing their national colours. And on the English side, again they would say, that’s our boy. In those conditions, with the tremendous audience, each pilot wearing the colours of his country, he couldn’t very well run away even if he wanted to with this tremendous mass of people watching him. So it was a fight to the finish. It took quite a different kind of character to suffer that kind of terrible ordeal.”
Collishaw had that character. Fellow flying ace Bill Alexander described Colliishaw as irrepressibly upbeat.
“That is Collishaw right through. I have never known anyone more—what is the word?— ebullient. I never saw him depressed in all the months I was flying with him. He was an excellent squadron man.”
Group Captain Gerry Nash, who also flew with Collishaw in the Royal Naval Air Service, said he stood out as a leader of men.
“He was a man’s man, and one of the boys,” says Nash. “There was a great spirit of camaraderie between himself and the other members of the squadron.”
“I always think of myself as most successful as a squadron commander,” Collishaw said when he was in his seventies. “In the first war, I commanded three fighter squadrons successively, which I think no one else in the world did at that time.”
How did he do it? The life expectancy for pilots was dismally short. So Collishaw knew he needed to inspire his officers—and distract them from the constant reminders of mortality.
“I deliberately adopted a policy of trying to make everybody happy. Some young fellows have a tendency to go to their cabins and mope and think about the dangers of tomorrow whence they might be wounded or killed. So I deliberately developed a policy to see to it that all the officers went into the mess and had a jolly good time there, sing song and drinking. And it worked too!”
Gradually Collishaw’s accomplishments became better known. His flight group’s Sopwith Triplanes became not only famous, but infamous.
“Each flight had its own colours. One was blue and one was red. And in my particular case, it was black. The engine cowling and wheel covers were black. And as they were coloured black, the men began to call the flight ‘the black flight.’ Then when the flight became more famous, the newsmen picked the idea up.”
Gerry Nash called his machine Black Sheep. Collishaw’s plane was Black Maria, a popular name for police paddy wagons. Black humour indeed.
King George V came to inspect Collishaw’s squadron in 1918. He was impressed. Not bad for a bunch of colonials from Canada. Collishaw was starting to have a good war.
“My generation had an excellent time, because when I was a boy, Canadians never went abroad. And when they went to the first war, it was the first major occasion when a vast number of Canadians really saw the world as it was rather than what they heard about in their schoolrooms.”
Away from home, and faced each day with death, British Columbia’s young pilots cut loose when they had time to spare. Collishaw laughed when he remembered some of the binges they went on.
“Every fighter squadron was given a half day off a week. And on that half day, these kids went wild. They would go into some big town and paint the town red. They’d get back in, say two or three in the morning—maybe four—pie-eyed, and roll into bed. The orderly would come in and wake the fellow up. He’d turn himself out of bed, get up and washed, get dressed and go out [to fly again]. You see, there was something peculiar about the air. As soon as you got out into the fresh air, it cleared your brain. They’d be quite normal after fifteen or twenty minutes. But at first you couldn’t get any sense out of them. Hah, hah!”
Once in the air, it was serious business.
“One of the most terrible things that could happen to a fighter pilot was to get locked in a deadly embrace—in what was known as a waltz, where you went round and round and round, making continuous, endless turns, each opponent trying to get on the tail of the other fellow. And, of course, the other fellow was very anxious to see he didn’t do that. If your aircraft was getting onto the tail of the other fellow, you could see what you were doing with the nose of your aircraft by watching the other fellow’s face. His face showed that his time had come.”
Collishaw survived the war and went on to fight in the air over Russia during the revolution.
“I took part in ten small wars between the two big ones. And we found out in the small wars that a pilot can get killed just as dead as he can in a big war!”
The death of a fellow pilot during the Great War brought him in contact with the pilot’s sister in New Westminster. And that meeting eventually led to marriage.
“My wife had three brothers who were fighter pilots, and all three were killed. One in 1916, one in 1917 and one in 1918. And so because of my close association with her brother, I naturally met her in 1917. And then we were engaged for six years. I didn’t want to get married because I was keen on adventure and I realized that marriage would tether my activities as an adventurer. And so we hung fire on our engagement for six years and then we got married.”
Collishaw received many honours, including the Croix de Guerre, Companion of the Order of the Bath, the Distinguished Service Order and Bar, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Distinguished Service Cross, and the Distinguished Flying Cross—by one count over twenty-five honours. He was mentioned in dispatches repeatedly. Replicas of his decorations are on display at the Vancouver Island Military Museum in Nanaimo, part of an impressive display on a local boy. He died in 1976.
His widow, Neita Trapp, outlived him, dying in 1989. The cemetery in New Westminster has a special monument to the three brothers she lost in the war. Stanley Trapp died in France in 1916, George Trapp died in Belgium in 1917 and Donovan Trapp died in France in 1918.
Thanks to Colin Preston, CBC archivist in Vancouver, who found the Collishaw documentary for us.
From Our Listeners: Flying Boat Pilot Claude Chester William Purdy
By Dianne Rabel, Prince Rupert
Dianne Rabel is a Prince Rupert teacher who has visited the Great War battlefields and researched the war. She took a class to Vimy Ridge in 2012 and continues to research the impact of the war on BC’s northwest.
Claude Purdy is remembered as the pilot of the ill-fated Curtiss Flying Boat on which Al Sturtevant, son of privilege, Yale graduate and noted athlete, lost his life. Sturtevant was the first American airman to die in combat in the Great War; consequently his death received much attention. But it was Prince Rupert bank accountant Claude Purdy who was at the controls on February 15, 1918, when they and two British crewmen were shot down over the North Sea.
Claude was the eldest son of Ontario-born Dr. Alexander DeForest Purdy and his wife Henrietta. He was born in 1888 in East Selkirk, Manitoba, but within a few months the family moved to Bellingham, Washington, where Dr. Purdy practised medicine for about twelve years until his death. In 1901 Henrietta and her children were back in Canada and living at 1158 Melville Street, Vancouver.
The next few years Claude spent in school and then embarked on a banking career in 1910. He and his brother Fred, two years his junior, supported their widowed mother and younger brother Herbert on their salaries as bank accountant and railway clerk.
In 1914 Claude completed a banking course at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, then continued his banking career at the Canadian Bank of Commerce in the young, bustling city of Prince Rupert, BC. He appears to have taken the city by storm, and the local newspaper carried dozens of reports of his social activities and community service. One of the city’s most eligible bachelors, Claude was reported at dances, fundraisers and every event of note. He served as treasurer of St. Andrew’s (Anglican) parish, entered his garden produce in the fall fair and participated in whatever was at hand. We know he made numerous excursions on the coastal steamer because at that time the comings and goings of first-class passengers and hotel guests were front-page news! In late 1915 he signed up with the local Earl Grey’s Own Rifles as lieutenant.
But Claude was obsessed with aviation. While others rolled bandages, he started an aviation fund and gave the Prince Rupert Daily News regular updates of donors and their contributions. So it came as no particular surprise in 1915 when Claude announced his intention of becoming a flyer himself.
Claude left the north coast in May 1916 to study aviation at the Glenn Martin School near Los Angeles, California. By fall he was on his way back to Vancouver and thence to Britain to join the Royal Naval Air Service.
His flying career began at Sleaford in Lincolnshire as flight sub-lieutenant. In time he was transferred to Felixstowe and promoted to flight lieutenant. By 1917 the end of the war was in sight and American aviators, notably the famous Yale “Millionaires’ Unit,” joined the British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans who were already there.
Purdy wrote to the bank:
Am here taking some special work on large sea-planes which will be able to stay out at sea on patrol much longer than the ordinary ones. Our special object is to sink submarines…There were four of us chosen last week for this job. One of our bunch out on patrol this morning brought down a Zeppelin. I should like to have an opportunity to get one as this has been my ambition ever since I came over…We have some very fine machines, some of which I should say are the largest in the world. It seems wonderful that such a large structure can possibly get into the air at all. Patrols, of course, go on in all kinds of weather, and we have to be pretty good at navigation, as there is very little in the air to go by when it is foggy; in fact it takes some pretty good work to steer through clouds, and fog is much worse. The whole thing has to be done by instruments by which one can tell the speed through the air, climbing and gliding angles, and the position laterally. There are also a dozen other things which require attention, and which help to keep the course and to keep the station at home posted on one’s movements. It is very interesting indeed to go sailing through the air with anything from five hundred to nine hundred horse-power behind one in the shape of engines.
Early on the morning of February 15, 1918, Purdy, along with a South African pilot in a second flying boat, was scheduled to escort a shipment of beef between Britain and Holland. One of the Yale flyboys was slotted as Claude’s co-pilot that day, but Sturtevant wanted more flying hours and persuaded his friend to trade shifts. According to the South African, the two aircraft were each pursued by several German planes. The other pilot managed to elude his attackers and make his way back to base, but once he left, all the aircraft pursued Purdy, forcing him farther south, away from the coast. Then, as in a bad dream, German air ace Friedrich Christiansen came from another direction and downed his plane. (Christiansen was credited with the hit, but other accounts give it to Urban and Ehrhard.)
When Al Sturtevant’s heartbroken father went to the Baltic coast to try to find out what happened to his son, Christiansen told him that after the crash he had circled back to look for survivors. He saw three men clinging to the wreckage, waving frantically. He said he considered rescuing them, but thought his own situation too precarious, so did not. By the time Felixstowe realized there was a problem, all but one aircraft were out on missions. The single plane left at the base attempted a search but was damaged on takeoff, thus Purdy and his crew were left to perish in the icy waters. No trace of plane or crew was ever found.
Interestingly, Claude’s younger brother Herbert became an American flyer and was credited with a U-boat sinking in 1918.
A full account of Purdy’s final flight is published in Marc Wortman’s The Millionaires’ Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Airpower.
Major Donald Roderick MacLaren—Forty-Eight Victories
“No more romantic figure emerges from the records of British aviation than that of Major Donald MacLaren of Vancouver.” So wrote George Drew in his groundbreaking 1930 book, Canada’s Fighting Airmen.
MacLaren stood alone as a latecomer to the war effort, rapidly scoring victories in the air in the last year of hostilities. He left a fur trading post in the Peace River Country to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps in spring 1917 and didn’t arrive in France until late that year. In the short time that remained, he attained the position of fourth-highest-scoring Canadian ace.
The MacLaren family arrived in 1911 in Vancouver where Donald studied electrical engineering. He and his brother Roy decided to go into the fur business with their father and ended up in a remote part of the Peace River. “The war seemed very remote,” wrote George Drew, “...and months passed into years without their realizing the extent to which Canada had become involved in the vast conflict.” But when it finally sunk in, Donald, Roy and their father all headed south to enlist.
Flying turned out to be something that Donald MacLaren was very good at. He had very little time to excel, but his list of citations kept piling up.
June 22, 1918, awarded the Military Cross: For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. On one occasion, when on low bombing work he bombed a long-range enemy gun, 9,000 yards behind the lines, obtaining from a height of 200 feet two direct hits on the gun track and two on the railway track alongside. When returning to our lines he encountered a hostile two-seater machine,which he shot down to the earth. He then attacked a balloon, which burst into flames, and finally,observing another two-seater plane, he engaged it and eventually succeeded in crashing it to the earth. He set an example of gallantry and skill to his squadron.
September 16, 1918, awarded the Bar to Military Cross: For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty as a fighting pilot. He has recently destroyed no less than nine enemy machines and proved himself a brilliant fighting pilot against enemy aircraft often far superior in number. He has done magnificent service and set a splendid example to his patrol.
September 21, 1918, awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross: Accompanied by two other pilots,this officer attacked four enemy aeroplanes; all of these were destroyed; he himself fought two down within 200 feet of the ground, destroying both. The two pilots who were with him each accounted for one of the remaining two. It was a well-conceived manoeuvre ably carried out,reflecting credit on all concerned. This officer has in four-and-a-half months accounted for thirty-seven hostile aircraft and six balloons, displaying great resolution and exceptional tactical ability.
February 8, 1919, awarded the Distinguished Service Order: Bold in attack and skilful in manoeuvre,Captain MacLaren is conspicuous for his success in aerial combats. On 24th September he and his patrol of three machines attacked a formation of six enemy scouts, although the latter were protected by sixteen other enemy aircraft at a higher altitude. Firing a burst at point-blank range,this officer shot down one in flames. In all he has accounted for forty-eight enemy machines, and six kit balloons.
MacLaren was also awarded the Legion of Honour and Croix de Guerre. He stayed with the Royal Air Force for a few years after the war, but in 1921 he was back in Vancouver where he organized Pacific Airways Limited, one of the country’s first successful commercial airlines. He died on July 4, 1988, aged ninety-six.
Captain Frederick McCall—Thirty-Seven Victories
Frederick McCall was born in Vernon in 1896 and enlisted with 175th Battalion in early 1916. But “Freddie” caught the flying bug and transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in March 1917, proceeding to France in December of that year. A month later he brought down his first enemy machine while flying a cumbersome two-seater reconnaissance plane. He won the Military Cross in March. “He has set a fine example of courage and determination on all occasions,” read the citation, “and has rendered most valuable service.”
McCall was active in the great German offensive in the spring of 1918, attacking fast-moving troops on the ground with bombs and machine-gun fire. He also shot down four more planes and added a Bar to his MC at a special investiture with the king.
In the dying days of the war, McCall drove up his tally of victories earning the DSO. “His courage and offensive spirit have inspired all who serve with him,” read the citation.
In September 1918, at twenty-two years of age, he sailed back to North America aboard the Scotian. He settled back in Calgary, Alberta, and founded his own company, Great Western Airways, becoming good friends with fellow aviation pioneer Donald MacLaren. McCall died in Calgary on January 22, 1949, at the age of fifty-two. Calgary airport was named for him for a time but later became Calgary International Airport.
Captain Charles Robert Reeves Hickey—Twenty-One Victories
Charles Hickey, like fellow Nanaimo flying ace Raymond Collishaw, flew with the Royal Naval Air Service. He was just eighteen when he signed up in March 1916, a farm boy with no previous military experience. He and his father both served in the Canadian Mounted Rifles before he decided to join the RNAS. He flew a Sopwith Camel and transferred to the Royal Air Force when it was formed in 1918. After scoring an astounding twenty-one victories, he was killed in a mid-air collision with another Sopwith Camel in October 1918.
His citation in November 1918 for the Distinguished Flying Cross with Bar read:
A very determined air fighter who has destroyed seven enemy machines and brought down nine completely out of control during the past three months. His skill and initiative as a flight commander have made his flight very successful. Last month he destroyed two machines and brought down two more out of control in one day, and the remainder of his flight, at the same time succeeded in disposing of several more enemy aircraft without sustaining any casualties.
Major Alfred Williams Carter—Seventeen Victories
Alfred Carter was another one of the Royal Naval Air Service boys. Raised in Alberta, he enlisted in 1915 and was a respected flight commander with the RNAS by 1917. He flew Sopwith Pups and Sopwith Triplanes and later a Camel.
His citation for the Distinguished Service Cross read:
This officer has at all times led his patrols with great courage, skill and pertinacity, often engaging superior numbers of hostile aircraft. On 22 July 1917, he engaged, single-handed for half an hour, five enemy scouts which he prevented from carrying out a reconnaissance. On 24 July 1917, with one other pilot, he attacked four enemy aircraft, one of which he drove down completely out of control.
In a 1969 CBC documentary, he described how he recovered a souvenir from one of the enemy aircraft he shot down:
I got the German fighter started down and I stayed right on his tail until he crashed in the canal. And I went up to the front where he was and got this rudder off the aircraft and brought it back to the squadron and eventually I had it crated up in a small crate and brought it home to Canada with my luggage.
After the war, Carter ran a car dealership in Victoria (A.W. Carter Ltd.) and then rejoined the air force, rising to the rank of air marshall. He died in Vancouver in 1986.
The Hilborn Brothers of Quesnel
Told with help from William Hilborn’s niece, Pat (Hilborn) Sexsmith, Prince George
William and Clarence Hilborn were big men, well over six feet, men who would stand out in a crowd. They came from a big family too—eight children. Their mother Josephine was from a pioneer stock in Barkerville. Their father was a respected farmer and a skilled tradesman who built many buildings in Quesnel.
Willie and Clarence were close in age and interests. And when the war broke out, they both wanted more than anything to fly. So they paid for their own flying lessons and stuck with it as long as the money lasted. The brothers graduated as Royal Flying Corps pilots within weeks of each other in the summer of 1917.
Willie Hilborn was the better pilot and more effective in combat. But he had one problem. He was prone to airsickness. He wrote to his brother in 1918, “I am starting to feel sick again. It is my stomach that bothers me. I would like to quit about the end of August.”
Even with the airsickness, Willie proved to be leadership material. He rose to the rank of captain and served as a wingman for one of Canada’s greatest aces, William Barker, who won the VC. They served together on the Italian front, conducting dogfights with Austro-Hungarian pilots who were just as proficient as the more famous German aces.
Willie scored seven victories in Italy, a significant accomplishment for a flyer who came into the war late. And he was rightfully proud of his accomplishments. He wrote to Clarence, “I have put more time in than any other officer since we came to Italy. I did six hours last week in one day. That was three patrols. I have a great machine...about the best in the squadron.”
He loved his Sopwith Camel even though he was a pretty big man to squeeze into the cockpit. And his success in the air attracted attention. “I was recommended for the DFC a couple of days ago,” he wrote to Clarence. “I am not supposed to know but somebody told me that knew. It will come through in a few days for sure. Decorations are very nice for sure, but I don’t believe in taking foolish chances to get them. I have just gone along, and done my work, and with a little luck have done pretty well.”
His Distinguished Flying Cross citation read: “An excellent patrol leader who on all occasions displays courage, endurance and skill.”
While Willie tried not to take chances, his superiors were the architects of a plan that would cost him his life. They determined that his squadron should start flying at night, a risky business in the primitive fighter planes of the day.
On August 31, Clarence received a telegraph at his hotel in London: “Deeply regret to inform you that Capt. W.C. Hilborn, Royal Air Force, is reported to have died of wounds on August twenty sixth. The Air Council express their sympathy. Sincerely, Air Ministry.”
On August 16, just a few months before the war ended, Willie had collided with a tree while practising night flying.
“After the crash, he lived for a while,” niece Pat Sexsmith told us. “He was scalped by the tree, and then died of infection.”
Back home in Quesnel, his mother took the news hard. She wrote to Clarence:
Last Saturday we got the news of our dear son Willie’s death. I could not write then. Oh, I can’t tell you how we feel and I’m sure your own dear heart aches too. But we believe he has gone to a better world where there is no war and no more pain. Where everything is bright. He was a good boy and so brave and we are all proud of him. Only we wanted him home again, it was such a shock to us all. We must try and be brave.
Pat Sexsmith says her grandmother never forgot or forgave the air force for the loss:
I know how it affected my grandmother Josie. My grandfather Stephen of Quaker stock, accepted tragedies with more equanimity, but my grandmother was very bitter. She refused to go to the cenotaph with the rest of the Hilborns. As a Girl Guide attending the ceremonies, I felt honoured to have a family member who gave his life so we could have peace in Canada. It bothered me that grandmother wouldn’t honour his memory too. She hid his DFC. It was never found.
Willie Hilborn is buried at the Montecchio Precalcino Communal Cemetery in Italy. His brother Clarence made it home safely and became a building contractor in North Vancouver.
The Bell-Irving Boys
The Bell-Irving family served with distinction during the Great War. Four of the boys accounted for nine awards for gallantry: Henry Beattie Bell-Irving of the RCN, who served in the Dover Patrol (Distinguished Service Cross and Bar); Roderick Ogle Bell-Irving, who served in the 16th Battalion, Canadian Scottish (Distinguished Service Order [Posthumous] and Military Cross); Malcolm (Mick) McBean Bell-Irving, who served in the Royal Flying Corps (Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross); and Alan Duncan Bell-Irving, who served in the Royal Flying Corps (Military Cross and Bar as well as the Croix de Guerre).
The fighting Bell-Irvings made quite a splash in England. In 1916, the London Daily Express described them as “all red-blooded, red-haired and red-fibred, with grit marked all over them.”
Duncan could not obtain a commission, so he went to Europe as a private with his own motorbike and for the first year of the war was a dispatch rider. Mick went to England and took private flying lessons before joining the Royal Flying Corps. Both boys became distinguished flyers. Duncan Bell-Irving scored seven victories, earning a place among British Columbia’s flying aces.
He was a good shot and a good flyer, later becoming an instructor. But in September 1915, Duncan was shot down. He miraculously survived. Then he was wounded in December. He was shot down again in October 1916 and again wounded in November. With those injuries (and a little luck) he was appointed to a leading position at a flying school in Gosport, England.
Duncan’s citation for the MC with Bar read: “For conspicuous gallantry in action. He displayed great courage and skill when escorting a bombing raid. He engaged several enemy machines and drove them off. Afterwards, although his own machine was damaged, he continued to fight against superior numbers of the enemy.”
Duncan went on to serve in the RAF in World War II and died in 1965.
Brother Mick was also a fighter with an incredible ability to survive. In December 1915 he was wounded within days of his brother Duncan. Both were both transferred to London to a private hospital run by Lady Ridley in her large house, where they recovered.
In early July 1916 Mick was wounded again, this time in the head while on a photo-reconnaissance flight. He passed out, regaining consciousness just in time to crashland inside the British lines. His observer was also wounded and died soon after. The bullet had entered Mick’s skull and lodged in the brain. Unbelievably, no vital parts were touched though he suffered some memory loss. He was nursed by his sister Isabel who had joined the nursing staff at Lady Ridley’s and he recovered sufficiently to return to Canada. Having been awarded a DSO and an MC, he was given a hero’s welcome.
While he was in Canada, the bullet in his brain shifted, causing blackouts and some loss of peripheral vision. He was sent to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where Dr. William Dabney successfully removed the bullet.
In January 1918 Mick was involved in another flying accident. After the successful removal of the bullet in his brain he was given command of one of the first Canadian RFC squadrons at Camp Borden, though he was not yet allowed to fly. Later he returned to Britain and was appointed liaison officer with responsibility for all matters affecting Canadians in the RFC. On a visit to Gosport he persuaded Duncan’s successor to let him take the special advanced flying course. While performing a difficult stunt, his plane crashed and he was badly injured, once more to his head. One leg was so badly smashed that it was amputated above the knee. From this time Mick’s flying days were over and as soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he returned to Canada. He died in 1942.
With excerpts from Ray Eagle’s In the Service of the Crown: The Story of Budge and Nancy Bell-Irving.
Flight Lieutenant Harwood James Arnold
Dianne Rabel from Prince Rupert wrote:
Harwood was well known and admired on the north coast according to the Prince Rupert DailyNews. He worked as a wireless telegrapher in a number of places including Triple Island and Ikedaon the Queen Charlotte Islands. He was working on the QCI when war broke out and he had theidea he could combine his wireless skills with aviation. He went directly to Vancouver to make hisway to England to sign up with the Royal Naval Air Service. In July 1915 he was awarded a DSO forhis part in the Königsberg incident in German East Africa. There are varying accounts of his death in1918, but seems it was accidental.
His citation for the Distinguished Service Order read:
Flight Commander Cull and Flight Sub-Lieut. Arnold were spotting on the 11th July, under fire ina biplane, when the enemy’s fire damaged it, so that it descended in a quarter of an hour from 3,200 feet to 2,000 feet. During this time no attempt was made to return to Headquarters at Mafia, although it was obvious that this could not be done unless a start was made at once. Flight Sub-Lieut. Arnold continued to send spotting signals the whole time, and when a quarter of an hour later, the machine was again hit and forced to descend, Flight Commander Cull controlled the machine and Flight Sub-Lieut. Arnold continued to send spotting corrections to the last, after warning the monitors that they were coming down and would endeavour to land near them. The aeroplane finally came down in the river, turning over and over. Flight Commander Cull was nearly drowned, but was assisted by Flight Sub-Lieut. Arnold, and both were rescued by a boat from the Mersey.
According to the book Collishaw and Company, Arnold returned to England in 1916 to take pilot training and became a flying instructor at Eastchurch. He married in England in 1917 but was killed accidentally in 1918 in a target shoot when a student’s bullets hit his propeller and caused the craft to catch fire and crash.
Captain Bernard Paul Gascoigne Beanlands—Thirteen Victories
By Bill Howson, West Yorkshire
Paul Beanlands was born in Victoria on September 9, 1897. He was the son of the late Canon Arthur Beanlands. Canon Beanlands had been in Victoria since 1884 and was rector and canon in residence at Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria. Beanlands entered Oundle School while his parents were still resident in Canada but later his family returned to England and settled at Wickhurst Manor, Weald, Sevenoaks.
Beanlands was entered at Sandhurst on August 22, 1914, and after three months of instruction passed out and was then sent on a special course in machine gunnery, which he passed with 100 percent. He was then commissioned to the 3rd Battalion of the Hampshire regiment on December 23, 1914, at Gosport. On January 23, he was in France with the 1st Hampshires, stationed near “Plug Street.” When his colonel found out how young he was, he and his staff from the sergeant major upward co-operated in guiding him along the path of a good soldier. This he never forgot.
The infantry were having a gruelling time in the Ypres salient because there was a lack of artillery and ammunition. Beanlands, along with other young soldiers, had long periods of trench warfare with little relief. He was a good shot and had hoped to be a member of the team from Oundle to shoot at Bisley in 1914. At the front he was a useful sniper. He had a good eye and a remarkably steady hand, and later became a very good marksman as his friends used to testify.
By a coincidence Beanlands was detailed to help instruct the 1st Battalion British Columbian Regiment in trench warfare and was recognized by Canadian friends from Victoria. Later, having just been relieved from the trenches himself, he volunteered to guide the Canadian Expeditionary Force on a very dark night to their trenches. He returned safely himself, but it was that fatal month of May when the Canadians were so badly gassed.
Beanlands had always wanted to fly. His letters home from the trenches to his father had been full of the delights of flying and its possibilities. On December 23, 1915, he was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps and sent to Reading for his theoretical training. He passed out 3rd and went on to Shoreham to learn to fly. He was now six feet three-and-a-half inches tall, and to the dismay of his instructors too big to fit into the first two classes of planes. He returned to France on August 23, 1916, and was promoted to flight commander on December 1. On December 13 he won his MC for bringing down three German planes the same day. He returned to England in February 1917.
It must have been sometime between May and June 1916 when Beanlands flew over to Oundle to see a cricket match and was warmly welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson (the headmaster and his wife) and the whole school. The event was commemorated by a postcard of himself and his mechanic standing by the plane.
During one of his flights reconnoitring early one morning over Lens, the interrupter on his plane froze and his gun missed firing between the revolutions of the propeller and blew off a blade. He was fifteen thousand feet up over the German lines and continued to fly in ever-widening circles until he was able to land behind his own lines without mishap to his observer or himself. The whole plane disintegrated from the strain of the heavy vibration and fell to pieces on landing. His men presented him with the hub and remaining blade of his propeller with an inscription of the event.
In 1918 he was acting squadron leader when he was seriously wounded near St. Quentin during the great retreat. He was returning to his base and saw our men being hard pressed in the trenches. He flew low, firing at the German lines. A bullet pierced through one leg and glanced off a piece of metal in his plane back into the other leg. Realizing he had been wounded, he made for his base but found he was bleeding profusely and flew into the grounds of a hospital, where he landed only just in time to be evacuated by the last of the staff to the railway station. After a wait of many hours, he was put in the last train from that district before it was overrun by the Germans.
It was some months before Beanlands recovered from his wounds. Then, just before his twenty-first birthday, he was made a captain in the RAF. On December 10, 1918, he was appointed examining officer to the 18th Wing, which entailed the testing of instructors and pupils of the London District and their planes. It was while he was testing a plane on May 18, 1919, just before taking up pupils, that he was killed at the age of twenty-one years and eight months. He was buried at Sevenoaks.
Paul Beanlands was a nephew of Bill Howson’s great-grandmother.
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James Alpheus Glen, schooled in Enderby: RNAS, fifteen victories
George Thomson, a printer from Celista: RAF, fourteen victories
Harold Byron Hudson, Vancouver: RFC, thirteen victories
Art Duncan, Vancouver Millionaires Hockey player: RFC, eleven victories (see Chapter 15)
William Henry Brown, born in Victoria: RFC, Military Cross, nine victories
Leonard Arthur Christian, born near Armstrong: RNAS, nine victories
George Leonard Trapp, Collishaw’s brother-in-law, New Westminster: RNAS, six victories, killed in action 1917
Joseph Hallonquist, born Mission: RFC, five victories
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