My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleysupplied the answer: the Royal Flying Corps. It was prepared to take on completelyuntrained men as observers and send them straight to fight. I had never been up in anaircraft in my life, but I put in for the job at once. Directly I had sent in myapplication I remembered that in a gymnasium I had the greatest difficulty in makingmyself walk across a plank twenty feet above the ground; I had always much dislikedheights. There was a considerable doubt about what would happen to me when Ifound myself several thousand feet above ground. Those were early days and it wasnot common knowledge that most people who dislike heights have no sensationwhatever of that kind in an aircraft. In any case there was nothing for it now but to goand see what happened.The sense of adventure into the unknown was certainly enhanced during the period ofwaiting by the most horrific drawings of aircraft being plastered by shell-fire whichappeared in the illustrated weeklies. It turned out for once that the imagination of theartist had not greatly exceeded the bounds of fact, for during my time at the front withthe R.F.C. I can rarely recall seeing any aircraft returning from crossing the lineswithout being hit. These early machines were flimsy contraptions, and precisely onthat account could stand a lot of stuff going through them without fatality. At last thewait was over and the order came to report for duty in France. I was joined by anotheryoung man from a Lancer regiment whom I had known at Sandhurst, and weunderstood we were the first two to go from the cavalry to the flying service inresponse to the appeal for observers. I had always liked him and we became closefriends on the way over. I was just past my eighteenth birthday and he was a year ortwo older. The night before we parted to go to different squadrons he said to me, 'Youknow, we are much too young to die'. I warmly agreed. A few weeks later I heard hewas dead.My experience on the western front will be an entirely individual story; the readermust expect no history of even a small section of the war. I have always felt a clearchoice existed between two states of mind, the writing of history and the making ofhistory. He who is interested in the latter should only be detained by the former justlong enough to absorb its lessons. In the case of the First World War a single ideaexisted for me: always to do my utmost in all circumstances to prevent it everhappening again. This thought was so burned into my consciousness by memory ofthe fate of my companions that it approached the obsessive far more closely than anyother experience of my life. I was at that time too occupied to record anything, andafterwards I was not interested in registering any thought but the determination toprevent the fatal recurrence, if it were humanly possible. Even the colossal errorsmade during the war became irrelevant if the only task were to stop war in its entirety.This attitude led me to take little further interest in the science of war, for war becamesomething to be prevented at all costs. It was not until pure science in recent yearsentered the science of war as its complete determinant that this interest returned. Forpure science in modern times offers the decisive choice of the ages, utter destructionor unlimited progress, the abyss or the heights. All politics are in this, and all thefuture. The problem of war and peace became one with the arrival of science; it wasthe problem of existence itself, the question of life or death. This was a new world,but from the old world I took one benefit which I shall never deny and alwaysappreciate— a certain attitude of manhood which came from the regular army andhelps much in the problems of life.44 of 424