My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyvery inventive, always trying out new things and new methods. With much raillery wewatched him tying onto his aircraft the first loo-lb bomb to reach the squadron (untilthen we had nothing heavier than I3~lb bombs) with a quaint contraption of string,wire and improvised pulleys to his pilot's seat, before he set out to deliver it to someGerman target of his particular dislike. We always maintained it had come off longbefore he reached the German lines, which he stoutly denied with his usual gayhumour. However, he managed soon to arrange things as he wanted. He won theD.S.O. for destroying a Zeppelin on the ground with light weapons under very heavyfire and the V.C. for a successful battle against great odds in the air. Finally, he wasshot down after a long air fight with the great German ace, Richthofen, who also diedin the same way soon afterwards. They rest together in the Pantheon of heroism.Hawker won his V.C. some time after I left the squadron. Another V.C. of thesquadron, by name Liddell, was a very different type; he was as calm as Hawker washighly strung. He died superbly as a result of being mortally wounded in the air andflying back a long distance to save his observer and make his report. He succumbed tohis wounds soon afterwards, and his V.C. was posthumous. Will and spirit in suchdeeds were exalted over the physical in a supreme degree. His was not the only caseof men dying of wounds soon after landing, having flown their aircraft back a greatdistance. It seemed that the will alone held the spark of life until the task was done; itwas extinguished as will relaxed.Hawker was quicksilver compared to the steel of such natures. It would have beendifficult to guess from his manner or appearance that he would be a V.C., yet he wasone of the greatest of them all. He was very intelligent, nervous, and acutely sensitiveto the conditions under which we were living. In the mess he would almost jump fromhis chair if someone dropped a plate. The continued noise during our daily flights hadreally affected him as, in different ways and varying degrees, it touched us all. Noisewas to my mind the worst part of the war, whether on the ground or in the air. In thetrenches the earth naturally received a great deal of the shock of shellfire, while italways seemed to me that explosions in the air were mostly absorbed by the aircraftand its occupants. I do not know if this sensation has any scientific basis; it maysimply have been an illusion fostered by the greater loneliness of the air. You were upthere by yourself while apparently the whole world shot at you, the hatred of mankindconcentrated upon you. Certainly the whoof or crash of shells bursting round uscontinually during about three hours of the reconnaissance each day affected us all invarious ways.Hawker would never eat or drink before he flew, not even a cup of coffee. He wouldsimply walk up and down while we were waiting in the morning, nerves on edge. Thisconcerned me greatly during the considerable period I was his observer, because therewas a belief then current that a pilot might faint in the air if he flew on an emptystomach. It had not much basis in fact, but in the early days of flying we were full ofsuch legends; it was a new subject in a sphere new to man. Yet try as I would, I couldnever persuade him to eat anything. All was nerves until the take-off; then the manwas transformed as the wheels left the ground. He was of all men I knew the boldest,perhaps the most reckless, certainly the most utterly indifferent to personal safetywhen a sense of duty was involved.He would not play any of the tricks to avoid heavy fire, like zigzagging within the49 of 424